Books
Sam Heughan’s delight at Audie Award nomination
Actor star Sam Heughan has told Scottish Field of his delight at being nominated for a top audio industry award. The Audio Publishers Association’s finalists for the 2022 Audie Awards programme was recently revealed, celebrating the best titles in audio publishing and spoken-word entertainment, honouring a varied group of actors, musicians and politicians, ahead of…
Read MoreStories of Scotland wanted for the Book Festival
The Edinburgh International Book Festival has announced a new project gathering and creating stories from and for people across the country in response to Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022. The year will spotlight, celebrate and promote the wealth of stories inspired by, written, or created in Scotland. Scotland’s Stories Now is a mass participatory project…
Read MoreFictional work based on two real Scotswomen
What You Call Free is a piece of historical fiction. This novel is loosely based on the lives of two women, Helen Alexander and Jonet Gothskirk (who was forced to wear a ‘sackcloth’ or ‘gown of repentance’ as punishment for adultery during the period of the Covenanters). After falling pregnant, 18-year-old Jonet seeks refuge among…
Read MoreA thrilling mystery in a fictional Scots village
The Purified is the second of C F Peterson’s high-octane thrillers set in the fictional village of Duncul. Eamon Ansgar (the hero of the first novel, ‘Errant Blood’) has found happiness in marriage, but community life is shaken by a brutal murder and he finds himself helping the local police force to investigate (an entirely…
Read MoreA look at the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction finalists
Thirteen novels are in contention for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The competition celebrates outstanding historical novels published in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth, with a £25,000 prize for the winner, with settings spanning from the 8th century BC up to the 1960s, and from all four nations of the United…
Read MoreAn essential guide to some outstanding bakes
Calling all budding bakers across the land, this one’s for you. Based in Muir of Ord, Bad Girl Bakery – a name that pokes fun at anyone who disapproves of a little indulgence – has become an institution for weary wanderers seeking a dose of sheer sugary glee. (It is, after all, impossible to eat…
Read MoreSam Heughan’s book nominated for an Audie Award
Scots actor Sam Heughan is in good company, with former President Barack Obama and media mogul Oprah Winfrey as a finalist at the Audie Awards this year. The Audio Publishers Association’s finalists for the 2022 awards programme have been revealed, celebrating the best titles in audio publishing and spoken-word entertainment, honouring a varied group of…
Read MoreEvil is just one floor away in a pacey read
Setting aside associations of Edinburgh’s cobbled streets with one ‘Boy Wizard’, Anthony O’Neill has crafted a rather more sinister reality. ‘In Edinburgh, evil is just one floor away,’ he writes. Protagonist Cat Thomas relocates to the capital’s Dean Village to flee death threats related to her job as a fraud investigator, only to find that…
Read MoreA travelogue of Britain’s most notorious climb on Skye
Simon Ingram is not alone in his fascination with the mighty Cuillin, but this breeze-block-sized tome is a veritable paean to the Skye mountain ridge that sits among the clouds. Broken into three sections – ascent, traverse, and descent – it is primarily a travelogue of Ingram’s own battle to conquer Britain’s most notorious climb.…
Read MoreSeminal Scots work given audiobook treatment
Over many years, people have asked writer Billy Kay why he had not recorded an audio version of his classic book Scots: The Mither Tongue. Knowing what a huge undertaking it would be, he always cited time and other commitments as the main reasons. The Covid lockdown changed everything, so he finally decided to commit…
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