Bear with us, there’s a LOT to add! We’re also awaiting the outcome of a validated appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner after Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE) withheld key applications and assessments or fully/partially redacted them. Publishers should be funded on merit, not because public agencies are prepared to mis-score their funding applications or…

Birlinn pocketed up to £43k EXCESS profit for the Muriel Spark Centenary project fronted by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister. Fiona Hyslop MSP, who was Cabinet Secretary at the time, has refused to recover the public funds lost as a result of SBT’s deception. Scotland’s charity regulator, Scottish Government-funded OSCR, has also refused to act…

Regulars will know that we have challenged Creative Scotland (CS) over its funding of unviable private company Sandstone Press. Sandstone is CS’s most-funded publisher. CS, and its predecessor SAC, have subsidised it annually since 2006. Together they have added £0.41m to Sandstone’s balance sheet, only for Sandstone to lose £0.34m of that. CS gave Sandstone…

Does the IBBY article by Creative Scotland’s Head of Literature, Publishing & Languages, Mairi Kidd, herald long-overdue change from Creative Scotland? We have asked several times to see Creative Scotland’s priorities for Scotland’s publishing sector and have been referred to its 10-year plan each time. The plan is high level. It does not set out…

Is history’s most outrageous serial killer on the loose? Gordon Brown’s new Craig McIntyre thriller, Highest Lives, is published TODAY. Craig is used to being hunted. Now he’s the hunter… Darkest Thoughts, Furthest Reaches, Deepest Wounds…Highest Lives.

Top conspiracy-thriller novelist Gordon Brown, author of the Craig McIntyre series, is off on tour with his latest book, Deepest Wounds. And already it is garnering rave reviews. Gordon’s namesake, the former PM, might appreciate that there’s a little bit of politics (as Ben Elton used to say) in the Craig McIntyre novels. The underhand sort.…

Margaret Collyer (1872-1945) is renowned as a London Royal Academy of Art-trained artist – her paintings can be found around the world and include the acclaimed The Lord of the Isles. Her artistic output, however, masks that hers was a life lived in two halves. And that lesser-known half is now drawing a lot of…

Linda Strachan has tackled them all. Speed in Spider. Blades in Dead Boy Talking. Fire in Don’t Judge Me. Novels centred around issues can be tricky – there’s a danger they will come across as preachy. But readers of these 3 can rest easy on that score in the expert hands of a Catalyst Book…

…as Cat Stevens wrote* and Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow and others sang. Craig McIntyre’s cuts are deep. They run to the core of his being, and the scars are showing few signs of healing. Deep. Deeper. Deepest. Others seem to understand him better than he understands himself. And they see a use for him when…

We’ve been captivated by Sunny, the gripping new novel from Paul Murdoch. So have his school and library audiences. It’s kicking up a storm of enthusiastic supporters. Sunny is like a cross between Frank Cottrell Boyce’s novel/Danny Boyle’s film Millions and Theresa Breslin’s exploration of sectarianism Divided City. It’s a page-turning thriller with a mystery…

Don’t Judge Me author Linda Strachan will be hosting this year’s Grampian Book Awards on Wednesday. And a fab host she’ll be too. Good luck to all those on the shortlist. Most of all, have fun everyone!

We’ve been rattling up several catalogues. Here’s just one.