Here are 89 books that Sisters at the Edge of the World fans have personally recommended if you like
Sisters at the Edge of the World.
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I am the author of sixteen novels—six of them set in the mid-seventeenth century. The English Civil Wars and their aftermath is a period very close to my heart—combining as it does fascinating personalities, incredibly complicated politics, and all the drama and bloodshed of civil conflict. My greatest pleasure has been finding and featuring real men whose names are now largely forgotten.
I read a lot of biographies but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. Told with a novelist’s eye, Hastings gives a compelling account of a remarkable man, his achievements, and his tragic, utterly disgraceful end.
Travel with Montrose and his band of ill-equipped Irishmen over the Grampians in the dead of winter—it’s a journey one doesn’t forget.
Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, FIRST EDITION. VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD. LONDON. 1977 A very good/fine copy in black cloth boards, gold-gilt title on spine, illustrated endpapers, with a very good/fine dust-jacket in a clear protective wrapper.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I am a novelist with a passion for reading and it is this which I feel qualifies me to speak on this topic. My reading is eclectic across the crime/mystery genre and there’s nothing I love more than a book that sucks me right into the same world its characters inhabit, something all five of my choices did. As a novelist I appreciate the way these novels all use the weather conditions to add an extra layer of threat to the protagonists and it’s something I’ve always wanted to emulate.
MacBride’s seminal debut introduces readers not only to an erstwhile hero and a stunning ensemble of secondary characters, but also his wonderful descriptions of a foul Aberdeen winter.
Scattered in among the narrative are little vignettes that elevate the whole story with his excellent turn of phrase. Since reading this novel, his books have become must reads for me, even if the Aberdeen Tourist Board don’t have him on their Christmas card list.
Stuart MacBride's Number One bestselling crime series opens with this award-winning debut. DS Logan McRae and the police in Aberdeen hunt a child killer who stalks the frozen streets.
Winter in Aberdeen: murder, mayhem and terrible weather...
It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Three-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he's only the first. There's a serial killer stalking the Granite City and the local media are…
As well as featuring kick-ass female lead characters, all the books listed delve into why people do what they do – and this has always fascinated me; it’s why I became a journalist. Talking to victims of crime, I was always struck by their strength (and that was never more true than when I fronted an award-winning campaign for victims of domestic abuse). Prior to that, I worked at a high-security men’s prison, and getting to know the prisoners had a profound impact on me. Now, whether reading or writing a book, I love to get under the skin of characters and find their ‘why.’
Complex, clever, and cunning Gruoch is fighting for her survival and the crown of the ancient kingdom of Scotland–and she isn’t going to let anything or anyone get in her way.
She has no one to look out for her, so she must take on the world herself, and no matter what was thrown at her, she kept on, as single-minded as ever–and I kept cheering her for that, despite her villainy.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION DAGGER 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE GOLDSBORO GLASS BELL AWARD 2024
'Suspenseful, atmospheric and full of twists and turns, I loved the brutal, backstabbing world that Isabelle Schuler conjures up where only the most ruthless can survive' - Jennifer Saint
'Dazzlingly clever and difficult to put down' i
Power. History. Love. Hate. Vengeance.
She will be Queen. Whatever it takes...
Daughter of an ousted king. Descendant of powerful druids. Destined to take her place in history.
As a child, Gruoch's grandmother prophecies that she will one day be Queen of Alba and reclaim the lands…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I love second-chance romances and I am not in my twenties anymore; so I wrote what I wanted to read. Now, I've found other authors who write 35+, characters who have lived, been hurt, and moved on in life. I do read New Adult or younger than 35 characters and often, really smutty, erotic books as I need to get out of my head sometimes. I love Nora Roberts, Claudia Burgoa, Catharina Maura, Jolie Vines and I'll one-click quite a few indies.
Hard Nox is set in Scotland and is brilliantly
written. It's the start of series two and I fell in love with the world that
Jolie had built. I did put this book down a few chapters in to find the first
book of the first series. I wanted to read them in order and I'm so glad I did.
It was hard at the time to find books showing the Scots dialect and Jolie does
it well. So much so, I'm one of her ARC readers and I have started collecting the
paperback copies. This is my favourite of all her books.
Isobel: Lennox is one hot Highlander. Muscles bulging on thick arms. A smirk and a bossy swagger. In a kilt, he's devastating. To everyone but me. As teenagers, he crashed my car, stole my first kiss, then walked away with another woman. I'll be damned if my brother's best friend is getting an easy ride back into my life.
Nox: Isobel is a menace. She races cars and has tattoos in places I can't even imagine. I shouldn’t want her. But I can't forget the one kiss we shared as teenagers. Fresh…
When we authors name our characters, we gift them with meaning—a single word that somehow encompasses everything they will experience on the page. The name of my heroine, Akmaral, hails from Kazakhstan and means “white deer.” It resounds with the sound of hooves on the ancient Central Asian steppes and the deep connection to the natural world of the nomadic people who once lived there. Names bear unconscious expectations—hopes for strength and wisdom, dreams of triumph, beauty, and love. I hope that someday, hearing “Akmaral” will bring to mind vast, windswept steppes and a strong woman on horseback, head held high, contemplating her journey from warrior to leader.
Great writing is the key to my heart, and this book is gorgeously written. Isobel, a newly arrived Scottish immigrant to Salem, MA, carries a dangerous secret gift—the “magic” of synesthesia. The story takes place two generations after the infamous witch trials, and while Isobel’s unique color awareness means she can support herself as a seamstress and embroiderer while her husband is at sea, it also means she’s vulnerable to suspicion. Meanwhile, she meets Nathaniel Hawthorne—yes, that Nathaniel Hawthorne.
While Albanese explains that Isobel isn’t specifically “Hester” of The Scarlet Letter, by the end of the novel, I completely believe that she is. Here's a strong feminist perspective on a classic case of a woman wronged. I can’t wait to pick it up again.
Named a Most Anticipated Book for Fall by Goodreads • Washington Post • New York Post • BuzzFeed • PopSugar • Business Insider • An October Indie Next List Pick • An October LibraryReads Pick
"A hauntingly beautiful––and imagined––origin story to The Scarlet Letter." ––People
WHO IS THE REAL HESTER PRYNNE?
Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward. An apothecary who has fallen under the spell of opium, his pile of debts have forced them to flee Glasgow for a fresh start in…
I am a Scottish writer and have long loved books from and about Scotland. But I would love to see more written about the working-class Scottish experience from women’s perspective as I think that would lead to less focus on the violence and poverty that is featured in so many contemporary Scottish books from male authors. There is so much joy in the Scottish working-class experience – a pot of soup always on the stove in someone’s kitchen, the stories, the laughter, a community that cares for their own. Let’s see more of that, and more stories from and about Scottish working-class women.
This is the debut novel by Ely Percy, and tells the story of Kirsty Campbell, an ordinary Scottish girl as she navigates her way through high school in Renfrewshire.
An extremely relatable novel, it is told in short, buzzy chapters, and I love it for relating the best of what a Scottish working-class childhood can give you – resilience, humour, and the will to succeed. The book covers issues like teen pregnancy, drugs, and violence, but it does so without lecturing; rather, it celebrates what it means to be brought up in contemporary, working-class Scotland.
Duck Feet is a coming-of-age novel, set in the mid-noughties in Renfrew and Paisley, Scotland.
It follows 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 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.
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I’m a historian who is endlessly curious about the past lives of the things that I love. My fondness for wine began when I lived in Paris after finishing my PhD, and it deepened when I taught in Cambridge and sampled my college’s vast cellar. My first books were on imperial history and this perspective made me wonder: was it a coincidence that New World wine producers are former European colonies? I spent a decade researching Imperial Wine, consulting archives in five countries, and proved that wine was an arm of colonial strategy. I’m a Professor of History at Trinity College in Connecticut, USA, and I love teaching wine and history.
Ludington’s book is exciting because it disproves pervasive ideas about wine consumption. One of the big assumptions in the history of commodities is that middle-class people want to imitate elites, and that taste trickles down the social ladder.
Ludington shows that the opposite was true 250 years ago in England and Scotland: aristocrats started changing their wine-buying habits to appear more sympathetic to the middling sort. This trickle-up is an eighteenth-century equivalent of affluent hipsters drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon or fashionistas buying $400 jeans.
I’m the type of reader who finishes each sentence thinking yeah, but how do we know that?, so I find Ludington’s generous footnotes and detailed cellar inventories to be deeply satisfying. This is not an easy read, but it’s a thoroughly enriching one.
A unique look at the meaning of the taste for wine in Britain, from the establishment of a Commonwealth in 1649 to the Commercial Treaty between Britain and France in 1860 - this book provides an extraordinary window into the politics and culture of England and Scotland just as they were becoming the powerful British state.
I love second-chance romances and I am not in my twenties anymore; so I wrote what I wanted to read. Now, I've found other authors who write 35+, characters who have lived, been hurt, and moved on in life. I do read New Adult or younger than 35 characters and often, really smutty, erotic books as I need to get out of my head sometimes. I love Nora Roberts, Claudia Burgoa, Catharina Maura, Jolie Vines and I'll one-click quite a few indies.
This is another series: The Blackstone Dragon
series. I've loved Dragons since: forever! If you enter my house, you'll see
just how much I love them (I have statues all over, including in the bedroom!)
so this series, was a given. There are
many others written by Alicia and I have a few books of hers waiting to be
enjoyed.
I am an award-winning author and journalist, specialising in social history and gardening. I have an M.A. in Modern History from Cambridge University and a Diploma of Horticulture from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. I have written for many British newspapers and magazines, most notablyThe Spectator, The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, and The Garden.
Witch Wood tells the story of a high-minded, ardent and scholarly young Presbyterian minister, David Sempill, who is called to a benighted Tweeddale parish in 1645 at the time of the War of Three Kingdoms, and how his desire to root out covert witchcraft amongst some of his most ‘devout’ parishioners at a time of civil war and plague leads to tragedy and exile. The Marquis of Montrose, on whose biography John Buchan was working at the same time, has a walk-on part in the story. John Buchan considered this his best work of fiction, and I agree.
Buchan's favourite of all his novels, Witch Wood deals with the hypocrisy that can lie beneath god-fearing respectability.
The book is set in the terrifying times of the first half of the seventeenth century when the Church of Scotland unleashed a wave of cruelty and intolerance. Minister Sempill witnesses devil worship in the 'Witch Wood' and is persecuted. It comes with an introduction by Allan Massie.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I am a Scottish writer who has published two books, one about poker and plumbing (Bad Beat Hotel) and the other about the treatment of men who sailed in the WW2 Arctic convoys and were unable to continue fighting (Sailor’s Heart). I’m interested in how people work and how they can be “repaired” when they wear out, malfunction, or break. My professional background is in clinical psychology and the study of human behaviour. I chose “cowards who become heroes” as my book theme because I’m constantly amazed by people’s resilience when faced with the most terrible circumstances.
It takes real guts to prove all the naysayers wrong, and become a hero.
Raassay is a remote Scottish island, site of the Rona lighthouse, which Calum MacLeod tended full time until 1967 when he was 56, and the lighthouse was semi-automated. As the only man living in northern Raasay, he had some more time on his hands.
To bring more people to the area, he decided to build a road, nearly two miles long, using just a pick, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, multiple pairs of wellington boots, and his bare hands. It took him ten years. Today on Calum’s Road or “Rathad Chaluim” (in Gaelic) drivers are in awe of one man’s determination to do what he believed was needed, despite the cost.
'An incredible testament to one man's determination' - The Sunday Herald
Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. 'So what he decided to do', says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, 'was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay'.
