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At Birlinn Ltd, we are home to the finest writing from an astonishing list of authors ranging across nearly every subject area from history to sport, fiction to poetry, children’s titles to academic works.
Check out the ON SALE NOW page where we hope to tempt you to try something new. And stop by the LATEST pages for author interviews, extracts, videos, events and more. To keep up to date with all our latest news, scroll down to sign up to the Birlinn newsletter.
There’s always something new going on.
Birlinn – Publishing in Scotland for the World.
Latest Releases
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Hardback | Pub: 11 Aug 2022£10.99
When he was appointed Edinburgh University’s first professor of medical oncology at the age of 33, John Smyth was already making a name for himself in the world of cancer research. Over the next three decades, he led the development of cancer…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£14.99
During the Second World War the Royal Navy’s vitally important Anti-submarine Experimental Establishment was secretly moved from Portland in Dorset to the Ayrshire village of Fairlie, to escape German bombing on the south coast. For the next six…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£12.99St Andrews is without doubt one of Scotland’s most historic and beautiful cities. Once the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland, it played a prominent role in the nation’s political life until the seventeenth century. In addition, it is also home…
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Hardback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£14.99
In 2019, Jenna Watt took part in the stalking of a hind on the vast Highland estate of Corrour: part of an immersive attempt to understand the ideas that lie behind ‘rewilding’, and what it means emotionally and physically to participate in…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£9.99
When you look at a painting, what do you really see? When eighteenth-century poet Alison Cockburn accepts a light-hearted challenge from her friend Katherine Hume to live as a man, in order to infiltrate Edinburgh’s all-male skating club, little…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£16.99
Under President Xi Jinping, China’s global ambitions have taken a dangerous new turn. Bullying and intimidation have replaced diplomacy, and trade, investment, even big-spending tourists and students have been weaponised. Beijing has strengthened…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£12.99
It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city’s…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£8.99
THE DEBUT THRILLER FROM N.E. SOLOMONS ON THE ROAD TO DISCOVERY, EVEN THE DEAD HAVE SECRETS. High up on a mountain road in the Balkans, former Olympic cyclist Heather Bishop races her journalist boyfriend Ryan. But when he suddenly disappears…
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Hardback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£12.00The characters in this delightful book are pushed to the point of no return and seek retribution. But how we get even is not always the best road to redemption. On the island of Mull, it takes an incomer to make the locals realise that they need to…
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Hardback | Pub: 21 Jul 2022£16.99
‘Peppered with humour, empathy and kindness’ – Sunday Post Ever since her pet sheep Lulu accompanied her to school at the age of seven, animals and nature have been at the heart of Polly Pullar’s world. Growing up in a remote…
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| Pub: 07 Jul 2022£19.99This unique and delightful map of mainland Scotland and the Hebrides, from the collection of the National Library of Scotland, is a magnificent pictorial map of Scotland. Not just annotated with beautiful calligraphy, it also includes dozens of…
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| Pub: 07 Jul 2022£19.99The Forth Rail Bridge is one of the world’s great engineering feats, and one of its most well-known. When it opened in 1890, the cantilevered bridge had one of the world’s longest spans, at 541 metres. Its distinctive and innovative design marks…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Jul 2022£8.99
Something scared Nuala Flaherty to death. When her body is found in the centre of a pentagram on a lonely moor, Rebecca is determined to find out what. Was she killed by supernatural means, or is there a more down-to-earth explanation? Rebecca’s…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Jul 2022£8.99
‘Combines historical fact with the fictional narrative, and offers a cast rich with multidimensional characters. Readers will be riveted’ – Publishers Weekly In June 1940, the Channel Islands becomes the only part of Great Britain to…
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Hardback | Pub: 16 Jun 2022£25.00
The Long Golden Afternoon tells the story of the transformative generation of golf that followed the rise of Young Tom Morris – an era of sweeping change that saw Scotland’s national pastime become one of the rare games played around…
Current Bestsellers
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Aug 2022£16.99
Under President Xi Jinping, China’s global ambitions have taken a dangerous new turn. Bullying and intimidation have replaced diplomacy, and trade, investment, even big-spending tourists and students have been weaponised. Beijing has strengthened…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Jun 2022£8.99
The ghosts of the past will not be silenced. Glasgow, 1983, and a beat constable walks away from a bar where he knows a crime is about to be committed. It is a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life. In the present, an old fisherman…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Jan 2022£6.99
Introduced by Alan Johnson. ‘All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.’ Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Mar 2021£9.99
A Times Bestseller Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing 2020 ‘Remarkable, and so profoundly enjoyable to read … Its importance is huge, setting down a vital marker in the 21st century debate about how we use and…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Apr 2022£8.99
‘An immersive and entertaining read’ – Alistair Mabbot, The Herald The year is 1317, and young squire Benedict Russell has joined the English-held garrison of Berwick-upon-Tweed after the spectacular Scottish victory at Bannockburn…
AYRSHIRE’S SECOND WORLD WAR
12 Aug ’22
2022: 75th anniversary year of Edinburgh’s first festivals
09 Aug ’22
Author Carrie Dunn on the Women’s EURO 2022 Final
28 Jul ’22
Escape into a Good Book – delivered right to your door!
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Mar 2021£9.99
A Times Bestseller Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing 2020 ‘Remarkable, and so profoundly enjoyable to read … Its importance is huge, setting down a vital marker in the 21st century debate about how we use and…
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Paperback | Pub: 21 Sep 2017£14.99
From the Ice Age to the Scottish Referendum, historian and author Alistair Moffat explores the history of the Scottish nation. As well as focusing on key moments in the nation’s history such as the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite…
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Paperback | Pub: 23 May 2019£10.99Winner of an Eric Gregory Award, 2020 Winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, 2020 ‘The old Shetland fishermen still speak with something like reverence of the forgotten art of steering by the moder dy (mother wave), the name given to an underswell…
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Paperback | Pub: 23 May 2019£14.99Some years ago a revolution took place in Early Medieval history in Scotland. The Pictish heartland of Fortriu, previously thought to be centred on Perthshire and the Tay found itself relocated through the forensic work of Alex Woolf to the shores…
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Paperback | Pub: 17 May 2011£6.99
Recently returned from South Africa, adventurer Richard Hannay is bored with life, but after a chance encounter with an American who informs him of an assassination plot and is then promptly murdered in Hannay’s London flat, he becomes the obvious…
SOCIAL FEED
Ever since her pet sheep Lulu accompanied her to school at the age of seven, animals and nature have been at the heart of @pollypullar's world. The Horizontal Oak tells her incredible story, from family secrets to the restorative power of nature. 🌿🍂🐑🐝
Available now from your local bookshop or from the Birlinn website.
Today is a very exciting day for us here at Birlinn with this big stack of books being published! Fiction, history, nature writing, politics and more are explored in this fantastically varied selection. All available now from your local bookshop or on the Birlinn website! 📚
🔥COVER REVEAL TIME 🔥
From the author of the bestselling D.C.I. Daley series, Denzil Meyrick, comes a thrilling new tall tale from Kinloch. Ghosts in the Gloaming is being published on 6th October and is available to pre-order now. @denzil_meyrick
What an incredible victory for the Lionesses in the Women’s Euro this weekend! 🎊The meteoric rise of women’s football in England is charted by Carrie Dunn in ‘Unsuitable for Females’. There really is no better time to pick up a copy! ⚽️ @carriesparkle123
