Donald S Murray
A son of the Hebrides, Donald S Murray is a writer and poet whose first novel, As the Women Lay Dreaming, won the Paul Torday Memorial Prize in 2020, as well as being shortlisted for a host of other literary awards. Like his first novel, his second, In a Veil of Mist, is set in the Isle of Lewis and centred on historical events of the 20th century. In a Veil of Mist was shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize.
Donald’s previous books have been shortlisted for both the Saltire Literary Awards and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. His critically acclaimed non-fiction books bring to life the culture and nature of the Scottish islands, and he appears regularly on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.
He is also the writer of The Man who Talks to Birds, a collection of poetry published in 2020.
The Call of the Cormorant
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From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a remarkable ‘unreliable biography’ of Karl Kjerúlf Einarsson: an artist and an adventurer, a charlatan and a swindler, forever in search of Atlantis.
As a child in the windswept, fog-bound Faroe Islands in the late nineteenth century, Karl Einarsson believes he is special, destined for a life of art and adventure. As soon as he can, he sets out for Copenhagen and beyond, styling himself as the Count of St. Kilda. He’s an observer and citizen of nowhere, a serial swindler of aristocrats and Nazis, fishermen and fops.
But when his adventures find him in 1930s Berlin, he is forced for the first time to reckon with something much bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power around him, his wilful ignorance becomes unwitting complicity, even betrayal.
Based on a true story, this is a fantastical tale of island life, of those who leave and those who stay behind, and the many dangers of delusions and false identities.
Jim Crumley
Jim Crumley is the author of more than forty books, mostly on the wildlife and wild landscape of his native Scotland, many of them making the case for species reintroductions, or ‘rewilding’.
His Seasons series, a quartet of books exploring the wildlife and landscapes and how climate change is affecting our environment across the four seasons, is highly acclaimed. The Nature of Autumn was longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017 and shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Bookshop Literary Prize 2017. The third in the series, The Nature of Spring, was Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The Nature of Summer, was shortlisted for the 2021 Highland Book Prize.
The Eagle’s Way was shortlisted for a prestigious Saltire Society award, and his Encounters in the Wild series – which sees Jim get up close and personal with Britain’s favourite animals – has found him many new readers. He has written about the return of the beaver to the UK’s wetlands in Nature’s Architect, and his most recent title is Lakeland Wild, his first to focus entirely on an English landscape. Lakeland Wild was longlisted for the 2022 Lakeland Book of the Year prize.
Jim is also a poet, an occasional broadcaster on both radio and television and a widely published journalist who wrote columns for the Dundee Courier for many years and has a monthly column in The Scots Magazine.
Seasons of Storm and Wonder
by Jim Crumley
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From Jim Crumley, the “pre-eminent Scottish nature-writer” (Guardian), this landmark volume documents the extraordinary natural life of the Scottish Highlands and bears witness to the toll climate chaos is already taking on our wildlife, habitats and biodiversity – laying bare what is at stake for future generations.
A display of head-turning autumn finery on Skye provokes Jim Crumley to contemplate both the glories of the season and how far the seasons themselves have shapeshifted since his early days observing his natural surroundings.
After a lifetime immersed in Scotland’s landscapes and enriched by occasional forays in other northern lands, Jim has amassed knowledge, insight and a bank of memorable imagery chronicling the wonder, tumult and spectacle of nature’s seasonal transformations. He has witnessed not only nature’s unparalleled beauty, but also how climate chaos and humankind has brought unwanted drama to wildlife and widespread destruction of ecosystems and habitats.
In this landmark volume, Jim combines lyrical prose and passionate eloquence to lay bare the impact of global warming and urge us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.
Claire MacLeary
Claire MacLeary lived for many years in Aberdeen and St Andrews, but describes herself as “a feisty Glaswegian with a full life to draw on”. Following a career in business, she gained an MLitt with Distinction from the University of Dundee and her short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies. She has appeared at Granite Noir, Noir at the Bar and other literary events.
Claire’s crime series, Harcus & Laird, has been recieved with wide acclaim. Her debut novel and the first in the series, Cross Purpose, was longlisted for the prestigious McIlvanney Prize, Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award 2017. Burnout was longlisted for the Hearst Big Book Award 2018. Runaway, her third novel, was published in 2019. Payback is Claire’s fourth novel and continues the Harcus & Laird series.
In Death Drop, the fifth Harcus & Laird novel, PIs Maggie and Wilma find themselves chasing leads on several fronts, including a missing Aberdeen schoolchild and the fallout from a disturbing hanging with a backstory of secrets and lies. Death Drop is out in July 2022.
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A disturbing hanging with a backstory of secrets and shaming highlights some outdated attitudes within Aberdeen’s finest.
After past skirmishes with the police, local PI Maggie Laird is determined to steer clear, but her partner, Wilma Harcus, goes rogue. Not only does she have leads up her sleeve, but she has grandiose ideas to expand their PI agency into the realm of romance fraud and cybercrime. Then, troubled schoolchild Frankie Bain goes missing.
As the clock runs down, the two investigations collide. Was the hanging the last, desperate act of a tortured mind or a calculated murder? And will Frankie Bain be found alive?
In this fifth Harcus and Laird novel, Claire MacLeary fashions a fast-paced, fresh and topical new adventure for her inimitable PI partnership.
REVIEWS OF Death Drop
'Original and entertaining … With her quirky mix of grit and humour, Claire MacLeary is carving a niche for herself.' Crime Fiction Lover
'A rare vitality and verve … these are two of Scottish fiction’s most engaging characters.' Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae
'This is a thoroughly entertaining series that could run and run.' Sunday Herald
'A terrific writer.' Kirsty Gunn
Adam Farrer
Adam Farrer is a writer and editor who has performed at festivals and events including Manchester Literature Festival and the Northern Lights Writers Conference. His work has been published in the anthology Test Signal and he edits the creative non-fiction journal The Real Story, as well as teaching writing workshops. Farrer won the 2021 NorthBound Book Award. Cold Fish Soup is his first book.
Cold Fish Soup
by Adam Farrer
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Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops. While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal. His insights on family, friendship, male mental health and suicide are revealed in stories of reinvention, rapacious seagulls, interdimensional werewolves, burlesque dancing pensioners, and his compulsion towards the sea. Cold Fish Soup is an affectionate look at a place and its inhabitants, and the ways in which they can shape and influence someone, especially of an impressionable age. Adam’s account explores what it means to love and be shaped by a place that is under threat, and the hope – and hilarity – that can be found in community.
REVIEWS OF Cold Fish Soup
'A truly wonderful and ingenious writer … funny, warm.' Emma Jane Unsworth
'Cold Fish Soup is such a wide-ranging and thought-provoking essay collection, covering masculinity, mental health, werewolves and alien sightings, sense of belonging, the difficulties of carving out a creative life in a geographically marginalised place, coastal erosion and burlesque, amongst other things. It drew me in, and kept me hooked, through all diversions and detours in time and narrative, and made me both cry and laugh heartily and fully. It is a love letter to Withernsea and all the people in it, its crumbling cliffs, its strange beauties and its losses, that made me love Withernsea too.' Polly Atkin
'Cold Fish Soup understands the oddity, tenderness and brutal ordinariness of small town life. Adam Farrer is a bold new voice in nonfiction writing. His keen observations are as gentle as they are wry, as attentive to the bleak truths of loss and deprivation as they are to the eccentric humour of humans being entirely themselves ... Witty, charming, moving and real.' Jenn Ashworth
Stan L Abbott
Stan L Abbott is an award-winning writer on the outdoors and conservation, whose career as a journalist began in Yorkshire. He has written on travel and the outdoors for national and regional newspapers and magazines. He has also worked in industry and tourism in the UK and Europe. He has written and edited many books about local history, travel and walking, and published or edited several travel and conservation magazines. A prominent member of the Outdoor Writers & Photographers Guild, he led a rail restoration group in Yorkshire and writes regularly for the New European newspaper. Walking the Line was longlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year prize. His most recent book, Ring of Stone Circles, was published in April 2022.
To paraphrase L.P. Hartley, “The past is a different country.” Stan L Abbott sets out to explore the visible clues to our mysterious past from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages: stone circles. Cumbria boasts more of these monuments than any other English county. Here, our tallest mountains are ringed by almost fifty circles and henges, most of them sited in the foothills or on outlying plateaux. Were these the earliest such monuments in Britain, placing Cumbria at the heart of Neolithic society? And what traces of that society remain today in the roads we travel, the food we eat, the words we speak, our work and play? By observing and comparing many sites in Cumbria and beyond, and researching many sources, a greater understanding emerges. Were some circles built for ritualistic purposes, or perhaps astronomical? Were they burial sites? Or were they just places for people to meet? Illustrated with linocut illustrations by artist Denise Burden, Ring of Stone Circles follows the search for the hidden stories these monuments guard – and might reveal if we get to know them.
REVIEWS OF Ring of Stone Circles
'An energetic and informed historical adventure shining a light on Neolithic Cumbria.' Emily Atherton, Editor, Cumberland and Westmorland Herald
'An intriguing and often amusing journey through what little we know – and the great deal that we don’t – about our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestry.' Steve Anglesey, Editor, The New European
Alison Armstrong
Alison Armstrong is a writer of prose and plays. She grew up in Leeds and East Yorkshire and has worked as a cleaner, waitress, painter and teacher, as well as developing her writing career. She won a Northern Writers’ Award for short fiction in 2017, a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and a Project Grant from Arts Council England in 2021. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published in magazines and journals. She now makes her home in Lancashire, and Fossils is her first book.
When twelve-year-old Sherrie-Lee witnesses a failed bank robbery in her neglected town, she seizes an opportunity to claim a new identity for herself. Escaping her troubled home life, she tries out a new name and invents stories and personas to cover her tracks. Sherrie-Lee finds both possibility and loneliness in this new freedom, as well as an unusual friendship which she nurtures. But harsh realities close in, and she’s plagued with foreboding – from her vulnerable brother at home to the climate crisis. While she dreams of a kinder world, it won’t be long before her own deceits start catching up with her. This arresting debut challenges assumptions and captures the powerless yearning of adolescence with a voice that is fresh, magnetic and often funny – one that pulls you in and won’t let go.
Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet is one of Scotland’s brightest literary talents, winner in the Author of the Year category for the 2017 Sunday Herald Culture Awards (aka Scotland’s Oscars). His latest novel, Case Study is out now.
Born and brought up in Kilmarnock, he spent some years working as an English teacher in Prague, Bordeaux, Porto and London, before returning to Glasgow and working for eight years for various independent television companies. He has degrees in English Literature and International Security Studies from Glasgow and St Andrews universities respectively.
His first novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust, was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award and was a cult hit. Set in small-town France, it is a compelling psychological portrayal of a peculiar outsider pushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination.
His second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), concerns a brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish Highland community during the 1860s. Lauded by critics and hugely popular with readers, His Bloody Project won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and the Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the LA Times Book Awards. It has been published around the world.
Graeme’s third novel, The Accident on the A35 (2017), is a literary mystery that takes place in Saint-Louis, the sleepy French backwater that was also the setting for The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau. It features the diffident Inspector Georges Gorski investigating a seemingly unremarkable fatal car crash – but where has the victim, an outwardly austere lawyer, been on the night of his death? Darkly humorous, subtle and sophisticated, The Accident on the A35 was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2018 and the Hearst Big Book Awards – Harpers Bazaar Modern Classics 2018.
Case Study (2021) consists of a series of notebooks apparently sent to the author in 2020 to aid his research into a rogue 1960s psychotherapist. The notebooks reveal the story of a young woman convinced that this charismatic therapist was responsible for her sister’s suicide. Determined to get to the bottom of his role in her sister’s death, she assumes an alter ego and presents herself as a client to him.
Graeme has appeared at literary festivals in Australia, the USA, Germany, India, Russia, Spain, France, Korea, Denmark and Estonia. His novels have been translated into more than 20 languages and achieved bestseller status in several countries.
Author photo by Sveta Mishina
“A page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted … Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.” James Walton, The Times
“Very funny … engrossing.” Guardian
“Brilliant, bamboozling … burstingly alive and engaging.” Telegraph
“Compelling … I was hooked like a fish.” Spectator
‘I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.’
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted His Bloody Project. www.casestudyGMB.com
Prizes and awards
LONGLISTED: GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
REVIEWS OF Case Study
“Burnet’s triumph is that it’s a page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted so as to reveal — or withhold — its secrets in a consistently satisfying way … Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.” James Walton, The Times
"Enormous fun … a mystery and a psychological drama wrapped up in one. Case Study is a triumph." Alex Preston, Observer
"Caustically funny and surprisingly moving, this is one of the finest novels of the year." Christian House, Financial Times
"A riveting psychological plot ... tortuous, cunning ... clever." Kate Webb, The Times Literary Supplement
'Encourages us to look more closely at the inherent instability of fiction itself … genuinely affecting … a very funny book.' Nina Allan, Guardian
Olga Wojtas
Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and very witty – writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, has been published in the UK and US to great critical acclaim – being longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus.
A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has had numerous short stories and several novellas published. Olga’s second novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace, was published in 2020.
The third book in the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters, was published in 2022.
She lives in Edinburgh, where she once attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the novel that inspired the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series.
Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters
by Olga Wojtas
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Fifty-something librarian Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name. Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for a crucial mission involving Macbeth, the Weird Sisters and a black cat. Unsure which version of history she’s in, Shona tries to figure out who she’s here to save. But between playing the Fool and being turned into a mouse, things don’t always go her way. Shona’s expertise in martial arts is put to the test as family tensions rise and fingers are pointed for murder. Can Shona unravel the mystery in time to complete her mission? Never underestimate a librarian! Praise for Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace Longlist: Comedy Women in Print 2020 “I couldn’t wait to be reunited with this character. I utterly love her.” Lynne Truss “Audacious … witty and fun.” Herald “Smart, funny and all-round good company, wherever Shona goes, readers will eagerly follow.” Scotsman
J.A. Mensah
J.A. Mensah is a writer of prose and theatre and a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of York. Castles from Cobwebs, her first novel, won the inaugural NorthBound Book Award (for a full length work of literary fiction or non-fiction by writers based in the North of England) in 2019. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021 and nominated for the 35th annual Chambéry Festival du Premier Roman (2022).
Her plays have focused on human rights narratives and the testimonies of survivors. Her work has appeared in several collections, including Test Signal, an anthology of the best contemporary northern writing, published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
Read J.A. Mensah’s interview with New Writing North here.
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LONGLISTED: Desmond Elliot Prize 2021 WINNER: NorthBound Book Award 2019 I’d always known that I was Brown. Black was different though; it came announced. Black came with expectations, of rhythm and other things that might trip me up. Imani is a foundling. Rescued as a baby and raised by nuns on a remote Northumbrian island, she grows up with an ever-increasing feeling of displacement. Full of questions, Imani turns to her shadow, Amarie, and her friend, Harold. When Harold can’t find the answers, she puts it down to what the nuns call her “greater purpose”. At nineteen, Imani answers a phone call that will change her life: she is being called to Accra after the sudden death of her biological mother. Past, present, faith and reality are spun together in this enthralling debut. Following her transition from innocence to understanding, Imani’s experience illuminates the stories we all tell to make ourselves whole.
Prizes and awards
DESMOND ELLIOT PRIZE: Longlisted
NORTHBOUND BOOK AWARD: Winner
CHAMBÉRY FIRST NOVEL AWARD: Longlisted
REVIEWS OF Castles from Cobwebs
'A strong debut.' THE FEMINIST NOOK
'Offers a unique blend of magical realism and social commentary – the past and the present intermingle with colonial history, displacement and family ties to form a rich narrative tapestry.' RESHMA RUI, WORDS OF COLOUR
'Striking … a memorable read that shines a light on important social issues whilst telling a beautiful story of hope, friendship and self-discovery.' BETH BARKER, NRTH LASS
'Mensah doesn’t shy away from tough subjects … a well-crafted debut … an extraordinary literary talent and … a thoroughly recommended read.' EMMA YATES-BRADLEY, NORTHERN SOUL
'Lyrical and magical … a powerful and very readable novel.' LOUISE MASKILL, INDIE BOOK NETWORK
'[An] extraordinary debut … changes with every reading, like the sea, deep and light, or the flicker of spidersilk … a book to be cherished and shared.' VAHNI CAPILDEO
'A compelling exploration of memory, race, mothers and the fractured self.' JESSICA ANDREWS
'From start to finish, I was spellbound … I absolutely love this book.' YVONNE BATTLE-FELTON
‘Real, powerful, and unique.’ CHITRA RAMASWAMY NorthBound Book Award Judge
Sue Lawrence
Sue Lawrence is the author of absorbing, popular historical thrillers that cast fascinating light on the perils and injustice that characterised women’s lives in Scotland through centuries past – whether born into penniless or powerful families: The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange, Down to the Sea, The Night He Left and Fields of Blue Flax and most recently The Green Lady.
She is also one of the UK’s leading cookery writers and broadcasters. Having trained as a journalist, she won BBC’s MasterChef in 1991 and became a food writer, Cookery Editor of the Sunday Times and a regular contributor to Scotland on Sunday and many leading magazines, and she appears frequently on BBC Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet. Born in Dundee, she was raised in Edinburgh, where she now lives. She has won two Guild of Food Writers Awards and a Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award and is the author of more than 20 books.
The Green Lady
by Sue Lawrence
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