ShortBookandScribes Scottish Books on my TBR Pile #ReadingScotland26

Joanne from Portobello Book Blog is hosting a Reading Scotland month. I love Scotland and I love Scottish fiction so I’ve decided to join in. Last week I shared some of my favourite Scottish island books. For week two, I’m sharing some Scottish books that are on my TBR pile.

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The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey – this is the first in what is currently a two-part series. Sounds right up my street being set on an isolated Scottish island.

On an Island full of secrets

The truth lies in the dark

A gripping and atmospheric debut crime thriller set on an isolated Scottish island…

A mysterious death

On a small island off the coast of Scotland, an isolated community is grieving. Eighteen-year-old Alan Ferguson was found at the foot of the lighthouse – an apparent suicide.

Two detectives trapped on an island

DIs Georgina Lennox and Richard Stewart are sent to investigate. But a raging storm keeps them trapped on the island for four days. And the locals don’t take kindly to mainlanders.

A village full of suspects

As George and Richie question the island’s inhabitants, they discover a village filled with superstition and shrouded in secrets.

But someone wants those secrets to stay buried. At any cost.

 

Whispers in the Glen by Sue Lawrence – this is historical fiction set across the two World Wars.

From the author of Lady’s Rock, The Unreliable Death of Lady Gange and The Green Lady, a tale of the sisterhood, heartbreak and resilience of the Scottish women on the World War II home front

Clova, Scotland, 1942. The midst of the Second World War. Sisters Nell and Effie Anderson live together in the Old Schoolhouse. Effie is a teacher, while Nell works as a postwoman, delivering news – often of the worst – from the frontline to her neighbours. Though they love and care for one another, there are unspoken tensions and mysteries that put distance between them.

Then, a plane carrying Canadian and British soldiers’ crashes over their village, and the only surviving soldier stumbles up to their front door. In his pocket is a photo that will set in motion a chain of events threatening to uncover their families’ generations-old secrets.

Told across a dual timeline of Effie and Nell’s adult years through World War II and their adolescence during World War I, Whispers in the Glen is a novel about secrets, lies – and the dangers of keeping them hidden.

 

The Second Stranger by Martin Griffin – I love the premise of this one which is set in the remote Scottish Highlands

Remie Yorke has one shift left at the Mackinnon Hotel in the remote Scottish Highlands before she leaves for good. Then Storm Ezra hits.

As temperatures plummet and phone lines go down, an injured man stumbles inside. PC Don Gaines was in a terrible accident on the mountain road. The only other survivor: the prisoner his team was transporting.

When a second stranger arrives, Remie reluctantly lets him in from the blizzard. He, too, is hurt. He claims to be a police officer. His name is also Don Gaines.

Someone is lying and, with no means of escape, Remie must work out who. If the cold doesn’t kill her, one of these men will get there first . . .

 

Clear by Carys Davies – another remote Scottish island book (sensing a theme here…)

1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger’s intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile, on the mainland, John’s wife, Mary, anxiously awaits news of his mission.

Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies’s intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.

 

Dancing in the Shallows by Clare Reddaway – a short book (only 156 pages) set on Skye

‘She’s had this feeling before. This feeling of marking time. Of pressing her nose against a window and watching as everyone else lives their best lives.’

Isla Wintergreen has not seen her grandfather since she was seven, but when she unexpectedly inherits his cottage on the Isle of Skye, she cannot resist the opportunity to escape her purposeless life. As she slowly becomes a part of the island community, she learns more about the family she never really knew – from her estranged father, to her reclusive grandfather, and her intelligent but oppressed great-grandmother. Meanwhile, her mother Cathy reflects on her own past. Mother and daughter both hope to find new freedom – but can family patterns ever really be broken?

Told through the lives of four generations of Isla’s family, all linked by their connection to water, Dancing in the Shallows masterfully explores family relationships and generational inheritance.

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Have you read any of these or do you like the sound of them?