Scotland Mystery

When Amy MacKenzie agrees to attend a meeting at a local spiritualist church, the last person she expects to hear calling to her from beyond the grave is her son. The son whom she'd only spoken to an hour before. Then the body of a young man is found inside a Neolithic stone circle high above the city of Glasgow and forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is soon on the case. The hands have been severed and there is a stone in the victim's mouth with the number five scratched on it. DI Michael McNab is certain it's a gangland murder, but Rhona isn't convinced.

Meanwhile, Gillan McArdle’s academic career is ending because of one stupid lapse of judgement. Offered a short-term contract, he lands on the Hebridean island of Harris to investigate obscure animal bones. Quickly dismissing the unicorn skull as a thinly disguised fake, he can’t deny there’s something unusual about these bones. Baited by rumors of a majestic tusked horse roaming the uplands, Gill begins to suspect someone is manipulating him. As he gradually unravels the mystery of the skull, he grasps a disturbing conclusion: If this creature does exist, the evidence suggests it’s a killer.

Scotland, 1296. The winds of rebellion are blowing. The wars of independence for Scotland are on the brink of changing the history of Great Britain. Under assault from King Edward I, the besieged city of Berwick-upon-Tweed is delivered into the hands of the English, who massacre and burn everything in their path. Aileas and Fillan, 16-year-old orphan twins, get separated on that horrific night. Aileas is carried away and disappears while Fillan manages to join forces with a Scottish clan fleeing to the north, into the very heart of the Highlands.

When members of a prominent family disappear from a coal-mining village - and a human eyeball is discovered in a bird's nest - the local constable sends for help from Scotland Yard's new Murder Squad. Fresh off the grisly 1889 murders of The Yard, Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith respond, but they have no idea what they're about to get into. The villagers have intense, intertwined histories. Everybody bears a secret. Superstitions abound. And the village itself is slowly sinking into the mines beneath it.

Zwei Opfer, eine Tatwaffe, kein Motiv - das perfekte Verbrechen? Ein wolkenloser Sommertag, die Hitze drückt aufs Land. Im Zug von London nach York zielt ein Fremder mit einer Pistole auf eine Frau. Sie entkommt in letzter Sekunde. Zwei Tage später: Eine junge Frau stürzt mit ihrem Fahrrad, weil jemand einen dünnen Draht über den Weg gespannt hat. Sie ist sofort bewusstlos. Den folgenden Schuss hört sie schon nicht mehr.

When struggling ex-copper Terry Coats was discovered in bed with an air hostess, his excuse that he was 'going undercover' cut no ice with the force - or his wife. But now he's been brutally killed on Hogmanay night, it seems there may have been more to his plea. Dragged from the New Year celebrations, Special Constable Sir Bob Skinner is shocked to find Coats' body alongside that of Griff Montell: his erstwhile protégé and former lover of Skinner's own daughter, Alex. Could there be some dark truth under Coats' cock-and-bull story, after all?

Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser's has left five dead. Tempers are frayed, and sentiments running high. When three youths are charged, the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse, but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go. Detective Harry McCoy has 24 hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead.

When Edwin, Delaney's boss at the Cracked Spine bookstore, leaves town on secret business, Delaney is called upon to guide his yearly literary tour around Edinburgh. But on the first night of the tour, at the inn where the tour group is staying, the inn manager falls—or is pushed—off the roof of the inn, and killed. Then, one of the tour members disappears, leaving a trail of puzzles in his wake. In a race against the clock, Delaney sets out on the expedition of her life, following clues around Edinburgh to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Magazine editor and part-time archaeologist, Gill McArdle is getting it together. Or at least, he thinks he is, until the death of a friend throws his life into turmoil. He’s on Orkney, researching an elaborate stone carrying an ancient religious motif. But he’s perplexed as the carving long predates any previous incidence of the symbol’s first use. Either someone is tampering with Orcadian archaeology, or Gill is facing a puzzle that can’t be resolved.

Ex-priest DI Farrell is called on to investigate a gruesome death in rural Scotland. All evidence points to suicide, except for one loose end: every light in the cottage was switched off. Why would he kill himself in the dark? The question sparks a murder investigation that leads to the mysterious Ivy House, home of ‘The Collective’, a sinister commune of artists who will do anything to keep their twisted secrets hidden. And when the remains of a young girl are uncovered on a barren stretch of coastline, Farrell realises that there is something rotten in this tight-knit community.

Ex-priest DI Frank Farrell has returned to his roots in Dumfries, only to be landed with a disturbing murder case. Even worse, Farrell knows the victim: Father Boyd, the man who forced him out of the priesthood 18 years earlier. With no leads, Farrell must delve into the old priest’s past, one that is inexorably linked with his own. But his attention is diverted when a pair of twin boys go missing. The Dumfries police force recover one in an abandoned church, unharmed. But where is his brother?

After a stressful winter, DSI William Lorimer is enjoying some time away from Glasgow. He and his new friend, Daniel Kohi, have retreated to the wilds of the Scottish Highlands to unwind. But what awaits them is far from a holiday. Despite its troubled history, the mountain village of Glencoe is now a popular resort, famed for its close-knit community, its breath-taking scenery and the warm welcome it offers weary travellers. So it's particularly shocking when two bodies are discovered in quick succession on the nearby peaks.

Whether you believe in the supernatural elements or not, it is fascinating to see how the idea of ghosts happened, and how it developed over the ages. A ghost is the soul or spirit of a departed individual or animal who can appear to the living in folklore. Ghosts are defined in numerous ways in folklore, varying from an unnoticeable presence to clear or hardly noticeable wispy shapes to reasonable, realistic forms. They are said to haunt particular spots, products, or people with whom they once had a relationship. Let’s talk about this more in this fascinating book.

In Rebus's Scotland Ian Rankin uncovers the Scotland that the tourist never sees, highlighting the places that inspired the settings for the Inspector Rebus novels. Rankin also reveals the story of Rebus and how he came into being, who he is, and what his - and Rankin's - Scotland is like.

Spiritualism has captured the public’s imagination. Séances are all the rage, and Detective Ian Hamilton’s otherwise sensible aunt Lillian is not immune to their allure. But for Ian, indulging her superstitions has its limits. When members of Lillian’s circle of séance friends begin turning up dead, Ian doesn’t need a medium to tell him these aren’t freak accidents.

A wicked Scottish winter has just begun when pioneering female physician Sophia Jex-Blake calls on Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton to investigate the suspicious death of one of her patients - a railroad lineman who she believes succumbed to the horrific effects of arsenic poisoning. The most provocative aspect of the case doesn’t escape Hamilton: the married victim’s numerous sexual transgressions. Now, for the first time since the unexplained fire that killed his parents, Hamilton enters the Royal Infirmary to gain the insights of brilliant medical student Arthur Conan Doyle.

Left to her own devices, Detective Sergeant Charlie West struggles with the responsibility of a full-blown murder investigation when a man is pushed off a cliff. Not ready to have her apron strings severed so soon, West finds Munro who reluctantly agrees to shed light on the Ayrshire detectives' most challenging case yet. Once the police have discovered the identity of the dead man, and established his demise was the result of foul play, the race is on to hunt down the murderer.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard is a collection of short stories about Molly Robertson-Kirk, an early fictional female detective. First published in 1910, Orczy's female detective was the precursor of the lay sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn. As well as being one of the first novels to feature a female detective as the main character, Orczy's outstandingly successful and brilliant police officer preceded her real-life female counterparts by a decade.

Fourteenth-century Scotland suffers under the heel of England's King Edward, and James Douglas refuses to submit to the conqueror. As he wages a scorched-earth guerrilla war to drive out the invader and reclaim his birthright, Edward brings a vast army to crush the Scots. In the midst of the brutal war, even the woman James loves is threatened by his implacable duty.

James, Lord of Douglas, known to his foes as the Black Douglas, leads a flank of the Scottish army in crushing a vast invading English force at the waters of the Bannockburn. Fresh from battle, James revels in honors heaped on him by the Scots and in the hatred of the enemy. When King Robert the Bruce orders him to push their advantage and force the English to the peace table, they both know the only way James can do so is by fire and the sword - the only language King Edward of England understands.