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Polygon to Publish Next Darkland Tale – This Door of the Seas by Val McDermid & Jo Sharp

  06 Feb '26   |  Posted by: Birlinn

Polygon is thrilled to announce that the next title in the celebrated Darkland Tales series will be This Door of the Seas by Jo Sharp and Val McDermid. Polygon Editor-at-Large Jamie Crawford procured UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights from Lizzy Kremer at David Higham Associates.

This Door of the Seas will be the seventh book in Polygon’s acclaimed Darkland Tales series, which sees Scottish authors reimagine key moments from Scottish history, myth and legend. Previous titles in the series include Rizzio by Denise Mina, Hex by Jenni Fagan, Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner, Columba’s Bones by David Greig, Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid, and, most recently, Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet.

Adding to the excitement around the book’s publication, This Door of the Seas will be the first co-authored book for civil partners Val McDermid and Jo Sharp. This Door of the Seas, the latest Darkland Tale, will be published by Polygon in August 2026.

The Darien Venture was the singular event at the end of the seventeenth century that fundamentally altered Scotland’s future. It took place on the other side of the world, amid the jungle-coastline at the junction between the continents of North and South America. And most of us know next to nothing about it.

Now it’s time to remedy that. Award-winning novelist Val McDermid and Geographer Royal for Scotland Jo Sharp unite in this revelatory novella to trace the story of Scotland’s only trading colony, which turned from a dream of prosperity to a nightmare that bankrupted an already impoverished nation and propelled it towards political union with England.

Written as a series of letters home from expedition scientist Dr James Wallace to his wife Eliza and Sir Robert Sibbald, the first Geographer Royal, this epistolary tale offers a devastating account of the forces that doomed the endeavour and completely changed the history of the British Isles in the process.

Credit Charlotte Graham

Val McDermid is a number one bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages and have sold over nineteen million copies. She has won many awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. In 2024, Polygon published Queen Macbeth, the fifth Darkland Tale to critical accalim. Val writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.

Credit Gayle McIntyre

Jo Sharp is Professor of Geography at the University of St Andrews with expertise in geopolitics, global health, feminism, and international development. She has over 100 publications, including 13 books. Jo has been awarded medals from both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was named the Geographer Royal for Scotland in 2022 – the first woman to hold this title – and it was her investigation into the first person to hold this role in 1682, Sir Robert Sibbald, that led her to This Door of the Seas.

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