Books like The Poems of Robert Henryson

This is the only ‘whodunnit’ on my list, but it’s so much more. (As are all the best ‘whodunnits’.)

For a start, it’s told from four different points of view. My own books use the early history of the Royal Society, its science, and various of its actual ‘Fellows,’ and this book was undeniably an influence. Pears details the politics and religious turmoil of the time and the excitement of new scientific discoveries.

The mid-17th century’s rigid social structure and manners are shown starkly, as is the misogyny. I found it dark, layered, and although complex, it’s immediately engaging. A very satisfying book indeed!

This is one novel that I can truly say kept me up all night until I’d finished all 548 pages, despite a headache and sore eyes!

A thrilling tale of deception, betrayal, and ingenuity by one of my all-time favourite writers, Fingersmith tells the story of two women from very different social classes. One is a young thief, the other from an aristocratic family, a secretary to her corrupt uncle.

In the course of the novel, their intertwined history is exposed, along with the conspiracy to steal Maud’s fortune. There are vivid, Dickensian scenes of Victorian London and Gothic elements to the romance, but I especially admire the multiple, breathtaking plot twists. I wish I’d written it!

A Thousand Notable Things was first published in 1579, coincidently the year in which my first Hew Cullan story is set. A miscellany of marvels, magic, myths and medicine, ‘facts’ and household tips designed to entertain rather than instruct, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the sixteenth-century mindset to be taken, like its remedies, with a pinch of salt. Where else can you find, in the space of a heartbeat, that robins will cover dead faces with moss; that a married man made impotent by witchcraft should ‘make water’ through his wedding ring to remove the spell; or that basil causes scorpions to breed inside the brain? "Take heed therefore ye smellers of basil." A thousand times diverting. "This is proved and true."

I first read They Were Defeated over thirty years ago, and recently reread to see if it had the power to move me still today. It does. Set in 1641, in Devonshire and Cambridge at the very brink of the Civil War, it reads like a love letter to a lost world, where the poets and Platonists are illuminated in already fading light, beautifully and tenderly observed. Rose Macaulay wrote that she had done her best "to make no person in this work use in conversation any word, phrase or idiom" not used at the time. "Ghosts of words," she calls them, after Thomas Browne. An astonishing feat in the pre-digital age. Yet the language of her ghosts is clear and true and natural. And the still moment, at the very heart of her heart-breaking story, transcends the factions that surround it and stays fixed for all time. This is… show more.

I want to reveal to people the superb achievement of the medieval Scots Makars who produced arguably the greatest poetry anywhere in Europe or Britain between roughly 1450 to 1550. John Barbour, William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay are the greatest of them but there are more excellent exponents of Scots in this, one of its golden ages, and they are all represented here. I quote many of them in my book.

When I moved to Scotland for my postgrad year studying writing at the University of Edinburgh, the apartment I rented had one book in it – this collection of short stories, set in the same city.

I was pretty sure Trainspotting was the best novel I’d ever read, but I wasn’t aware of this collection of three works of Irvine Welsh’s short fiction. My first night in the apartment, I sat on the one chair and read the one book. And what a buzz!

I loved the mix of grittiness, euphoria, and dark-as-night humour. The focus on club drugs was more relatable than the heroin culture of Trainspotting (although to my delight, Spud Murphy makes a cameo appearance – twice!). 

There are 25 (!) books in the Rebus series by Scottish writer Ian Rankin, which is really great news for everyone because they are all really good. Each book can be read as a stand-alone as well, so don’t be daunted. This one is one of my favorites because it has a cool twist and it’s very moody.

Inspector John Rebus, who is (as many mystery protagonists are) a gifted detective who doesn’t always play by the rules, has been sent a way to a kind of Scottish re-training course for senior offices who have been bad. The dialogue is very good here, not to mention the many gritty descriptions of Edinburgh. 

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 of my all-time favourites I’ve read this book 3 times now and, after this review, I’m sure I’ll be tempted to indulge myself for a fourth time. Follett is the master of knife-edge thrillers, if you’ve never read him, start now. Full of treachery and violence, twists and revelations. It’s a scary, but utterly brilliant read.

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.