89 Books Like The Bookseller of Inverness

A poignant, passionate retelling of The Seven Wild Swans set in an alternate Scotland, this gorgeous book stars a prickly, fierce girl who will do anything to save her brothers from a wicked enchantment. Rowenna’s mother Mairead dies before she can teach Rowenna the magical craft she is so desperate to learn. But when Mairead seemingly comes back from the dead, Rowenna is powerless to defeat the evil creature wearing her face, who proceeds to curse Rowenna, her brothers, and the boy named Gawen Rowenna rescued from the sea. The boys are turned into swans by day, only shifting back to their human forms at night. Rowenna herself is robbed of her voice by day. There is only one thing that can save her brothers and herself—shirts woven out of stinging nettles. But can she weave the shirts before time runs out?

Although this is, strictly speaking, a Young Adult level book, it belongs here in my cadre of stories that have woven a measure of magic through my being. I first read this as a young girl, and loved it so much I saved my pennies to buy my own copy (I still have it). Sally Watson showed me how to create a real, believable, and magical heroine. One with flaws, and fears, and a call to be other than those who surround her. Other than those who surround her. The story also takes place in the Scottish Highlands, a place very dear to my heart, and presents a wealth of actual historical characters who come to life between the pages. This one will forever have a place in my heart.

Neil Munro’s Scottish tales, especially the Para Handy stories, were very popular in his lifetime, but I prefer his historical novels. In my opinion, the best is The New Road. The title refers to the military road into the Highlands, made in the 1730s by General Wade, which was a major reason why the Highlanders were defeated, since it enabled the army to bring artillery to bear at the Battle of Culloden in April 1746. But the road also brought the possibility of greater prosperity, through trade, to the benighted Highlands. Munro came from Inverary in Argyll, and so does the hero in this thriller, who sets out to find the killer of his Jacobite father years before, during the uprising in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s father, James. It is an exciting story but with underlying serious themes, for example about progress and change in traditional societies.

The largest – but also the worst led – Jacobite military challenge to Great Britain happened in 1715, when more than 20 000 men volunteered to fight.

Daniel Szechi tells their story more fully than anyone else, and sees Scottish opposition to the 1707 Union with England as one of the greatest motivators of the Jacobite Rising.

This was the fifth time I have read this book, and I swear I love it just as much every time I read it.

The book is about a writer who has a story come to her in waking dreams and flashes of vivid insight. The story of the past is one of her ancestors who lived near this place.

As a writer, this idea appeals to me. Some of my favorite ideas have come to me in the space between waking and sleeping. The dual timeline of present and historical mesh seamlessly so that the two pieces complement each other, and I love rediscovering all the ways the pieces connect.

Having met the author and taken a dozen workshops with her, I appreciate the craft that went into the writing. Plus, she’s a fellow Canadian.

This is a collection of essays for a major exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland in 2017. It features essays on aspects of the endurance of the Jacobite cause, and objects associated with Jacobitism (like Bonnie Prince Charlie’s silver picnic set). It also has over 200 pictures. This myth has endured through the writings of Sir Walter Scott through Outlander, and this book presents the much, much larger, and more complex story.

This book contains tough questions that I have struggled with in the past like, “Why would God allow this to happen?” “Does God see me?” “How can God use this for His glory?” I found comfort in these pages. I learned the struggle of many during the Jacobite uprising—something I knew precious little about, and I have Scottish heritage!

Laura always transports me into history, and I love how she combines stories of struggle with hope. I always walk away from her books with new knowledge of history and encouragement for my own life. Besides, I can never say no to a good romance!

One of the greatest ‘what-ifs?’ of the Jacobite movement centres on the English Jacobites and the fundamental question of why they were so politically important within the movement and yet so useless in terms of achieving a Stuart restoration. 

England was the most powerful of the three kingdoms of the British Isles and a major section of the Tory party, the most popular party in England, episodically developed a yearning for such a restoration. Yet it never took off. Monod’s classic book explores English Jacobitism in admirably fine and lucid detail and provides the best answer we are going to get.

A forgotten gem of a book. Katherine Parker hasn't (yet) enjoyed the same revival of interest as Violet Jacob, but this volume alone should make us reconsider. Sitting somewhere between biography and novel, it teases us and makes us a little uncomfortable as it veers between fragments of dialogue—clearly invented, albeit very much in keeping with period language—and more obviously historical passages, telling the eventful life of Jean Cochrane, Viscountess Dundee (1662-1695) from her birth in the west of Scotland, through her marriage with the famous Jacobite general Viscount Dundee—"Bloody Clavers" or "Bonnie Dundee" depending on your political preferences—to her strange death, killed by a collapsing inn roof in Utrecht, and her stranger exhumation a hundred years later.

A bracing tonic for anyone slogging through the Outlander—or Waverley—version of the Jacobite rebellions, Jacob's 1911 novel is beautiful, painful, and utterly unromantic (even though the deep attraction felt between the two main male characters is the driving force of much of the plot). It throws into sharp relief the ambiguities of civil war and the ways in which personal background, inclination, and affection play more of a role than principle ever could in determining an individual's place in such a conflict. Each year, my students are continually surprised by how much they enjoy it.