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.)

The Mash House


Alan Gillespie - 2021
    In the same village, Donald is the aggressive distillery owner, who floods the country with narcotics alongside his single malt; when his son goes missing, he becomes haunted by an anonymous American investor intent on purchasing the Cullrothes Distillery by any means necessary. Schoolgirl Jessie is trying to get the grades to escape to the mainland, while Grandpa counts the days left in his life.This is a place where mountains are immense and the loch freezes in winter. A place with only one road in and out. With long storms and furious midges and a terrible phone signal. The police are compromised, the journalists are scum, and the innocent folk of Cullrothes tangle themselves in a fermenting barrel of suspicion, malice and lies.The Mash House uses multiple narratives to weave together the parallel lives of individuals in the village. Each fractured by the fears and uncertainty in their own minds.

Boyracers


Alan Bissett - 2002
    It is a totally fresh, savvy and supremely honest take on being young, naive and hopeful, and the pains of living life at hyperspeed in a mad pop-culture world. It is fast, pacy and funny - an exhilarating joyride through the formative years of four Falkirk teenagers.'A terrific yarn... superb from start to finish' - FHM 'There is real emotion here, and gutsiness... a feeling for language so passionate it shames the dullness of so many sentences that make it into print' - Sunday Herald 'Required reading for those who understand and live its message' - The Herald

Mavis Belfrage


Alasdair Gray - 1996
    Five other tales describe folk in Britain's lowest professional class between the late-1950s and 60s.

Tinker, Tailor, Schoolmum, Spy


Faye Brann - 2021
    And apart from being outstandingly good at paintball, no one would ever know that in a past life she was an undercover spy and has been trained to kill a man with her bare hands. Not even her husband, and certainly not the other mums at the school gate.But beneath the school runs and bake sales, Vicky had never quite said goodbye to the past. So, when a newcomer on the PTA sets alarms bells ringing and MI5 comes calling, she’s determined to prove that despite her expanding waistline and love of pink gin, she’s still every bit the cold-eyed special operative.When the assignment gets uncomfortably close to home, Vicky must decide if she has got what the job takes after all, and if home is really where her heart is…

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.

Duck Feet


Ely Percy - 2021
    Dive in and follow the lives of 12-year-old Kirsty Campbell and her friends as they navigate life from first to sixth year at Renfrew Grammar school. This book is a celebration of working-class life and youth in an ever-changing world. It uses humour to tackle hard-hitting subjects such as drugs, bullying, sexuality, and teenage pregnancy. But moreover, it is a relatable and accessible portrait of figuring out who you are, plunging into the currents of life, and most of all, finding hope. 'Relatable, quirky, and sometimes heart-wrenching, this story paints an authentic portrait of growing up working class in Scotland.'

Scabby Queen


Kirstin Innes - 2020
    And, as practical as she is, Ruth doesn't know what to do. Or how to feel. Because knowing and loving Clio Campbell was never straightforward.To Neil, she was his great unrequited love. He'd known it since their days on picket lines as teenagers. Now she's a sentence in his email inbox: Remember me well.The media had loved her as a sexy young starlet, but laughed her off as a ranting spinster as she aged. But with news of her suicide, Clio Campbell is transformed into a posthumous heroine for politically chaotic times.Stretching over five decades, taking in the miners' strikes to Brexit and beyond; hopping between a tiny Scottish island, a Brixton anarchist squat, the bloody Genoa G8 protests, the poll tax riots and Top of the Pops, Scabby Queen is a portrait of a woman who refuses to compromise, told by her friends and lovers, enemies and fans.As word spreads of what Clio has done, half a century of memories, of pain and of joy are wrenched to the surface. Those who loved her, those who hated her, and those that felt both ways at once, are forced to ask one question: Who was Clio Campbell?

Hieroglyphics and Other Stories


Anne Donovan - 2001
    The debut collection of the Orange- and Whitbread-shortlisted author of Buddha DaA beautiful collection—charming, witty, and touching—these stories give voice to a variety of different characters: from the little girl who wants to look "subtle" for her father's funeral, a child who has an email pen pal on Jupiter, and an old lady who becomes a star through "zimmerobics." Often writing in a vibrant Glaswegian vernacular, Donovan deftly gives her characters authenticity with a searing power, aided and abetted by tender subtlety.

A Glasgow Kiss


Sophie Gravia - 2020
    With 30 fast approaching, she's determined to do whatever it takes to find love - or at least someone to sext! Cheered on by best friends Ashley and Raj, Zara embarks on a string of dating escapades that are as hilarious as they are disastrous. From online dating to blind dates, hometown hook-ups to flirty bartenders, nothing is off limits.But when Dr Tom Adams, aka Sugar Daddy, shows interest, it's a game-changing moment. Zara has had a crush on Tom since her very first day at the aesthetics clinic she works at part-time. As things heat up between them, Zara can't help but wonder: is this it? Or is it another disaster waiting to happen?

Swing Hammer Swing!


Jeff Torrington - 1992
    Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it "a rich Scotch broth of language, steaming with metaphor...and pungent dialect." Winner of Britain's Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

A Time to Keep


George Mackay Brown - 1969
    First published in 1969, its 12 stories depict a vast cast of characters drawn from Orkney’s past and present, offering a range of emotions and incidents. They are elemental tales of the fishermen, crofters and farmers of the island and of the harsh, beautiful landscape in which they live.

HWFG


Chris McQueer - 2018
    In HWFG...Your fave Sammy gets a job and Angie goes to Craig Tara.Plans are made to kick the f*ck out of Kim Jong-Un. You’ll find answers to the big questions in life: What happens when we die?What does Brexit actually mean?Why are moths terrifying?What are ghosts like to live with?It’s just a load more short stories ‘n that.hwfg x

Mayflies


Andrew O'Hagan - 2020
    With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.Mayflies is a memorial to youth's euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.

The Accidental


Ali Smith - 2005
    Jonathan Safran Foer has called her writing “thrilling.” Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her “style, ideas, and punch.” Here, in a novel at once profound, playful, and exhilaratingly inventive, she transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a mysterious visitor.Amber—thirtysomething and barefoot—shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner.Eve Smart, the author of a best-selling series of biographical reconstructions, thinks Amber is a student with whom her husband, Michael, is sleeping. Michael, an English professor, knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid, age twelve, thinks she’s her mother’s friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks she’s an angel.As Amber insinuates herself into the family, the questions of who she is and how she’s come to be there drop away. Instead, dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives through the searing lens of Amber’s perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but not—they discover when they return home to London—from their profoundly altered lives.Fearlessly intelligent and written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy, The Accidental is a tour de force of literary improvisation that explores the nature of truth, the role of chance, and the transformative power of storytelling.