Rose
Nicolson is the story of Will Fowler, student, would-be poet, warily Protestant
in the charged atmosphere of 1570s Scotland, where the scorch marks of burned
martyrs are still visible on the streets.
I loved this because it felt like
time travel. I believed in Greig’s Scotland: the place, the smells, the
frightening world where Will had to step warily among tangled politics. There
was atmosphere, excitement, meetings with historical characters and romance:
Will’s love for Rose, the intelligent fisher girl who’d learned Latin and
philosophy at her brother’s elbow, yet who wanted to stay within her own class
and marry a fisher lad.
Most of all, I loved the language, conjuring up Will’s
world: I came out of it speaking the Scots I’d heard from my Granny. Did it end
well? Yes ... no ... sort of ... satisfyingly.
Embra, winter of 1574. Queen Mary has fled Scotland, to raise an army from the French. Her son and heir, Jamie is held under protection in Stirling Castle. John Knox is dead. The people are unmoored and lurching under the uncertain governance of this riven land. It's a deadly time for young student Will Fowler, short of stature, low of birth but mightily ambitious, to make his name.
Fowler has found himself where the scorch marks of the martyrs burned at the stake can be seen on every street, where differences in doctrine can…
It’s
not often we Scots get to read about our history from a Scottish persepctive,
and this crime novel took us right into the aftermath of Culloden, where the
Government troops slaughtered the Jacobites under Bonny Prince Charlie. Six
years later, survivor Iain MacGillivray finds a dead man in his bookshop, and
his desire for peace is tested as a new Jacobite plot begins.
Maclean recreates
the tense atmosphere in this garrison town, where memories of the atrocities
after the battle are still vividly alive, where the Grandes Dames still meet to
toast the king over the water, and the military come down hard on any hint of
rebellion.
The characters and events were vividly described, and I was
delighted to find that some of the most striking scenes really happened.
A GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN INVERNESS IN THE WAKE OF THE 1746 BATTLE OF CULLODEN.
'This slice of historical fiction takes you on a wild ride' THE TIMES
After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drummossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.
Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he…
This summer, I was hit by a yacht at our local
regatta. I was in a coma for two weeks, in hospital for another five, and I came
home at last, battered, bruised, and on crutches. I tried this book on a friend’s
recommendation and was hooked instantly.
Max, the narrator, is a bolshie
take-no-prisoners... historian. St Mary’s, where she works, sends her to view
past events – except that nobody from St Mary’s can manage to view quietly.
Whenever Max sets foot in the past, chaos follows. I enjoyed the vivid
recreations of historical events, I laughed out loud at the wise-crack
one-liners, and I cowered from the dinosaurs.
From my bed, I charged about and had
hair-breadth escapes... in short, this was exactly the book I needed to
distract me from my rather restricted present. Within two chapters, I’d ordered
the next two, then the next three. Now I’m rationing myself – the next two are
saved for my birthday treat, and after that, it’s Christmas.
Time Travel meets History in this explosive bestselling adventure series.
`So tell me, Dr Maxwell, if the whole of History lay before you ... where would you go? What would you like to witness?'
When Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, she discovers the historians there don't just study the past - they revisit it.
But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And she soon discovers it's not just History she's fighting...
Follow the tea-soaked disaster magnets of St Mary's as they rattle around History. Because wherever the…
When liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch lands her dream job as the skipper of a Viking longboat for a prestigious Hollywood film being shot in Shetland, she thinks she’s going home in triumph to the place - and family - she ran away from as a teenager.
However, when a corpse is found aboard the longship, Cass and her family come under intense scrutiny from the disturbingly shrewd DI Gavin Macrae.
Even if Cass’s local knowledge and sailing wisdom help to clear the Lynch family of suspicion, they may not be enough to keep her ahead of the murderer’s game… or to prevent her from becoming the next victim.
