Perfect reading to get you through!
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Paperback | Pub: 14 May 2020£8.99You can’t change your past. You can only use the experiences you live through to make your future better, wiser. Anna and her best friend George meet every week to remember, to sigh, to laugh, to reminisce about their moments of glory, guilt and…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Jun 2019£8.99£7.19In 1920s Scotland a foreign dignitary on a secret visit has been abducted by men who plan to murder him. Veteran adventurer Richard Hannay must recruit three of his oldest friends to prevent a catastrophe that could plunge Europe into another war….
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Paperback | Pub: 19 Sep 2011£9.99The Great Wood of Caledon – the historic native forest of Highland Scotland – has a reputation as potent and misleading as the wolves that ruled it. The popular image is of an impassable, sun-snuffing shroud, a Highlandswide jungle…
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Paperback | Pub: 12 Jul 2018£14.99Why couldn’t Michael Jordan, master athlete that he was, hit a baseball? Why can’t modern robotics come close to replicating the dexterity of a five-year-old? Why do good quarterbacks always seem to know where their receivers are? In this deeply…
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Paperback | Pub: 08 Nov 2018£30.00
Very little is known about the battle of Carham, fought between the Scots and Northumbrians in 1018. The leaders were probably Máel Coluim II, king of Scotland, and Uhtred of Bamburgh, earl or ealdorman in Northumbria. The outcome of the battle was…
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Paperback | Pub: 11 Jul 2019£8.99‘The Starberths die of broken necks’ goes the legend in the village of Chatterham . . . The Starberth family governed the now-abandoned Chatterham prison for many years, and each male heir must spend the night of his twenty-fifth birthday there,…
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Paperback | Pub: 25 May 2018£9.99One of the greatest travellers in Scotland, Martin Martin was also a native Gaelic speaker. This text offers his narrative of his journey around the Western Isles, and a mine of information on custom, tradition and life. Martin Martin’s wrote…
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Hardback | Pub: 03 Sep 2020£17.99Miami, 1963. A young boy from Louisville, Kentucky, is on the path to becoming the greatest sportsman of all time. Cassius Clay is training in the 5th Street Gym for his heavyweight title clash against the formidable Sonny Liston. He is beginning to…
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Paperback | Pub: 07 Feb 2019£8.99Annette Somerville, a young single mother, earns her living in a high-class Glasgow sauna parlour, scrupulously keeping her respectable home life separate from her professional activities. During a series of murders in the city, seemingly…
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Feb 2018£9.99Edinburgh, 1930, and the world is on the brink of change. Leading the charge is the glamorous, free-spirited Miss Jean Brodie, schoolteacher at the Marcia Blaine Academy, whose guiding principle is ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and…
Check out our specially selected Reading Boxes!
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Multiple-component | Pub: 23 Mar 2020£25.00Plunge into a series of chilling tales, cold blooded murders and mind-bending mysteries with our specially selected Crime & Mystery box. Featuring gritty detectives, investigative journalists and family feuds, this is a collection that will…
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Multiple-component | Pub: 23 Mar 2020£25.00Keep your spirits up with these uplifting, sensational and heart-warming reads. Talking alpacas, love in the face of adversity, and journeys to find yourself – these stories will keep you entertained and inspired! This box includes: The…
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Multiple-component | Pub: 23 Mar 2020£55.00Stuck at home? Looking for something to pass the time? Then look no further than our gift box put together just for you! Learn a new language, complete a 1000 piece jigsaw and explore the wonderful world of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in our…
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Multiple-component | Pub: 24 Mar 2020£30.00Allow yourself to be swept away by some of the finest poets writing today. From the masterful work of award-winning Liz Lochhead, to Roseanne Watt’s exquisite debut, these collections will delight and inspire all who read them. This box…
Coming Soon
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£8.99Twelve-year-old Ko Bo Bo lives with his uncle U Ba in Kalaw, a town in Burma. An unusually perceptive child, Bo Bo can read people’s emotions in their eyes. This acute sensitivity only makes his unconventional home life more difficult: His father…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£20.00Scotland has its rugged Hebrides; Ireland its cliff-girt Arans; Wales its Island of Twenty Thousand Saints. And what has England got? The isles of Canvey, Sheppey, Wight and Dogs, Mersea, Brownsea, Foulness and Rat. But there are also wilder,…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£16.99After Highland shepherd Colvin Munro disappears, a mysterious trail of his possessions is found in the Cairngorm mountains. Writing the eulogy for his memorial years later, his foundling-sister Mo seeks to discover why he vanished. Younger brother…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99In a life stranger than any fiction, Grace O’Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her commander, but her three decades of…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99After giving up a hectic life as a journalist in Europe and Hollywood in the late 1960s to return to his boyhood love of nature, Mike Tomkies moved to Eilean Shona, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland. There he rebuilt an abandoned croft…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£16.99Arnold Schwarzenegger – a bodybuilder-turned-real-estate mogul who turned an undefeated streak at the Mr Olympia contest into an astonishing film career and eight years as the governor of California – is, for many people, the embodiment of the…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of 420 million years of Scottish history and achievement. Involving a…
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Calendar | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99Following the continued success of the 2021 Scottish Maps Calendar, Birlinn is once again proud to collaborate with the National Library of Scotland. This new calendar features more of the most beautiful maps of Scotland ever made. From the very…
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Calendar | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99The Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of 420 million years of Scottish history and achievement. Involving over a thousand volunteer stitchers who worked on 160 separate panels, the Tapestry is one of the biggest community arts…
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Calendar | Pub: 06 May 2021£9.99This calendar features distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists and is a wonderful celebration of the extraordinary natural beauty of the Hebrides throughout the seasons. Mairi Hedderwick’s drawings,…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£12.99This hardback desk diary is illustrated throughout with Mairi Hedderwick’s beautiful sketches of the Hebrides through the seasons. Featuring distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists, this exquisite…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 May 2021£7.99This hardback pocket diary is illustrated throughout with Mairi Hedderwick’s beautiful sketches of the Hebrides through the seasons. Featuring distinctive full-colour paintings by one of Scotland’s best-loved authors and artists, this exquisite…
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Paperback | Pub: 06 May 2021£12.99The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was the largest attack on Britain since World War Two. 259 passengers and 11 townsfolk of Lockerbie were murdered. Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted…
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Paperback | Pub: 20 May 2021£6.99Edited by Lilias Fraser, Jane Cooper and Kate Hendry, To Learn the Future is a selection of poems that will grip at first reading – perfect if the only time you have is five minutes in a rushed lunch break. The choice of poems includes insight…
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Paperback | Pub: 20 May 2021£6.99Nursing staff throughout the world have endured an unprecedented increase in distress, anxiety and depression. Physical and mental health have come under attack from anxiety, depression, elevated blood pressure and increased stress hormone…
Latest Releases
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£8.99Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2019 When Les and Chris Humphreys moved to Ardnamurchan 15 years ago, little did they realise they would be sharing their home with some of Britain’s most elusive and misunderstood mustelids. Amongst all the…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£4.99Brunch should evoke a sense of pleasure and relaxation – and perhaps also the temptation to try something new. Food writer and broadcaster Ghillie Basan offers 50 recipes in seven themed sections: brunch in a bowl, brunch with eggs, brunch on…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£9.99‘Hauntingly delicious’ – Sunday Post Bitterhall is a story of obsession told between three unreliable narrators. Daniel, Órla and Tom share a flat and narrate the intersections of their lives, from future-world 3D printing…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£16.99China is building the world’s first digital totalitarian state, a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control. Internet freedom has been eliminated and ubiquitous surveillance cameras employ the latest facial recognition…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£9.99When Mike Tomkies moved to a remote cottage on the shores of Loch Shiel in the West Highlands of Scotland, he found a place which was to provide him with the most profound wilderness experience of his life. Accessible only by boat, the cottage he…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£6.99Customs play an important part in all societies and offer fascinating insights into a country’s history and culture. Scotland boasts a multitude of unique customs, many of which can be traced back to the times of the Druids, Celts and Romans. This…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£6.99Proverbs, once described as ‘the wisdom of many and the wit of one’, offer unique insights the way of life and the social mores of past generations. This book features an introduction which explores the role of proverbs in Scottish culture and…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2021£9.99Shortlisted for the The Great Outdoors Awards – Outdoor Book of the Year 2020 Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 2020 There are strange relics hidden across Scotland’s landscape: forgotten places that are…
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Hardback | Pub: 18 Mar 2021£20.00In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns and frozen lochs could be a…
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Paperback | Pub: 11 Mar 2021£12.99Vibrating with endeavours for Britain’s effort against the might of Nazi Germany, Clydebank was – in hindsight – an obvious target for the attentions of the Luftwaffe. When, on the evening of 13 March 1941, the authorities first detected…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Mar 2021£8.99Stretching for almost 10,000 miles (including numerous islands), the coastline of Scotland is one of the most varied in the world, from beautiful sandy beaches and flower-laden machair to dramatic cliffs and sea stacks. In this book Eilidh Muldoon…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Mar 2021£14.99Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award, 2020 This is the first modern history for general readers of the entire Jacobite movement in Scotland, England and Ireland, from the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 that drove…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Mar 2021£9.99A Times Bestseller Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing 2020 Desperate to connect with his native Galloway, Patrick Laurie plunges into work on his family farm in the hills of southwest Scotland. Investing in the oldest and…
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Paperback | Pub: 16 Feb 2021£14.99James Baldwin was born into the squalor of a Harlem tenement and transcended an early life of setbacks and racism. A storefront preacher at the age of fourteen, he supported his entire family – mother and eight siblings – before he began…
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Paperback | Pub: 04 Feb 2021£12.99In a career spanning forty years, Angus Roxburgh lived and worked in Russia as a literary translator, as Moscow correspondent of the Sunday Times and the BBC, and as a media consultant to the Kremlin. He witnessed Russian history unfolding at first…
A Year of Sport
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Hardback | Pub: 01 Oct 2020£20.00Busby’s Last Crusade is the never to be forgotten fable of Manchester United’s rise from the ashes of Munich in 1958 to the European Cup win 10 years later … and the humble Scot who led them there. With words from best-selling author Jeff…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Jun 2020£14.99The 2018/19 Premier League season was a historic one for African players in English football. More than 130 years after Arthur Wharton became the first, Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah shared the Golden Boot with Arsenal’s Gabon striker…
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Paperback | Pub: 14 Feb 2020£9.99
From being the most dominant club in Scottish football history, Rangers F.C., one of the most famous and powerful names in British sport, was sold to venture capitalist Craig Whyte in 2011 . . . for £1. When Whyte walked through the gates at Ibrox,…
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Paperback | Pub: 20 Jul 2020£16.99Labels such as ‘icon’ or ‘legend’ are rarely attached to one individual to the degree that they are to Bruce Lee. He only made a handful of films, yet four and a half decades after his untimely death at the age of 32, the Little Dragon’s…
Muriel Spark
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Hardback | Pub: 06 Sep 2018£9.99Hildegard Wolf is a German psychiatrist who lives a comfortable life in Paris. When she encounters a client who claims to be Lord Lucan, she can’t help but be intrigued. After all, he’s the second man who has claimed to be the elusive lord. But…
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Hardback | Pub: 06 Sep 2018£9.99Described by Gore Vidal as ‘a novel written at the top of her form and so unique’, Reality and Dreams concerns the delirious, egocentric film director Tom Richards, who is recovering from injuries sustained while falling off a crane on set. His…
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Hardback | Pub: 02 Aug 2018£9.99Wealthy Canadian scholar Harvey Gotham lives in splendid isolation in France and is working on a book about Job. He loves his wife, Effie, dearly but she has taken to planting bombs in supermarkets and has joined an anarchist group. Here, Spark…
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Jun 2018£9.99Described by Edmund White as ‘a hilarious account of political and romantic intrigue’, Territorial Rights tells the tale of aspiring art historian Robert who encounters an enigmatic Bulgarian refugee, Lina, in the labyrinthine canals and streets…
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Hardback | Pub: 07 Jun 2018£9.99Italy, the setting an enchanted lake southeast of Rome, and American heiress Maggie – famed for her beauty, wealth and steely will – is the target for an assortment of con men, jewel thieves, counterfeiters, adulterers and spongers. A dazzling,…
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Hardback | Pub: 07 Jun 2018£9.99It is time to elect a new abbess at the Convent of Crewe. There are two contenders: nuns Alexandra and Felicity. Alexandra is busy bugging the convent while Felicity calls the police when her love letters (to a young Jesuit priest) are stolen. A…
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Hardback | Pub: 10 May 2018£9.99During World War II, Elsa and Paul were involved in secret propaganda work in England. It is now 1973 and they are living in New York. Elsa is convinced that a German ex-POW – and former lover – who has appeared in New York, may be planning to…
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Hardback | Pub: 10 May 2018£9.99Geneva. As a ferocious thunderstorm rages outside, behind the locked doors of the library the aristocratic Klopstocks are ‘not to be disturbed’. In the attic, Baron Klopstock’s lunatic brother rants and raves. But in the staff quarters, all is…
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Hardback | Pub: 05 Apr 2018£9.99Lise has had enough. She’s been working in the same accountancy firm for years and so she decides to take off abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. Her quest for new experiences, sex and adventure quickly becomes a dark journey of self-destruction….
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Feb 2018£9.991961. While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, English teacher Barbara Vaughan becomes intent on joining her archaeologist fiance Harry, who is working on the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ignoring warnings not to cross the Mandelbaum Gate –…
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Feb 2018£9.99London, 1945. The girls of slender means are the residents of the May of Teck Club, a genteel yet rather shabby boarding house established for the ‘social protection of ladies of slender means below the age of thirty years’. The novel concerns…
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Feb 2018£9.99
Edinburgh, 1930, and the world is on the brink of change. Leading the charge is the glamorous, free-spirited Miss Jean Brodie, schoolteacher at the Marcia Blaine Academy, whose guiding principle is ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and…
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Hardback | Pub: 08 Feb 2018£9.99Spiritualist and extortionist Patrick Seton is coming up for trial. He’s been accused of forgery, and suddenly West London’s bachelors are all in a tizzy. Described by Evelyn Waugh as the ‘cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark’s clever…
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Hardback | Pub: 14 Dec 2017£9.99After young publishing assistant and war widow Mrs Hawkins crosses swords with writer Hector Bartlett the repercussions are swift. Set in postwar literary London, A Far Cry from Kensington is a mischievous and stylish tale of the cost of telling the…
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Hardback | Pub: 16 Nov 2017£9.99Described by David Lodge as ‘her first masterpiece’, Memento Mori opens with a telephone call and the words ‘Remember you must die’. Over several months, a circle of elderly men and women receive similar calls and everyone becomes a suspect….
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Hardback | Pub: 16 Nov 2017£9.99Caroline Rose has a problem. She hears voices and the incessant tapping of typewriter keys, and she seems to be a character in a novel . . . A comedy of errors, a crime novel, a book about books, Spark’s debut remains as otherworldly and…
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Hardback | Pub: 16 Nov 2017£9.99A bewitching comic masterpiece, The Ballad of Peckham Rye relates the tale of one Dougal Douglas, who is taken on by a small textile firm to ‘bring vision into the lives of the workers’. A devilishly charismatic force of nature who likes nothing…
