Francis Sanzaro
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Francis Sanzaro PhD is a climber, academic, speaker, and the author of books on philosophy, climbing, athletic theory and comparative religion. His essays, poetry and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Huffington Post, Climbing, Adventure Journal, The Baltimore Post Examiner, Continental Philosophy Review, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Rock and Ice, among a dozen others. His books include The Boulder: A Philosophy for Bouldering; and Society Elsewhere: Why the Gravest Threat to Humanity Will Come From Within. He appeared at TEDx Ascend in Colorado speaking on approaches to risk and our relationship with the natural world.
The Zen of Climbing
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“May be the single most insightful book about climbing ever written.”
– Paul Sagar, climber, writer and academic.Climbing is a sport of perception, and our level of attainment is a matter of mind as much as body. To be successful in climbing, the art of focused awareness must be perfected alongside physical fitness, strength and technique.
Written by philosopher, essayist, and lifelong climber Francis Sanzaro, The Zen of Climbing explores the fundamentals of successful climbing, delving into sports psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and Taoism. Awareness, he argues, is the foundation of climbing, allowing us to merge mental and physical attributes in one embodied whole.
Written by the author of the classic The Boulder: A Philosophy of Bouldering, this book puts the climber’s mind at the forefront of practice. The book expands on the ideas mentioned in the author’s New York Times opinion essay published in September 2023.
This book is part of the IN THE MOMENT collection of books exploring themes of mindfulness and being present in our activities and environment. The first six, out now or forthcoming soon, are pictured here.
REVIEWS OF The Zen of Climbing
"One of the book’s highlights is that the author writes simple but elegant, vivid prose to make his case for a unified approach to movement and mind. An inspiring book aimed at rock climbers and other athletes that’s ideal for both spirituality and sports psychology sections. Its emphasis on the virtues of cultivating mind-body awareness will also appeal to readers interested in New Age wisdom.”—Dorian Gossy
“Simply put, this the best book on climbing I have ever read!" –John Kettle, climbing coach and writer
“Between the start and finish of every climb, big or small, is a vertical gulf we can see across but never fully chart beforehand. The Zen of Climbing provides a peerless working model of how to embrace the unknown, cross that gulf and come to know the crazy wonderful sorcery of ascent.” – John Long, author of more than forty books, storyteller, stonemaster
“The Zen of Climbing is a fascinating read. We are climbing our best by paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment. The book integrates different forms of practice for devel¬oping your physical, cognitive, and mental domains. Highly recommended!” – Udo Neumann, climber, coach, filmmaker, co-author of Performance Rock Climbing.
“A skillful and entertaining presentation of aspects of Zen that can make one a better climber and, at the same time, enhance one’s enjoyment of climbing. Top athletes, climbers and others, reveal how these traits improved their performance and led to deeper understanding and appreciation of their craft.” – John Gill, father of modern bouldering, author, mathematician
“If you really want to level up your climbing, want to connect with your every movement on the rock, The Zen of Climbing is essential to creating that experi¬ence. It’s a book we can all read, learn from, and then revisit time after time.” – Steve Bechtel, founder of Climb Strong and author of Logical Progression
“A skilled and experienced climber, Francis Sanzaro writes about his long-time application of Zen Buddhist mind-training techniques to overcome the difficulties of fear and enhance performance in life-challenging, climbing situations ... The lesson: we could bring this wisdom not only into climbing and other athletic pursuits but also into modern-day life in all its many aspects.” – John Baker, co-editor of Cutting through Spiritual Materialism and The Myth of Freedom
“Written by a climber, and for climbers, there is no better book to get you started climbing with the right mindset.” – Adam Ondra, first person to climb 5.15c and 5.15d, multiple World-Cup Gold Medalist.
"Outstandingly good … It may be the single most insightful book about climbing ever written." —Paul Sagar, Climber, writer, thinker.
J. David Simons
J. David Simons is a Scottish author, media journalist and literary editor. His first novel, The Credit Draper, was shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize, and his subsequent novels include The Liberation of Celia Kahn (2011), The Land Agent (2014), A Woman of Integrity (2017), The Responsibility of Love (2021), as well as An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful (new edition published in 2023). He has been awarded several bursaries from Creative Scotland and the Society of Authors and in 2012 was the recipient of a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship.
Simons is also a former lawyer, charity administrator, cotton farmer and university lecturer. His nomadic lifestyle has allowed him to spend considerable time in Israel, Australia, Japan and the United States, and he currently lives in Javea, Spain.
An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful
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The personal collides with the political in this literary tour-de-force. In the 1950s, an eminent British writer pens a novel questioning the ethics of the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—but soon he’s trying to outrun his own past.
Hakone, Japan, 2003. An eminent British writer in his seventies, Sir Edward Strathairn, returns to a resort in the Japanese mountains where, in his youth, he spent a beautiful, snowed-in winter.
It was there he wrote his best-selling novel, The Waterwheel, accusing America of being in denial about the horrific aftermath of the Tokyo firebombings and the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
London, England, 1952. A young Edward falls in love with an avant-garde American artist, Macy. After their tumultuous relationship and breakup, he heads for Japan, where he meets someone else and becomes smitten again as he writes the novel that makes him famous.
This is as much a thrilling romance as it is a sensitive exploration of blame, power and guilt in post-war America, Japan and Britain. With a narrator whose behaviour strikes the national conscience as much as his own, An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful will stay with readers long after the final page is turned.
REVIEWS OF An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful
"An accomplished and compelling novel by a storyteller at the top of his game, An Exquisite Sense Of What Is Beautiful lives up to its ambitious title, delivering a story that is both delicate in its detail and politically robust." Chris Dolan, author of the award-winning Ascension Day, Redlegs and Aliyyah
"Highly accomplished and moving novel. It says much for Simons' skill that he can show us a [protagonist] Strathairn who for all his flaws and occasional selfishness can engage our sympathies when he finally realises the cost of his own denial." Sunday Herald
"If you're going to call your novel An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful then you have to be prepared to back it up. Luckily David Simons does this with style and substance. Simons pulls off one of the hardest tricks for a novelist, reflecting world events through the lives of individuals while avoiding the reader feeling like they are being given a history lesson or being preached to." Scots Whay Hae
"An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful moved me a great deal. But perhaps an even greater delight is the sheer beauty of Simons' descriptions: despite the engaging plot pulling me onwards, I often stopped to re-read and savour these. Really a wonderful, pleasurable, thoughtful novel." Sophie Cooke, author of The Glass House and Under the Mountain
Andrew Millham
Andrew Millham is a nature and folk history writer, with features and columns published in a wide range of national publications including BBC Wildlife, Coast and The Countryman. He graduated with a first class honours degree in environmental science, has received a Field Studies Council ‘Young Darwin Scholarship’ and – after completing his training with Essex Wildlife Trust – is now a Forest School leader, teaching outdoor skills to primary school children.
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RSPB BOOK OF THE MONTH
Singing Like Larks opens a rare window onto the ancient song traditions of the British Isles, interweaving mesmerising lyrics, folklore and colourful nature writing to uncover the remarkable relationship between birds and traditional folk music.
Birds are beloved for their song and have featured in our own music for centuries. This charming volume takes us on a journey of discovery to explore why birds appear in so many folk songs.
Today, folk songs featuring our feathered friends are themselves something of a threatened species: their melodies are fading with the passage of time, and their lyrics are often tucked away in archives. It is more important than ever that we promote awareness of these precious songs and continue to pass them down the generations. Lifetimes of wisdom are etched into the words and music, preserving the natural rhythms of nature and our connection to times past.
An important repository and treasury of bird-related folk songs, Singing Like Larks is also an account of one young nature writer’s journey into the world of folk music, and a joyous celebration of song, the seasons, and our love of birds.
REVIEWS OF Singing Like Larks
“An accomplished work … a heartfelt celebration of both birdsong and the folk songs inspired by birds.” Countryman
"This gorgeous book leads the reader on an exploration of why birds appear in so many folk songs.” RSPB Book of the Month
"We absolutely love this book." Benji Fallow, young birder and artist
“Handling so many interwoven threads — birds, birds in song, habitats, habitat loss, restoration, people, place and personal experience — in this accomplished way is a rare thing indeed.” Caught by the River
“How beautiful is this lovely book?” Folde, Dorset
“Inspiring.” Essex Life
“Absolutely charming.” The Copper Family
“A beautiful, informative and fascinating book. In each chapter [Millham] seamlessly blends the behaviour of the bird with its place in the history of folk song, all written in a lively and engaging style … with evident passion for the subject.” Stephen Moss, bird writer and naturalist
Sue Lawrence
Sue Lawrence is the author of several 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: Lady’s Rock, The Green Lady, The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange, Down to the Sea, The Night He Left and Fields of Blue Flax. 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 Unreliable Death of Lady Grange
by Sue Lawrence
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Edinburgh, January 1732. It’s the funeral of Rachel, wife of Lord Grange. Her death is a shock. Still young, she’d shown no signs of ill health. Rachel is, however, still alive. She has been brutally kidnapped by the man who has falsified her death: her husband. Her punishment, perhaps, for railing against his infidelity – or simply for being too feisty for a lady and never submissive enough as a wife. Whether to conceal his Jacobite leanings or to replace his wife with a long-time mistress, Lord Grange banishes Rachel to a remote island exile, to an isolated life of hardship on St Kilda, where she can never be found. This is the gripping story of a woman who has until now been remembered mostly by her husband’s unflattering account. It’s a remarkable tale of how the real Lady Grange may have coped with such a dramatic fate, with courage and grace.
REVIEWS OF The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange
“A compelling narrative … fitting current trends in historical fiction, where women’s history is centralised and new light shed on their position in the past … An enjoyable read.” Historical Novels Review
“A fascinating historical novel … utterly compelling … a book we'd highly recommend.” Undiscovered Scotland
“Swept me along breathlessly … The cruelty and complexity of eighteenth-century Scottish society is richly represented. And what a story to uncover!” Dr Annie Gray (author of The Greedy Queen and Victory in the Kitchen)
“An imaginative telling of an extraordinary true story, played out against a wild landscape in unforgiving times.” Sarah Maine
“The wronged lady finally has her say … One of the strangest and most disturbing stories to have emerged from Scotland’s Jacobite past.” The Times
“From the Jacobite intrigues of eighteenth-century Edinburgh to Scotland’s dark and sea-battered islands, Lady Grange’s life is one of eye-popping incident. An amazing story.” Sally Magnusson
Kathryn Aalto
Kathryn Aalto is a New York Times best-selling writer of creative nonfiction focused on the natural world. An American living in the UK, her creative practice fuses nature and culture: teaching the literature of nature and place; designing beautiful and sustainable gardens; and writing about the natural world. She is the author of Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (2020), The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood (2015), and Nature and Human Intervention (2011). A personal essayist and book reviewer, her work appears in Smithsonian Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Buzzfeed, Resurgence and the Ecologist.
The Nature Chronicles
The best of contemporary nature writing from the winners of the inaugural international Nature Chronicles Prize.
The Nature Chronicles Prize is a new biennial, international, English-language literary award founded to celebrate engaging, unique, essay-length non-fiction that “responds to the time we are in and the world as it is”. Conceived in 2020 to mark the global pandemic, the prize is also a memorial to Prudence Scott, a lifelong nature diarist who died in 2019. The prize was announced at the Kendal Mountain Festival on November 17, 2022.
Contained within this volume are the outstanding winning entries for the inaugural prize, by Jenny Chamarette, Laura Coleman, Ben Crane, Joanna Pocock and Neha Sinha, alongside the inaugural overall winner: Nicola Pitchford, for her essay ‘A Parable of Arable Land’. These winning works express diverse responses to our planet and its life, and together embody the best of contemporary nature writing, whether by emerging or established authors.
The anthology is introduced by bestselling nature writer Kathryn Aalto, who was one of the judges for this inaugural prize.
REVIEWS OF The Nature Chronicles
“Neha Sinha brought a vital global perspective, putting the pandemic at the heart of the story and graphically revealing the different ways it was experienced.” (On ‘City of Covid Trees’)
"This gritty essay is about displacement, loss, and overconsumption in the desert ecosystem of Las Vegas … finds solace in knowing what does belong.” (On Joanna Pocock’s ‘None of This Should Be Here’)
“This unflinching essay has a hot, wild breath … a brisk, braided [that] transports readers.” (On Ben Crane’s ‘The Flight of the Goshawk’)
“So stylishly written that it could have been fiction … an essay about boundaries and relationships written in sharp and vivid imagery.” (On Laura Coleman’s ‘The Fence’)
“A refreshing essay on queerness, sexuality, and love.” (on Jenny Chamarette’s ‘Q is for Garden’)
“A richly layered reading experience……Not only did ‘A Parable of Arable Land’ make us think deeply, but we had the sense that Prudence Scott might also have chosen it.” (On the winning essay by Nicola Pitchford)
Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow. He is the author of five novels and a novella. His novels are His Bloody Project, Case Study and the French-set Gorski trilogy, the final part of which A Case of Matricide was published in October 2024. His novella Benbecula was published in October 2025 in Polygon’s Darklands series. The Guardian called it ‘intense and utterly compelling.’
His Bloody Project was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize and won the Saltire Prize for Fiction. It was variously described as ‘astonishing’, ‘fiendishly readable’ and ‘spellbinding’. Case Study was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and included in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022. Hannah Kent called it ‘a novel of mind-bending brilliance.’ The Financial Times declared A Case of Matricide ‘a triumph’. It won the Australian Crime Writers Best International Crime award.
Graeme’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has appeared at festivals all over the world.
His Bloody Project: Limited Edition Hardback
From the twice Booker-listed author of Case Study, a unique opportunity to buy a new, hardback edition of the Booker-shortlisted His Bloody Project.
The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae.
A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.
Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED: Man Booker Prize 2016
REVIEWS OF His Bloody Project: Limited Edition Hardback
“His Bloody Project plunges the reader into a remote Scottish world where Victorian anthology distorts the profoundly human plight of its complex protagonist.” – Man Booker Prize judges
“Graeme Macrae Burnet makes such masterly use of the narrative form that the horrifying tale he tells… seems plucked straight out of Scotland’s sanguinary historical archives.” – Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
“[A] powerful, absorbing novel… Fiction authors from Henry James to Vladimir Nabokov to Gillian Flynn have used [an unreliable narrator] to induce ambiguity, heighten suspense and fold an alternative story between the lines of a printed text. Mr. Burnet, a Glasgow author, does all of that and more in this page-turning period account of pathos and violence in 19th-century Scotland… [A] cleverly constructed tale… Has the lineaments of the crime thriller but some of the sociology of a Thomas Hardy novel.” – Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
“Such an engrossing plot that I couldn’t put it down once I started reading it. Definitely one of the best books this year.” – Nicola Sturgeon, Books of the Year, The Herald
“Graeme Macrae Burnet sucked me in from the very first page with compelling narratives about a triple murder. A series of convincing but unreliable voices circles the central event and left me breathless.” – Val McDermid, Best Books of 2016, The Guardian
“A smart amalgam of legal thriller and literary game that reads as if Umberto Eco has been resurrected in the 19th-century Scottish Highlands.” – Mark Lawson, The Guardian
“Disembowels rosy illusions about Highland life in Victorian Scotland. Dark, but impossible to put aside until finished.” – Neil Ascherson, Books of the Year, The Herald
“Beautifully written … What I really love about the book is how it upends the usual romantic notion of what was like to live in rural Scotland and instead it gives you a portrait of what it can be like to be swallowed up by small places. Douglas Stuart
North Country
An anthology of landscape and nature
Karen LloydThe North of England abounds with beauty, from unspoiled Northumbrian beaches and green Yorkshire Dales to the dramatic Lakeland Fells, for so long celebrated by writers and artists. Wide estuaries, winding rivers, sheer cliffs, rushing waterfalls, ancient woodland, limestone pavements, and miles of hedgerows and drystone walls sustainably built and rebuilt over centuries – all form part of its rich heritage.
But these are, too, contested and depleted landscapes. Today the curlew’s call is isolated, habitat is pressured and diminishing, and many species are in decline. Industry, urban sprawl and climate chaos threaten our environment on a previously unimagined scale. And while stereotypes persist – of dark satanic mills or “bleak” moorland – the imperative of conservation is all too often overlooked for short-term economic interests.
This essential volume reminds us how and why Northern people have risen to the challenge of defending their open spaces, demanding action on pollution and habitat loss. Contemporary writers including Sarah Hall, Lee Schofield, Benjamin Myers and Lemn Sissay take their place alongside those who wrote in previous centuries. Together, the voices in this one-of-a-kind anthology testify that North Country is a place apart.
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED: LAKELAND BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
REVIEWS OF North Country
“Engrossing, engaging and passionate. The broad-ranging Northern voices celebrate, call out, grab and hold your attention, and gift an extraordinary amount of new material.” Julie Coldwell, MagNorth
Donald S Murray
Writer and poet Donald S Murray is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature who has won the Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Memorial Prize (2012, for As the Women Lay Dreaming,) and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award (2021), among many awards for his historical fiction, creative non-fiction and poems. His critically acclaimed books bring to life the culture and nature of the Scottish islands, and he appears regularly on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland and as a live performer.
The Call of the Cormorant
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.
REVIEWS OF The Call of the Cormorant
“From the first line I know I’m in the hands of a bard and consummate storyteller. The writing is lyrical and hugely descriptive … The history is rich and fascinating.” Historical Novels Review
“An intriguing and engaging novel based on the life of a real man … I would recommend [it] to anyone wanting something memorably different to read.” Undiscovered Scotland
“A wonderful tale looking at belonging and identity... in the strong storytelling tradition of both Northern Scotland and the Nordic countries, and [Murray] is a master of it.” Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae / CamGlen Radio
“One of the most interesting and enjoyable [authors] writing in Scotland today … A fine story, rich in irony, a story of folly and a fool who nevertheless invites one’s sympathy …[Murray’s] most ambitious novel to date.” – Allan Massie, Scotsman
“A beautifully written novel, the prose sweeps off the page like the seabirds of the Faroes.” Inverness Press & Journal, Book of the Week
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.
The Seasons quartet is now available in one handsome hardback edition, Seasons of Storm and Wonder.
Seasons of Storm and Wonder
by Jim Crumley
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.
Prizes and awards
LONGLISTED Highland Book Prize 2022
REVIEWS OF Seasons of Storm and Wonder
It is difficult to do justice to a book of such knowledge and emotional heft as Jim Crumley's latest and profoundly meditative work … ‘We are nature itself’ – that is the essential truth and the core message of this beautiful book.” Dundee Courier
“One of Scotland’s finest nature writers.” Allan Massie, The Scotsman
"This is a book from an author that can inspire those with a good knowledge of wildlife but also, I feel, draw in others to that subject through the beauty of the writing and the incisiveness of the observation. A great book, and obviously a book for all seasons." Mark Avery
“Jim Crumley … has been our predominant writer on the natural world … [He] is a naturalist with a great gift for observation … His work engages us in the best ways – it addresses us as equals. We are drawn alongside him, to appreciate what he appreciates.” Kathleen Jamie
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.
A disturbing death 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 this 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
