Scotland Mystery

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries's polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done. When the general office manager of Sutcliffe Manufacturing is murdered, no one is really surprised. Ronald Dearman was anything but a dear man. The tyrannical bully had more than enough enemies to go around.

Sir George Braxton was found lying face down in a frozen fountain with the back of his skull bashed to bits. The case is complicated by a distinct lack of holiday cheer in the victim's three argumentative middle-aged daughters and their sullen house guests. Even the cranky cat hates everyone. To top it all off, the home secretary has called in Inspector Witherspoon over the heads of some touchy local lads, making matters stickier than a plum pudding. Only the help of his housekeeper, Mrs. Jeffries, will give the poor inspector any chance of sleeping on Christmas Eve....

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.

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.

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?

One bitterly cold February night at the remote MacKinnon Hotel, Remie Yorke begins her last shift at the front desk as the snow begins to fall. She has booked a one-way flight for the next day—and she's never coming back to Scotland. Or so she thinks. As the storm quickly invades the surrounding Highlands, the roads become impassable and the phone lines fall dead. When the icy temperatures plummet further, an injured man stumbles into the hotel lobby from the blizzard. Police Constable Don Gaines has been in a car accident on the mountain road, and Remie welcomes him to safety.

Lady Emily, husband Colin Hargreaves, and their three sons eagerly embark on a family vacation at Cairnfarn Castle, the Scottish estate of their dear friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge. But a high-spirited celebration at the beginning of their stay comes to a grisly end when the duke’s gamekeeper is found murdered on the banks of the loch. Handsome Angus Sinclair had a host of enemies: the fiancée he abandoned in Edinburgh, the young woman who had fallen hopelessly in love with him, and the rough farmer who saw him as a rival for her affections.

Cressida’s hopes for a relaxing journey are dashed when a gunshot resounds through the carriages. Industrial tycoon Lewis Warriner has been shot dead in his cabin. And as this train has been racing through the countryside, the culprit must be among Cressy’s fellow passengers. Teaming up with Detective Andrews of Scotland Yard, also on his way back to London, they work their way through the suspects. Did Warriner’s mistress, a famous dancer, see his death as her ticket on to the silver screen? Or was it the mysterious man who can’t take his eyes off Lewis’s close companion?

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.

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.

Many changes have happened to the Murder Squad. Rash actions have cost Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith his job, and in response he has set up his own private detective agency. Inspector Walter Day has been missing for a year, and no one knows where he is - though there is a strong suspicion that Saucy Jack has him. Hammersmith has made finding Day his primary case, and he has company - a pair of bounty hunters, a man and a woman.

It was a dream come true. Susan loved all things Scottish. So, when the opportunity presented itself, there was no question in her mind that she would go on the archaeological dig in the Highlands.

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.

The 30th gritty mystery in Quintin Jardine's bestselling Bob Skinner series, not to be missed by readers of Ian Rankin and Peter May. Former Chief Constable Bob Skinner may have left the police service, but he's never far from a case. When his old mentor on the force, Jimmy Proud, finds himself in a desperate situation, Skinner gets pulled into a murder investigation that's been closed for 30 years.

Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit her Aunt Cassandra, who waits on the platform at Oxford station where the train terminates, to greet them. Only they never arrive. All the passengers alight but the two women are nowhere to be seen. The train is searched and the coachman swears he saw them board onto first class, but they seem to have vanished into thin air. The Railway Detective must unravel the mystifying web of their disappearance before Imogen and Rhoda vanish into oblivion for good.

Scotland is a fascinating and ancient land filled with history. Not everything in Scotland is as it appears, however. Some Scots say this is a land haunted by spirits, a place of strange disappearances and unexplained phenomena. The Ghosts of Scotland: A Collection of Ghost Stories Across the Scottish Nation is a collection of such tales, just a few among the thousands of local legends and modern sightings that make Scotland one of the most haunted countries in the world.

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.

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.

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.

Scotland, 1949: Caroline Gillan and her new husband, Alasdair, have moved back to Kelly Castle, his dilapidated family estate in the middle of nowhere. Stuck caring for their tiny baby, and trying to find her way with an opinionated mother-in-law, Caroline feels adrift, alone, and unwelcome. But when she is tasked with sorting out the family archives, Caroline discovers a century-old mystery that sparks her back to life.