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

World-famous artist and widower, Vic Kamp, has been bringing his family to the same Italian lakes’ villa for years. This year he brings his young, mysterious fiancé and marries her, in the absence of his children. His death and her presence expose the long-suppressed fractures in the family, and the dark, manipulative shadow Vic has cast on his too-dependent children. It’s a story of false hope, and it isn’t gentle, but if it isn’t a good book group book, I don’t know what is!

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

Anne Tyler captures the human character and the art of tension, subtle or otherwise, like few others. A daughter’s wedding provides the backdrop to Three Days in June, a time of heightened joy and angst, sweeping commitments and fussing about detail; most of all, it’s about family and love, old and new – all beautifully observed.

You can buy it from us from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking: Three Days in June

Winner of Bloody Scotland’s Scottish Crime Debut of the Year award in 2024, the story is set in the interwar years, the shadow of the trenches haunts pathologist Dr Jack Cuthbert. The discovery of two bodies in a London park guarantee that he will face more horror ahead as he works to uncover the reason for their deaths.

You can buy it from us from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking: The Silent House of Sleep

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