About Scotland

No ones ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fineMeet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what shes thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. Bu...

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach?an ?outlander??in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...

Who formed the first literate society Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics?contributions that have...

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.Sh...

In this first book in the legendary Lymond Chronicles, Francis Crawford of Lymond, traitor, murderer, nobleman, returns to Scotland to redeem his reputation and save his home.It is 1547 and Scotland has been humiliated by an English invasion and is threatened by machinations elsewhere beyond its borders, but it is still free. Paradoxically, her fre...

Discover the sights of Scotland with this classic Katie picture book.With so much to see and do in Scotland, it's lucky that Katie, Jack and Grandma have a very special guide to show them the best spots. Join their funpacked tour with Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster! Landmarks featured include Glasgow's Kelingrove Park, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood,...

Love of Country...

More than four hundred years after her death, Mary Queen of Scots remains one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history. Antonia Fraser's classic biography of her won the James Tait Prize when it was first published in 1969, became an international bestseller and was translated into nine languages.Mary passed her childhood i...

The basis for the hit series "Shetland" now airing on PBSWinner of Britain's coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to U.S. mystery readers.Raven Black begins on New Year's Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body...

In The Hidden Ways, Alistair Moffat traverses the lost paths of Scotland its Roman roads tramped by armies, its warpaths and pilgrim routes, drove roads and rail roads, turnpikes and searoads in a bid to understand how our history has left its mark upon our landscape. As he retraces the forgotten paths that shaped and were shaped by the lives ...

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown Scotland's largest secondhand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A booklover's paradise Well, almost ... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an insid...

From the astonishingly talented writer of The Accidental and Hotel World comes Ali Smith?s brilliant retelling of Ovid?s genderbending myth of Iphis and Ianthe, as seen through the eyes of two Scottish sisters. Girl Meets Boy is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, and the absurdity of consumerism, as well as a story of ...

When Scotland's 1846 potato crop was wiped out by blight, the country was plunged into crisis. In the Hebrides and the West Highlands a huge relief effort came too late to prevent starvation and death. Further east, meanwhile, towns and villages from Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso, rose up in protest at the cost of the oatmeal that replaced potatoes a...

In 1997, at the age of 24, Sarah lost her mother to breast cancer. Alone and adrift in the world, she very nearly gave up hope but she'd made a promise to her mother that she would keep going no matter what. So she turned to the beautiful, dangerous, forbidding mountains of her native Scotland.By walking in her mother's footsteps, she learns to a...

Detective John Rebus: His city is being terrorized by a baffling series of murders...and he's tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood. Once John Rebus served in Britain's elite SAS. Now he's an Edinburgh cop who hides from his memories, misses promotions and ignores a series of crank letters. But as the ghoulish killings mount and the tabloi...

Janice Galloway's inventive first novel is about the breakdown of a 27yearold drama teacher named Joy Stone. The problems of everyday living accumulate and begin to torture Joy, who blames her problems not on her work or on the accidental drowning of her illicit lover, but on herself. While painful and deeply serious, this is a novel of great war...

World War II has brought rationing to the Hebridean islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks as though the end of the world has come. George Campbell needs the courage to stand up to his mother and marry Catriona. The priest, the doctor and, of course, the inn?s landl...

Morvern Callar, a lowpaid employee in the local supermarket in a desolate and beautiful port town in the west of Scotland, wakes one morning in late December to find her strange boyfriend has committed suicide and is dead on the kitchen floor. Morvern's reaction is both intriguing and immoral. What she does next is even more appalling. Moving acro...

She was a schoolmistress with a difference. Proud, cultured, romantic, her ideas were progressive, even shocking. And when she decided to transform a group of young girls under her tutelage into the "creme de la creme" of Marcia Blaine school, no one could have predicted the outcome.This P.S. Edition contains insights, interviews and more....

44 SCOTLAND STREET Book 1The residents and neighbors of 44 Scotland Street and the city of Edinburgh come to vivid life in these gently satirical, wonderfully perceptive serial novels, featuring sixyearold Bertie, a remarkably precocious boy?just ask his mother. Welcome to 44 Scotland Street, home to some of Edinburgh's most colorful character...

Is a story ever just a storyMac, a retired academic and writer, is working on a new collection of folktales, inspired by local legends, and at the insistence of her only child, Arthur, she hires a young assistant, Lucie, to live in a cottage on her property and help her transcribe them. What Arthur doesn?t know is that his mother is determined to ...

This first ever guide to the Scottish bothies reveals the country's unique and often hidden network of bothy cabins and mountain huts. Scattered across Scotland's most beautiful landscapes, these evocative abandoned crofts and farmsteads are free to stay in and offer a chance to experience the ultimate in wild adventure living. The first ever compl...

A new compendium of adventures, from the bestselling Wild Guide series (winner of travel guidebook of the year 2015). This guide to Scotland and the Scottish highlands and islands, one of Europe's fastest growing adventure holiday destinations, explores the hidden parts of its better known tourist areas, as well many more remote regions, rarely vi...

Waverley, Sir Walter Scott's first prose fiction, is often regarded as the first historical novel. It was wildly popular, and the first of the "Waverley Novels" that include "Ivanhoe" and "Rob Roy," that made Scott the most famous writer of his day....

A fishing trip honouring a dying man's wish becomes a meditation on life, nature and friendship, a literary biography and a celebration of the beauty of the Highlands of Scotland....

Whether you take the high road or the low road, Scotland is yours to explore with Rick Steves! Inside Rick Steves Scotland you'll find:Comprehensive coverage for spending two weeks or more exploring ScotlandRick's strategic advice on how to get the most out of your time and money, with rankings of his mustsee favoritesTop sights and hidden gems, f...

The Massacre of Glencoe happened at 5am on 13th February 1692 when thirtyeight members of the Macdonald clan were killed by soldiers who had enjoyed the clan's hospitality for the previous ten days. Many more died from exposure in the mountains. Fifty miles to the south Corrag is condemned for her involvement in the Massacre. She is imprisoned, ac...

"Everyone should have two copies one for the car and one for the house to plan journeys. . . a reminder to think more about the places you pass and less about your route, because every British journey is through rich history." (Edward Stourton)From muchloved historian Neil Oliver, comes this beautifully written, kaleidoscopic history of a place ...

It's surprising what you can find by simply stepping out to look. Kathleen Jamie, award winning poet, has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following th...

?Outlander meets Camelot? (Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers) in the first book of an exciting historical trilogy that reveals the untold story of Languoreth?a powerful and, until now, tragically forgotten queen of sixthcentury Scotland?twin sister of the man who inspired the legendary character of Merlin.Intelligent, passionate, rebellious...

In Bothy Tales the followup to The Last Hillwalker from bestselling mountain writer John D. Burns travel with the author to secret places hidden amongst the British hills and share his passion for the wonderful wilderness of our uplands. From remote glens deep in the Scottish Highlands Burns brings a new volume of tales some dramatic some moving s...

The next best thing to visiting your favorite bookstore (bookshop cat not included). Go behind the scenes at The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland with owner (and author) Shaun Bythell. Inside a stonefaced Georgian townhouse on the Wigtown highroad, jammed with more than 100,000 books and one portly shop cat, Shaun manages the daily ups and downs of r...

This work, originally published in 1981, has been hailed as the most influential Scottish novel of the second half of the 20th century. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying....

She became Queen of Scots when she was only six days old. Life among the warring factions in Scotland was dangerous for the infant Queen, however, and at age five Mary was sent to France to be raised alongside her betrothed, the Dauphin Francois. Surrounded by all the sensual comforts of the French court, Mary's youth was peaceful, charmed, and whe...

Brace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting?the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain.Trainspotting is the hilarious, appalling, riveting, bestselling, and altogether masterful first novel that launched the spectacular career of Irvine Welsh. It is an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating group por...

In her starkly beautiful and wholly unexpected tale, Jackie Kay delves into the most intimate workings of the human heart and mind and offers a triumphant tale of loving deception and lasting devotion.The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret, one that enrages his adopted son, Colman, leading him to collude wi...

Scotland's history has been badly served over the years and here gets a rewrite by archaeologist and historian Neil Oliver. Defined by its relationship to England, Scotland's popular history is full of nearmythical figures and tragic events, her past littered with defeat, failure and thwarted ambition. The martyrdom of William Wallace, the tragedy...

Readers can discover all the foul facts about the Scotland, including the truth about William Wallace, the disgusting details of sick Scottish torture techniques, and how to terrify a tourist with gory Scottish ghost stories. With a bold, accessible new look and a heap of extrahorrible bits, these bestselling titles are sure to be a huge hit with ...

His novels are playing a significant part in redefining Scotland's image of itself in literature' Independent on Sunday In 'Rebus's Scotland' Ian Rankin uncovers the Scotland that the tourist never sees, highlighting the places that inspired the settings for the Inspector Rebus novels. Rankin also reveals the story of Rebus and how he came into ...

Young Chris Guthrie comes of age in the harsh landscape of northern Scotland, torn between her passion for the land, her duty to her family and her love of books, until the First World War begins and the landscape around her changes dramatically. The first novel in Gibbon's classic trilogy A Scots Quair, Sunset Song marks the emotional and politica...

Bestselling, awardwinning author Val McDermid delivers her most stunning story yet in The Distant Echoan intricate, thoughtprovoking tale of murder and revengeIt was a winter morning in 1978, that the body of a young barmaid was discovered in the snow banks of a Scottish cemetery. The only suspects in her brutal murder were the four young men ...

From the author of the acclaimed novels The House Between Tides and Beyond the Wild River, a rich, atmospheric tale set on the sealashed coast of west Scotland, in which the lives of a ninthcentury Norsewoman, a nineteenthcentury woman, and a twentyfirstcentury archeologist weave together after a body is discovered in the dunes.Libby Snow has ...