Heatwave

We have actually had a bit of a hot and juicy summer this year! We at BooksfromScotland are thrilled about that and want to keep that going with some hot and juicy book recommendations - we have new fiction, memoir, history, nature writing and children's books, and we also celebrate the work of literary legends of the twentieth century. So if you love your reading full of zest, zip, spice and tang, you're going to love this lip-smacking issue!

Centenaries, Controversies and the Scottish Sixties

Trocchi, Finlay and Fraser

2025 sees the centenary of the births of three Scottish writers – Alexander Trocchi, Ian Hamilton Finlay and George MacDonald Fraser. Greg Thomas considers their lives and legacies.

The year so far has been awash with centenary celebrations for the feted Scottish poet, artist, and ‘avant-gardener’ Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006). From a series of international exhibitions organised by the poet’s estate to shows at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and further afield, to print-media coverage touching on lesser-known aspects of the poet’s legacy, oeuvre, and biography, the roster has been packed. There has even been some old-fashioned broadsheet controversy of the type Finlay courted during his lifetime, with The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones offering a carping review of the recent Finlay show at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, earning a rejoinder from the veteran Scottish journalist Magnus Linklater in The Times.

It’s less well-known that 2025 also marks the centenary of two other Scottish authors, Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984) and George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008). In very different ways, both also made striking contributions to twentieth-century Scottish literary culture. Both were also, for very different reasons, figures as liable to attract opprobrium and fierce loyalty as Finlay. Yet, while the latt...

Firebloom by Justin Davies

Twelve-year-old Tally Smuck is destined to become a Sting Winkler — someone who can communicate with jellyfish — just like her mother and grandfather before her. The Smucks‘ special gift means only they can do the vital job of caring for the invaluable jellies that Stormcliff depends on. The isolated, salt-soaked isle of Stormcliff is preparing for the annual Firebloom Festival, a famous gathering of thousands of jellyfish and their incredible light show....

David Robinson Reviews: The Letters of Muriel Spark

‘”Your policy is cramping and stifling my vital development as a writer. I am tired of living in an attic. I do not intend to write attic literature all my life. I have glorious things to be written, …

The Book … According to Damian Barr

‘It’s a novel based on two real people: Robert (Bobby) MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. They were working class boys from Ayrshire who met on their first day at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. They were …

A Fire in their Hearts by Philip Paris

‘Parting from our families had been a great deal more upsetting than Hamish and I had imagined.’

These Mortal Bodies: A Q & A with Elspeth Wilson

‘Something I love about dark academia is a genre is that the characters are so flawed, and yet (nearly) all of them have redeeming qualities too. My novel definitely sits more on the campus novel side …

Drystone by Kristie De Garis

‘From an early age, my hands knew the weight of stone.’

Women Who Dared: From the Infamous the Forgotten

‘”Men have made a more comfortable world for boys and men than for girls and women; and the women now want the power to make the world more comfortable for the girls and women without doing any harm t …

The Man on the Endless Stair by Chris Barkley

‘I reached out with my good arm and held it inches from the doorknob. What would I find on the other side? I stepped back from the door, began to breathe deep and ragged breaths. No one else was comin …

Hold Fast: Motherhood, My Autistic Daughter and Me by Catherine Simpson

‘This is a fascinating memoir of growing up without parents and in an environment where children rule the roost.’

Who Will Be Remembered Here? Queer Spaces in Scotland

‘She would see wives – like me and Eilidh! – walking hand in hand, legally married, kissing in broad daylight; she might even spot someone dressed as Sappho. She would scarcely believe her eyes. She w …

The Lost Elms: A Q & A with Mandy Haggith

‘Stand under a tree and exchange breath with it. We are part of nature and the rest of nature is all around us.’

Blitzers by Alastair Chisholm

‘Everyone is desperate to have a Blitzer, the new fighting-game craze. But Danny’s Blitzer is broken – it won’t fight!’

Cat Wumman by Gerda Stevenson

‘Mind you, I miss the tree ootside ma windae. I miss its wrunkelt bark – like me, aa the lines o lang life scored intae oor skin.’

The Needfire by M. K. Hardy

‘No one had challenged the banns because she knew no one here, was nothing here. She was completely and wholly alone.’

The Foreshore by Samantha York

‘Silence hung ominously at the end of the Reverend’s words. Flora felt the air thicken as the remaining mourners all turned to observe them.’

Abdullah’s Bear Needs a Name! by Yasmin Hanif

‘”Why don’t you guess?” said Abba. “You’ll know in your heart when you’ve found the right one.”‘
Food, Whisky, Life by Ghillie BaŞan

‘Pastries filled with ground nuts, baked fruit or creamy, semolina mixtures, and bathed in honey or …
A Chaos of Light: New Writing Scotland

‘The attic lowed like a crystal haal, last I saa her – / dark-eyed and ready tae furgit me.’
The Fathers by John Niven

‘The pleasures of the unexamined life and all that. Dan had read somewhere that the lower classes – …
Mrs Burke & Mrs Hare by Michelle Sloan

‘If you rip these bodies from the place that’s been blessed as their final place of peace, where fam …
It’s Hotting Up! Summer Reading Suggestions

‘Carso sits on the very north edge of Britain, higher than the Highlands, where the swirling waters …