BOOKS: Fiction
-
Approval
More***WINNER OF THE NORTHBOUND BOOK AWARD 2020*** "John Rutter's Approval is many things at once. A powerful meditation on judgement. A transfixing fable of a Kafka-esque application process. A complex tragedy about fatherhood. But it's also a simple, affecting and beautifully wrought story of one couple's journey towards what they most desire – a child – and the cost of reaching out for one. A hugely promising debut.” Rodge Glass
-
Shocked Earth
More***HAPPY WOMEN IN TRANSLATION MONTH 2021*** #WIT2021 "Shocked Earth exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land we live on, and how its destruction will ultimately be our own. A powerful portrait of a family, an exploration of love and grief, it is perhaps most of all an essential call to action - I was both heartbroken and inspired." Helen Sedgwick
-
How to Survive Everything
MoreMy name is Haley Cooper Crowe and I am in lockdown in a remote location I can’t tell you about. Haley and Ben live with their mother. But their dad has good reason to believe there’s a new, much deadlier pandemic coming. He’s determined to get them to the safety of his lockdown hideaway. NOW. "I wasn't sure there could be a great pandemic novel. Here it is." Ian Rankin
-
In a Veil of Mist
MoreHISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH, THE TIMES | From the author of the award-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming, In a Veil of Mist is a haunting exploration of the costs and fallout of warmongering. Based on another little-known incident in the Outer Hebridean island where Murray grew up: Operation Cauldron, 1952. Top-secret germ warfare experiments on monkeys and guinea pigs are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst.
-
The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange
MoreA thrilling historical novel based on the true story of Lady Grange, who in 1732 was kidnapped on the orders of her husband and exiled to a remote island – St Kilda.
-
The Lyre Dancers
MoreFormer slave, indomitable survivor and now matriarch Rian returns with her daughters to her Celtic homeland and navigates changing fortunes from plundered riches and feuding warlords to betrayals and menacing curses. But when a disaster befalls her older daughter mirroring the cruellest events in Rian’s own past, Rian finds herself conflicted.
-
Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace
More*****SHORTLISTED: CrimeFest Last Laugh Award, 2021***** The intrepid librarian Shona McMonagle finds herself in an isolated French mountain village, which has no sunlight because of its topography. It’s reeling from a spate of unexplained deaths, and Shona has once again travelled back in time to help out.
-
As the Women Lay Dreaming
A novel of the Iolaire disaster
MorePAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE WINNER In the small hours of January 1st, 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed at a stroke the lives of an entire community. Tormod Morrison was there that terrible night. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. For Tormod – a man unlike others, with artistry in his fingertips – the disaster would mark him indelibly.
