Item category 1: Read Past/Discover Future

Few landscapes in the British Isles are as iconic as the islands that lie off the north-western Scottish coast. Over a period of six years, Madeleine Bunting returned again and again to the Hebrides, exploring their landscapes, histories and magnetic pull. With great sensitivity and perceptivenes...

In a fast-paced narrative spiced with genuine wit, this novel describes the billionaires' banquet going on around us daily in contemporary Britain - who feasts and who pays the bill. Intriguing, disturbing and hugely entertaining, 'Billionaires' Banquet' is an immorality tale for the 21st century.

Just as 'The Magicians of Edinburgh' themes ranged from Sir Walter Scott to the new Parliament, from Greyfriar's Bobby to the trams, the themes of the collection include Scotland's past, present and future, its landscape and people, its myths and politics - from Bannockburn, Flodden to Faslane, t...

Far away on the planet Meta, Loma's going nowhere fast. She's dropped out of school, dumped her boyfriend and is bored out of her mind. She longs to feel things. That's where her idol, the lunatic poet Rac Shade, and his infamous madness coat come in. Loma steals the garment and makes a break acr...

One of the greatest post-apocalyptic novels ever written, 'The Death of Grass' shows the disintegration of the familiar world - and the terrible price of survival.

In this book the remarkable story of how ancient North Britain became the medieval kingdom of Scotland is told.

Ann Cleeves' series of crime novels, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, and now also adapted for a major BBC television series, draw their inspiration from the place in which they take place: Shetland. An archipelago of more than a hundred islands, it is the one of the most remote places in the Uni...

Henrietta Tayler served throughout the First World War as a Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachement nurse, putting herself in danger to help wounded soldiers on both sides of the conflict, refugee children and adults. She did this as she did everything with bravery, widsom and good humour.

As an antidote to more sober accounts of Scotland's history, Ian Crofton offers a colourful chronology of the eccentric, the infamous, the bawdy, the horrific and the hilarious people and events that have spattered across the pages of our nation's history.