Good reads

This book won the 2023 BOOKMARK Book of the Year Award. Kelly is living a precarious, desperately raw life on the streets of Glasgow, when a chance encounter sets her on a path of physical and redemptive pilgrimage towards her home town in Dumfriesshire. There’s guilt, loathing, kindness and love; there are baddies, brilliant pals and a dog called Collieflower. It’s a book that gets under your skin.

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It is 825, on the tiny, holy island of Iona, and the Vikings’ red sail has been spotted. What follows is brutal and bloody. But just as quickly as the violence comes, so it disappears. In its wake, the contrast of peace – uncertain at first, then building, as faith is restored, animosity is bridged, and comfort and confidence are restored. It is a captivating, witty and visceral read.

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This is the fourth outing for the enthusiastic, highly accomplished (occasionally clueless), time-travelling, librarian-cum-detective, Shona. This time she is in Venice, investigating the watery disappearance of a number of unfortunate gondolier passengers. Can she solve the clues in time? Always a fun and welcome, escapist delight.

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

This is the story of Red, who is raised in Georgian high society after her itinerant, fortune-telling father suddenly dies. Red puts herself in great danger when she starts to investigate the mysteries of her early life – how her mother died, and why her father had lived in fear – she puts herself in great danger. It’s an epic story, and brilliantly plotted.

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

Among many adventures, this book invites us to journey to far-flung places with the humble missionary Annie Royle Taylor, defy convention with the knife-wielding Lady Hester Stanhope and survive the Canadian wilderness with Susanna Moodie.

Moodie wished to deter others from ‘sinking their property, and shipwrecking all their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada’. However, I’m prefer Aimee Crocker’s reflection on a long life: ‘If I could live it again…, I would love to do so. And the only difference would be that I would try to crowd in still more….more places, more things, more women, more men, more love, more excitement.’

You can buy this book from our bookshop or from our Bookshop.org page by clicking here:  19th Century Female Explorers

Daisy Thistledown has escaped from school to find her missing mother. In her quest, she steps through a door into another world full of plants and magic. But the world on both sides of the door is threatened and, with the help of an unexpected band of friends, she must find a way to save it.

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

This fascinating historical atlas takes readers on a tour through time and place. From the glaciers of the ice age to the settlers of the neolithic. From the Viking invaders and Jacobite supporters, to the great Enlightenment thinkers. From the Highlands, Lowlands and Islands to Scotland’s crofts, castles and cities. Fun and facts galore!

You can buy this book from our bookshop or through our Bookshop.org page by clicking: An Amazing History Atlas of Scotland