Book picks similar to
Boyracers by Alan Bissett


fiction
scottish
scottish-fiction
contemporary

Daisy on the Outer Line


Ross Sayers - 2020
    And to make matters worse, she's in someone else's body.To make amends for her behaviour, she must save a life—but she doesn’t know who, how, or where to begin. She’ll have to find out fast if she wants to make it back to her old life and avoid being trapped in the wrong timeline forever.(This novel was awarded one of the first Scots Language Publication Grants funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Scottish Book Trust.)

Sky Dance: Fighting for the wild in the Scottish Highlands


John D. Burns - 2019
    'Bring back the lynx? Over my dead body!”The environmental protestors murmured, and Rory stepped forward. ‘Your hunting has destroyed our hills and left them treeless wastes, devoid of wildlife. It’s time that changed.’‘Listen, you lentil-eating cat lover,’ Purdey barked through the megaphone, ‘men like me own Scotland. If we want to kill anything that moves and turn the whole damn place into a theme park, we’ll do it.’Someone from the group of protestors hurled a turnip. It struck Purdey and he crumpled to the ground. Just as the archaic class system he represents must eventually fall, Angus thought with a grin.In his first two bestselling books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, John D. Burns invited readers to join him in the hills and wild places of Scotland. In Sky Dance, he returns to that world to ask fundamental questions about how we relate to this northern landscape – while raising a laugh or two along the way. Anyone who has gazed at the majesty of the Scottish mountains will know this place and want to return to it. Now, as wild land is threatened like never before, it’s time we asked ourselves what kind of future we want for the Highlands.

The Young Team


Graeme Armstrong - 2020
    2005. Glasgow is named Europe’s Murder Capital, driven by a violent territorial gang and knife culture. In the housing schemes of adjacent Lanarkshire, Scotland’s former industrial heartland, wee boys become postcode warriors.2004. Azzy Williams joins the Young Team [YTP]. A brutal gang conflict with their deadly rivals, the Young Toi [YTB] begins.2012. Azzy dreams of another life. He faces his toughest fight of all – the fight for a different future.Expect Buckfast. Expect bravado. Expect street philosophy. Expect rave culture. Expect anxiety. Expect addiction. Expect a serious facial injury every six hours. Expect murder.Hope for a way out.

Buddha Da


Anne Donovan - 2003
    So when he first takes up meditation at the Buddhist Center, no one takes him seriously. But as Jimmy becomes more involved in a search for the spiritual, his beliefs start to come into conflict with the needs of his wife, Liz. Cracks appear in their apparently happy family life, and the ensuing events change the lives of each family member.

The Changeling


Robin Jenkins - 1958
    His teachers admit that he is clever, but only one, Charles Forbes, sees an uncanny warmth in his reticence and in his seemingly insolent smile—so he decides to take Tom on holiday with his own family. This powerful novel explores one of Jenkins's consistent and most fruitful themes—how goodness and innocence are compromised when faced with the pressures of growing up and becoming part of society.

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away


Christopher Brookmyre - 2001
    In both their cases, it was to be rock stars. Fifteen years later, their mid-thirties are bearing down fast, and just like everybody else, they're having to accept the less glamorous hands reality has dealt them. Nervous new father Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody has to find their own way of coping. For some it's affairs, for others it's the bottle, and for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.

To a Fault


Nick Laird - 2005
    Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, he balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Formally deft, rhetorically fresh, these poems never shy from difficult choices, exploring cruelty and vengeance wherever they may be found: in love, in work and against political backdrops. But these are brave, resolute writings that resist despair at all times, affirming instead the need to rebuild and to right oneself, to dust down and carry on.

The Testament of Gideon Mack


James Robertson - 2006
    For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies. Until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan himself.Mack's testament - a compelling blend of memoir, legend, history, and, quite probably, madness - recounts one man's emotional crisis, disappearance, resurrection and death. It also transports you into an utterly mesmerising exploration of the very nature of belief.

Way to Go


Alan Spence - 1998
    First US publication for the Scottish Spence.Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

The Trick is to Keep Breathing


Janice Galloway - 1989
    The problems of everyday living accumulate and begin to torture Joy, who blames her problems not on her work or on the accidental drowning of her illicit lover, but on herself. While painful and deeply serious, this is a novel of great warmth and energy: it's the wit and irony found in moments of despair that prove to be Joy's salvation. First published by Polygon in 1989 and Dalkey Archive Press in 1994, now available again.

Fresh Air


Charlotte Vale Allen - 2003
    Alone in the Connecticut farmhouse that was once her mother's, Lucinda's life has become a small thing. Everything she wants or needs can be purchased online, and her only trips to the outside world are to the library or to the post office. It sometimes takes her days before she has the courage to venture past her front door, and even these excursions are sufficiently traumatic to induce blinding migraine headaches.Then, one hot morning in July, as she sits at her computer near the living-room window, a motion in the garden catches her eye. When she turns to look out, she is certain she must be hallucinating--for out there, admiring the overgrown flower beds, is a little girl in shorts and a T-shirt, her bare feet in outsize sneakers. She can't be real, Lucinda tells herself. But when she looks again, the little girl beckons to her to come outside. Bemused, curious, Lucinda gets up and goes outdoors to make the acquaintance of charmingly precocious nine-year-old Katanya Taylor who has, courtesy of the Fresh Air Fund, come from Harlem to spend two weeks with a host family. Taken with the girl's sweet-natured intelligence and generosity of spirit, Lucinda gradually, painfully finds herself drawn back into the world she left after her mother's death. Through Katanya, Lucinda re-examines her past, and gets answers to the questions that kept her locked inside herself and inside her mother's house for more than half her life.

King Henry and the Three Little Trips (The King Henry Tapes)


Richard Raley - 2016
    Telling three interconnected stories taking place on the same day, two weeks after events in "The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist" this novel is a can't miss for fans of THE KING HENRY TAPES. Spending equal time with Tyson Bonnie, Eva Reti, and King Henry Price himself, KING HENRY AND THE THREE LITTLE TRIPS shows the fallout from the Days of Supernatural Exhibit in both the personal cost for our characters and the political cost for supernatural organizations worldwide as fear of the Curator spreads to even the Asylum itself. Read as Tyson Bonnie escorts Vicky Welf to the Coyote Nation compound, find out if Eva Reti can survive the anima experiment inflicted upon her, and follow King Henry as he returns to the Asylum seeking Plutarch's help. The queue for the "Foul Mouth and the Pit of No Return" roller-coaster begins here! THE KING HENRY TAPES Book 1 - "The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady" (released) Book 2 - "The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes" (released) Book 3 - "The Foul Mouth and the Troubled Boomworm" (released) Book 4 - "The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny" (released) Book 5 - "The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist" (released) Book 5.5 - "King Henry and the Three Little Trips" (released) Book 6 - "The Foul Mouth and the Pit of No Return" (forthcoming)

The Art of Dancing in the Rain


Jack Lehman - 2013
    Or read this book and find out how you have all the tools you need, but must make the one change to become the writer you have always wanted to be.

There but for the


Ali Smith - 2011
    'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party . . .' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear.There but for the was hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley. 'Dazzlingly inventive' A.S. Byatt 'Whimsically devastating. Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting' Guardian 'A real gem' Erica Wagner, The Times 'Eccentric, adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read' Literary Review 'If you liked Smith's earlier fiction, you will know that she enjoys setting up a situation before chucking in a literary Molotov cocktail then describing what happens' Sunday Express 'Wonderful, word-playful, compelling' Jeanette Winterson 'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph 'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard

Going Postal


Stephan Jaramillo - 1997
    He's similar - in name only - to the actor who used to play Hercules. He's the son of a postman who's been losing it for decades. He's got a girlfriend he's not so sure about, a demeaning job at BagelWorks, and a crappy car. Things are not going well for Steve. He just went home for his sister's wedding (to another postman) and hates his family more than ever. His Dad just gave him a gun, and he doesn't know who to shoot first. His girlfriend just dumped him (now he's sure), he just lost his demeaning job, and his car still stinks. What's a jobless, dreamless, girl-less twentynothing to do? Scam money off his deaf grandmother. Drink before noon with his equally pathetic friends. Keep the gun. And try to keep from Going Postal.