Stunning new novel from Scots author: 10 books to read right now

Set in the near future, Gliff is Smith’s riff on the world’s current ails. “It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world,” runs the blurb, before asking: “What would that actually be like?”

Smith’s novels are sui generis, consistently challenging readers to think or imagine more clearly. Few writers engage so deeply with today’s political ferment while managing to elevate our problems into a philosophical and sometimes playful sphere.

(Image: Hamish Hamilton)

Columba’s Bones
David Greig
Polygon, £10

Part of Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, in which Scottish history is rewritten, Greig’s debut novel promises the same unflinching clarity as his plays. In a brutal Viking raid on Iona Abbey in 825, Abbot Blathmac is killed for not revealing the whereabouts of St Columba’s bones. Thwarted, the Vikings depart, leaving one behind, who cannot swim, has no sword, and must negotiate his way out of trouble. Nor can he leave until he has discovered where the relics are hidden. The scene is set for an engrossing drama of Christian versus pagan, encompassing the nature of love, shame and honour.   

(Image: Polygon) Edinburgh: A New History
Alistair Moffat
Birlinn, £14.99

Marking Edinburgh’s 900th anniversary, Moffat’s colourful and concise history of the capital covers the best part of a millennium with a light, readable touch. Starting with the geological forces that shaped the landscape on which castle and city would later be built, Moffat shows Edinburgh’s evolution from the time of Romans and Celtic tribes, through centuries of religious, political and intellectual tumult, industrialisation and the age of festivals and mass tourism. Bringing the tale up to the present, he describes Edinburgh as “the most beautiful city in the world”. As this book shows, it is also among the most interesting.

(Image: Birlinn)

That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz
Malachy Tallack
Canongate, £18.99

John Burnside described Malachy Tallack as “the real deal”. A writer of travel and nature books as well as fiction, Tallack’s second novel, like his first, is set in Shetland, a place at the mercy of the Atlantic weather.

That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz features a Shetland whaler in the 1950s and Jack, an old musician in our own times. A story of friendship, identity and music, it is accompanied by an album of songs, performed by the author. 

(Image: Canongate)

The Unknown Warrior
John Nichol
Simon & Schuster, £22

An RAF veteran, taken prisoner-of-war when his plane was shot down during the Gulf War, John Nichol understands what it’s like on the front line. Here, he explores the story of the Unknown Warrior, whose tomb in Westminster Abbey stands as a memorial for all those soldiers who fell in action but whose bodies were never found. This is a deeply moving book, as Nichol digs into the archives and speaks to the families of combatants who died in war, as far back as the First World War and as recently as Iraq and Afghanistan.

(Image: Simon & Schuster) Powsels and Thrums: A Tapestry of a Creative Life
Alan Garner
4th Estate, £14.99

This memoir comprises essays, poems and stories in which Alan Garner, author of the children’s classics The Owl Service and Red Shift, reflects on his writing career. It recounts a long, original life, beginning with his working-class Cheshire childhood and his purchase of a medieval cottage in Blackden that features in Treacle Walker. To his surprise, that novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.

(Image: 4th Estate)

Nobody’s Empire
Stuart Murdoch
Faber & Faber, £20

The debut novel from the frontman of Belle & Sebastian, Nobody’s Empire is set in early 1990s Glasgow. Stephen, a musician with severe chronic fatigue syndrome, moves to California with a friend in the hope of making a new life by writing songs.

(Image: Faber & Faber)

She Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street
Paulina Bren
John Murray, £20

This account of women trying to break into the ferociously macho world of Wall Street shows how hard they had to struggle. Historian Paulina Bren describes how, between the 1960s and 9/11, a select band, from typists and secretaries to business school graduates, joined the wolf pack: “The female pioneers of Wall Street…pushed into uncharted territory not knowing what awaited them there other than men, lots of men, few of whom were going to roll out a welcome mat”.

It wasn’t easy then, and it remains difficult today.

(Image: John Murray)

Money
David McWilliams
Simon & Schuster, £25

McWilliams is an economist, formerly with the Central Bank of Ireland, whose mission is to explain how money works. In this lively account of the origins of money – millennia ago – and its evolution to the present day, he takes what sounds like a dull subject and turns it into an epic human drama.

By way of ancient Africa, the Roman Empire, revolutionary France and America, and two world wars, he brings the story of how money changes people and society to the era of bitcoin and beyond. With a knack for catching the attention, McWilliams also questions the orthodoxy by which most economists work. This might not endear him to his fraternity, but for the rest of us it is an eye-opener.  

(Image: ​Simon & Schuster)

A carefully curated selection of the Nobel Laureate’s correspondence with friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. Culled from half a century’s archive, this compendium offers a glimpse of the poet in public and private mode. On this evidence, even dashed-off letters had a lyrical, mythological edge:  “Every now and again I need to get down here, to get into the Diogenes tub, as it were, or the Colmcille beehive hut, or the Mossbawn scullery. At any rate, a hedge surrounds me, the blackbird calls, the soul settles for an hour or two…”  Who could resist reading on, especially now it is available in paperback.

(Image: Faber & Faber)