Mrs Burke & Mrs Hare by Michelle Sloan (17 July 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
In the shadowy closes of Edinburgh’s Old Town, sixteen people are murdered. Burke and Hare and their wives, Lucky and Nelly, are all complicit,
but only Burke swings for their crimes. Lucky, Nelly and Hare go on the run from the angry mob, reinvention their only means of survival. Years
later, journalist Duncan Fletcher hears rumours of sightings of the two women. With cobbler Joseph Campbell in tow, Duncan’s quest leads him to the
backstreets of London, where the horrors of the past collide with the present. The time for retribution has come.
Read our full review.
Witches: A King's Obsession by Steven Veerapen (4 September 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Witches – whether broomstick-riding spell-casters or Wiccan earth-worshippers – have been culturally relevant for centuries. Steven Veerapen
traces witches, witchcraft, and witch-hunters from the explosion of mass-trials under King James VI and I in the late sixteenth century to
the death of the witch-hunting phenomenon in the early eighteenth century. Based on documents and the latest historical research, he explores
what motivated widespread belief in demonic witchcraft throughout Britain and beyond.
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Friend or Foe? by Ken Lussey (14 July 2025).
A fast-paced thriller set largely in south-west Scotland during World War Two. It’s late June 1943. Bob and Monique Sutherland’s
journey home from Malta is interrupted in London to hear Soviet claims of a German spy. Back in Scotland, they travel with a Military
Intelligence 11 team to Galloway to track down a ghost who may already have uncovered vital military secrets. When two Soviet agents
arrive in Galloway to help, Bob and Monique need to decide if the spy exists, or whether he is a Soviet invention intended to lure
MI11 into danger.
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Glasgow Harbour by Graeme Smith and Mike McCreery (15 April 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Glasgow Harbour, the port and shipbuilding centre along the River Clyde from Glasgow Green to Clydebank, became the greatest seaport
in Scotland and one of the largest in Britain. Through a mixture of striking illustrations, this book recounts the early history,
development, pioneering inventions and importance nationally and internationally of Glasgow Harbour, as well as its regeneration
today. From the seventeenth century Glasgow became one of the major hubs of trade to the
world.
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Walking Rum and the Small Isles: Rum, Eigg, Muck, Canna by Peter Edwards and Katie Featherstone (30 September 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Guidebook to 25 coastal and mountain walks on the Small Isles of Rum, Eigg, Muck and Canna, suitable for a range of abilities. Explore this wild
and rugged archipelago off Scotland’s west coast, where volcanic peaks, dramatic cliffs and quiet shorelines offer some of the Hebrides’ most rewarding
walking. Highlights include the towering Cuillin of Rum, the pitchstone ridge of An Sgùrr on Eigg, Canna’s spectacular sea cliffs and Muck’s fascinating
coastline.
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The Cadence of a Song: The Life of Margaret Fay Shaw by Fiona J. Mackenzie (2 Octobr 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
The American-born folklorist and musician Margaret Fay Shaw’s passion for the Hebrides led her to the island of South Uist in 1929 and then to Canna
in 1935 as the wife of the eminent folklorist John Lorne Campbell. This book celebrates the legacy and life of a remarkable woman, who wrote with such
wit and flair of her travels and adventures and which took her from Pennsylvania to 1920s New York, Paris, Nova Scotia and the Hebrides, where she
lived until her death in 2004.
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Graveyards and Cemeteries of Perthshire by Charlotte Golledge (15 October 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
In this book Charlotte Golledge takes readers on a tour through the history of Perthshire’s burial grounds. Perthshire is known as the Gateway
to the Highlands and is home to many clan graveyards. The last resting place of Rob Roy MacGregor is at Balquhidder. The city of Perth’s numerous
churches, graveyards and cemeteries reveal its importance in the history of Scotland. Dunkeld Cathedral draws many, but numerous other towns and
villages in Perthshire have intriguing burial stories to tell.
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Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age by Bruce Peter (10 April 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Step into the glamour and energy of the Art Deco era with this beautifully illustrated guide to Scotland’s most iconic Art Deco
architecture and design. Emerging in the 1920s, Art Deco quickly made its mark around the world, including in Scotland. Featuring
breathtaking photography and stunning archival illustrations from Historic Environment Scotland, this elegant hardback edition
offers a fascinating glimpse into Scotland’s architectural past.
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Sea Marked: Throwing a Line to a Coastal Past by Linda Cracknell (4 September 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
When Linda Cracknell’s quest to connect herself and her mother to a seafaring family history finds her in a harbour, bracing herself to
throw a line, she is struck by the parallel of this physical action to her years-long mission of reeling the past closer to the
present—finding her place in a family tree full of mariners and ship-owners, whose lives were defined by the ebb and flow of tides.
She travels the Scottish and South-West England coast and lays a family palimpsest in the footsteps of her ancestors.
Read our full review.
15 Short Walks in Perthshire North - Pitlochry, Aberfeldy and Dunkeld by Nicole Bukaty (28 August 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Would you like to explore the best of the Pitlochry, Aberfeldy and Dunkeld? This guidebook covers 15 of the best short walks in the area, including
the Falls of Bruar, Birnam Hill, the Birks of Aberfeldy, Drummond Hill and Blair Castle. Cicerone’s Short Walks guidebooks contain everything you
need to get outdoors and discover the best of an area. The routes are perfect if you’re new to walking or looking for something you can enjoy
with the whole family. Let the adventures begin!
Read our full review.
Early Railways of Scotland by Anthony Dawson and Ed Bethune (15 August 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Scottish railway history began in 1722 when William Dickson commenced work on the Tranent–Cockenzie Waggonway. Built entirely in wood
and designed to carry coal from pits at Tranent to salt pans at Cockenzie. Ed Bethune and Anthony Dawson of the 1722 Waggonway Project
present a century-long tour of the earliest of Scottish railways, beginning in 1722 and ending with the Garnkirk & Glasgow Railway of 1831,
the first ‘modern’ railway in Scotland.
Read our full review.
Take Me to the River by Vicky Allan and Jackie Kemp (11 September 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Immerse yourself in an ocean of great literature. Be transfixed by Iris Murdoch's monster rising from the waves. Learn how to swim like the
frogs with John Muir. A selection of joyful, immersive and life-affirming writing about wild swimming. From gentle dips in calm waters to
fights for survival in stormy seas. From the erotic charge of a streamlined body to moments of revelation amidst the waves. Take Me to the
River is an anthology of stories of how a jump into deep waters can change us.
Read our full review.
The View from the Shoulder: A Portrait of Scottish Surfing by Roger Cox (3 July 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
The story of surfing in Scotland is defined by people who dared to dream, to Andy Bennetts and the pioneers of the 1960s, who discovered many
of the nation's best breaks, to contemporary big wave surfer Ben Larg, a native of Tiree who travels the world riding walls of water for a
living. The View From the Shoulder draws together 20 years of surf journalism from the pages of The Scotsman newspaper, together with fresh
context, to create a portrait of a wave-riding community like no other.
Read our full review.
Summer Hours by Alessandra Thom (19 June 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
It's a hot Edinburgh summer, and Roisin’s life is stagnating. She spends her days skipping work and drinking lukewarm wine in the bathtub with
her best friend Eve. When their wealthy mutual friend Claire offers Roisin a significant amount of money under the guise of ‘freelance work,’
Roisin thinks her luck might be changing. But Claire’s proposal is not all it seems, and soon Roisin finds herself trapped. Paralysed by both her
intense infatuation with Eve and her secret arrangement with Claire, Roisin must walk a delicate line.
Read our full review.
The Dummy Drome: Stories from a WW2 Decoy Aerodrome in the North of Scotland by Rob More (30 June 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
The story of the aerodrome that wasn’t really there – this was RAF Wick’s decoy airfield near Sarclet, by Thrumster in Caithness. The Dummy Drome tells
the story of how it became a part of the lives of the people who built it, worked there or lived nearby, the ordinary people who knew it and who were
sworn to secrecy. This was only one of over 200 similar decoy sites, and it is possible to piece together what’s left of it on the ground some 80 years
later, since it is clearly visible from the air.
Read our full review.
Rabbits by Hugo Rifkind (5 June 2025). (Amazon paid link.)
Tommo has just moved to a prestigious boarding school. A product of the middle class, he finds himself invited into fading
crumbling country houses. It’s the early nineties and the elite he is now surrounded by is struggling for relevance. Alienated
from the mainstream, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. When Tommo’s
friend Johnnie’s brother is found dead, a shotgun at his feet, he realises there are secrets that everyone knows, but no one
speaks about, or even acknowledges. And those secrets can no longer be hidden.
Read our full review.
