The Bookseller of Inverness: a gripping historical thriller from the double prizewinning author

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The loss of family, friends, homes, and livelihoods is devastating, and even thirty years later people are still crushed by everything that has happened. It’s the characters that make it, the historical overtones, the Scottish background and the idea of a bookseller with a mysterious book. While reading the book, I did stop and brush up a bit on my Scottish history, the better to understand what was going on. uk/landing-page/quercus/quercus-company-information/">The data controller is Quercus Editions Ltd.

The Highlanders of the past, the ghosts of Culloden, had been real, flesh and blood characters with cares and intrigues and sorrows and laughter of their own. Anyone who has visited the place will know the atmosphere that envelops it to somehow cut away the intervening centuries. I am not sure if this is the first in a series, but I hope it is as I loved so many of the characters here. Iain MacGillivray himself is an engaging character with an interesting past; I enjoyed getting to know him and reading about the work he and his assistants put into collecting, restoring and selling – or lending – books to the people of Inverness. But MacLean's Bookseller of Inverness has the right whiff of nostalgia, tragedy, and post war devastation.Her standalone Jacobite thriller, 'The Bookseller of Inverness' was voted Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2023. I was more interested in the historical detail, the descriptions of everyday life in 18th century Inverness and the insights into the mood, politics and changing loyalties in the years following Culloden.

A gripping historical thriller set in Inverness in the wake of the 1746 battle of Culloden from twice CWA award-winning author S.

Howver, the next morning, when Iain comes to open the door, he finds the stranger dead, his throat cut and a sword lying beside the body. It’s the only book I’ve read by MacLean, but I do have a copy of The Redemption of Alexander Seaton somewhere!

I enjoyed reading descriptions of the surrounding countryside, where I have family connections, and there is an increasing air of tension as old resentments surface and revenge is enacted. The importance of local politics for the novel’s plot made me worried that the book would become overwhelming, but that never happened. Most of the characters in the book are fictional, although many of them, as I discovered from the author’s note, are based on the lives and experiences of real people. Nice to see you back after your time-travelling adventures in hibernation and your long walk home from Alaska! I’m not sure whether there will be a follow up – it ends quite neatly – but if there is, I’ll certainly be reading it!The presence of many English soldiers is unnerving, some like Major Thornlie, polite and correct in his manner and others like Captain Dunne violent and uncouth. The dog is much more conducive to this kind of thing than the children, although I have realised that a close reading of my books reveals the true hero of most of them to be a canine.