Biblio File

10 Very Scottish Books

Mary Queen of Scots Cover

Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser
Mary Queen of Scots grew up in France and went on to marry the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years.

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
Waverly is the story of a young dreamer and English soldier, Edward Waverley, who is sent to Scotland in 1745. He journeys North from his aristocratic family home to the Scottish Lowlands and then into the Highlands and the heart of the 1745 Jacobite uprising and aftermath.

Selected Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Burns, the "ploughman poet," writes about politics, history, Scottish nationalism, his loathing for social injustice and illicit affairs as easily as he does nature and beauty.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The mild-mannered scientist Dr. Jekyll develops a potion that unleashes his secret, inner persona—the twisted Mr. Hyde.

Lanark Cover

Lanark by Alasdair Gray
"First he had been a child, then a school-boy, then his mother died. He became a student, tried to work as a painter and became very ill. He hung uselessly around cafes for a time, then took a job in an institute. He got mixed up with a woman there, lost the job, then went to live in a badly governed place where his son was born. The woman and child left him, and for no very clear reason he had been sent on a mission to some sort of assembly..."

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
The story and its lively cast of characters revolve around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh.

Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
Wartime food rationing is bad enough, but when the whisky supplies run out things get serious. Then the fifty-thousand-bottle cargo from a shipwreck brings salvation.

Trainspotting Cover

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
The story of a group of working-class junkies in Edinburgh.

Hide and Seek (Inspector Rebus #2) by Ian Rankin
Detective John Rebus is an Edinburgh cop with a bad past and little ambition. He is also the only man with all the pieces to solve the puzzle and catch the killer.

Outlander by Diana Galbaldon
Claire Randall is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon in 1945. She walks through a standing stone in an ancient stone circle and finds herself transported to war torn Scotland, 1743.

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You forgot 'Sunset Song' by

You forgot 'Sunset Song' by Lewis Grassic Gibbon - widely considered *the* Scottish novel.