Good reads

The winner of the 2024 BOOKMARK Book of the Year. A passionate and atmospheric portrayal of three lives caught up in things way beyond their control – the Scottish clearances, schisms in the church, and the weather. A slim volume that packs an emotional punch.

Carys Davies will be appearing in Blairgowrie on 19th July at BOOKMARK’s 2025 Festival Launch: click here for more details.

You can buy this book from us from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking: Clear

This year’s winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The novel starts in The Netherlands, in 1961, with Isabel tending her late mother’s garden. She lives a solitary, isolated, regimented life. Her peace is disrupted by the arrival of her brother and his new girlfriend, Eva. Her presence leads to a shattering revelation that forces Isabel to reconsider everything she has known.

You can buy it from us from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking: The Safekeep.

The latest book in the Cesare Aldo series. Set in the winter of 1539, Aldo learns of plans to assassinate the ruler of Florence Duke Cosimo de Medici. The plotters have also managed to steal the duke’s journal, which is full of dangerous secrets. Aldo must hunt down those responsible, but the trail leads him to Venice: a city full of lies and enemies; the one place Aldo has sworn to never return.

Geographically, the narrative follows the course of the river, as it collects up tributaries and then flows into the sea. However, it also depicts what the river has meant to people over time – a means of transport, source of food, place of sport, place to wander.

You can buy it from us from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking: The Sound of Many Waters.

Harrowing, moving, compelling and, according to one of our customers: ‘Should be compulsory reading in every high school.’ Nichol tells the story of how the idea of the ‘unknown soldier’ came about, and how one dead, unnamed soldier came to be chosen to represent so many of the missing. Moved from the battlefields to be buried at Westminster Abbey, the unknown soldier gave a focus for the grief of a nation that was heart-broken at the loss of their sons.

You can buy this book from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking here: The Unknown Warrior

The title references Corridor Eight, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where four young, pioneering women, Beatrice, Otto, Marianne and Dora, have taken up residence at the start of Michaelmas Term, 1920.  Though the rules of ‘engagement’ are draconian, these women are among the first to matriculate with men at Oxford. With the long shadow of the war still very visible, their varied characters, backgrounds and expectations weave together in a strengthening friendship.

You can buy this book from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking here: The Eights

A simple and delightful story of a young squirrel who inadvertently plants a wood; the woodcut art work is colourful and striking. A keep forever book.

You can buy this book from our bookshop or through our Bookshop.org page by clicking: The Squirrel and the Lost Treasure