55 Books Like The Last Wilderness

The author and her husband are pioneers of one of the best-known rewilding schemes in Britain at their estate at Knepp in West Sussex. They began a quarter century ago, after financial losses from conventional farming of their heavy clay soils, with its reliance on expensive oil-derived inputs, became unsustainable.

She describes rewilding as restoration by letting go, although with the help of grazing animals such as pigs, ponies, and longhorn cattle. The book is a rich evocation of a landscape evolving as a remarkable array of wild species flourish. It is also a valuable record of the debates about rewilding. In 2023, it was made into a documentary film. 

Islands of Abandonment shares extraordinary examples of nature’s ability to reclaim – and restore – land abused by humans.

In startling vignettes, the author visits numerous abandoned sites, uninhabited by humans for different reasons: from Chernobyl to a no man's land on the island of Cyprus, to factories simply rendered obsolete leaving the surrounding neighborhoods blighted, dangerous and often empty.

I found this book to be, if not hopeful, then cautiously optimistic in its affirmation of nature’s resilience, even in the wake of massive destruction. Cal Flyn’s writing is enviably good: keenly observant, capturing intimate details about these landscapes and the non-human beings who inhabit them in vivid detail.

Unforgettable and illuminating. This is nature writing and investigative journalism at its best.

In this short and exquisitely beautiful book, the author takes us on his wanderings around a river in West Wales not far from his home: journeys in places no longer deemed important in the modern world, reclaimed by nature. They’re intimate, small, meditative walks into hidden and overgrown landscapes: an island of tangled, quiet beauty where he can contemplate his surroundings; a ruined cottage made of stone and wood that will eventually crumble back into the ground, and the objects that he finds abandoned, full of imagined meaning. Its poetic words are joyful without being strained, ‘a hymn to those liminal, fluvial places where one glimpses with astonishment the secret, unfolding moments of an enchanted universe’.

There’s been a proliferation of books in the last decade about wild and abandoned Scottish islands abundant in puffins and seals, but I have an affection for this, originally published twenty years ago, as it was the first I read and nudged me towards exploring the theme at the opposite extreme edge of Europe. Nicolson actually inherited the Shiant islands in the Hebrides who had bought them, so it’s no wonder he had them to himself, but he also was inspired by that connection and made it his serious mission to explore their nature and history, and uncovered in detail the haunting past of these abandoned islands. 

This is another chiller thriller, set in a remote hotel in the Scottish Highlands. (Note to self: only holiday in Scotland in the summer!)

The hotel is closed to guests, and Rennie Yorke is working what should be her final shift when a storm blows in and seals off her exit. But she’s not alone for long – an injured man arrives at the door, claiming to be a police officer who was transporting a dangerous prisoner when his car crashed, and the prisoner escaped. Rennie lets him in – but shortly afterward another man arrives, making the same claim.

It’s a brilliant hook, and I was completely immersed in trying to work out who was telling the truth and who was lying. 

Another alien novel, but one of the strangest and most profound I’ve read. Isserly drives around in her van in the wilds of Scotland, picking up hitchhikers. But she is no ordinary woman; in fact, she isn’t human at all, but a modified alien tasked with finding humans to be turned into fast food for an alien world.

It is a darkly ironic, strange, and disturbing novel that asks questions about how we treat animals, cleverly reversing its language to refer to humans as aliens and aliens as humans. It felt to me that this book was able to touch on many of the evils of capitalism, not just mass farming but also the treatment of women and women’s bodies. But it doesn’t do this in an obvious way.

It’s an alien novel that’s low on overt science fiction; it’s gritty and real, emotional and lonely. I wasn’t the same… show more.

One night, a gaunt woman stumbles into the road in front of Lauren and her father. They take her home, but the next day she is gone, and only Lauren can remember she was ever there. 

The best supernatural horror works because it reflects the terrors of real life. Francine Toon’s Pine is the story of Lauren, a young girl growing up in rural Scotland with an alcoholic father and only the memory of a mother who disappeared when she was a child.

And while the supernatural is always present, it is the isolation and actions of the living that create true horror. 

Who can resist a three-book series set in the Scottish Highlands? Travers does not disappoint we lovers of all things Scottish.

She sets this book in Edinburgh, 1911. The main character does something uncommon for women to do at that time—she takes a family inheritance and opens a detective agency. She also brings along Daisy, her lady’s maid.

When their first case leads them into the Highland society, the Duchess of Duddington employs them to ferret out a jewel thief. They go undercover to hunt for the thief, but soon realize they are hunting for a killer. This book blended the political and cultural reality of the day, but did it seamlessly.

I learned a few things while following Maud and Daisy around that fancy house in the Highlands. 

I adored the premise of this novel so much—a wee Scottish cafe needs a volunteer to come run it? Yes, please.

The setting was utterly delightful, and I just love a small town full of colorful characters. It made me want to travel back to Scotland as soon as possible.

When Ishabel Stewart’s life falls apart she returns to the tiny island off the west coast of Scotland to recover only she doesn’t plan on meeting Brodie, a sexy American who turns her world upside down. This is a fun book with quirky secondary characters, lots of romance, and laughter. I could hear the beautiful accent as I read and see the stunning setting of the western isles.