How Nicola Sturgeon’s publisher was repeatedly rescued by Creative Scotland & Highlands & Islands Enterprise, enabling the unviable company to lose £0.5m public money yet still publish her speeches using cash derived from public bodies while HIE’s £0.175m loan has not been repaid The fact that unviable Sandstone Press is using money derived from public…
Scottish Book Trust negotiated a significantly worse deal than it claimed to ScotGov and Postcode Culture Trust. As a result, publisher Birlinn – SBT’s CEO’s business partner – pocketed £131k funding, and up to £43k EXCESS profit, for a Muriel Spark Centenary project announced by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister. ScotGov and Creative Scotland –…
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…
In a case set to shake up Scotland’s commercial trade book publishing market, Strident has filed a damages claim against Scotland’s main arts funder, Creative Scotland (CS), accusing it of breaching the Competition Act 1998 (CA98) by abusing its dominant position. The claim before the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) alleges that CS has breached the…
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.
We’re excited and delighted to announce that we’ll be publishing Kirkland Ciccone’s 4th Young Adult novel next year. Hoorah! It’s titled Glowglass, and although it’s not out until May, a few lucky people will get a sneak preview. (More about that in the coming weeks.) There’s lots about all of Kirkland’s books over on his…
We’re absolutely delighted that Gordon Brown‘s conspiracy thriller Darkest Thoughts – book 1 in the Craig McIntyre series – has been hailed by The Reading Agency as one of its Books Of The Year for 2017. Brilliant novel, brilliant author; the perfect combo. It’s up there with the likes of novels by Robert Harris and…
Paul Murdoch is the author of Windscape and The Egg Thief (Jenny & Pavel Adventures) and fantasy series The Peck Chronicles – Talisman, Citadel and Tyrant. (He’s a busy guy!) Paul touches on environmental and ecological issues in Windscape and The Egg Thief in particular. He’s especially careful to explore different sides of debates through…
It’s 10 years since D A Nelson‘s DarkIsle was first published. And 9 years since it won the Scottish Children’s Book Awards. It’s much-loved for its humour and sense of adventure. No wonder so many schools choose it for novel study. The dragon in the story is called Shona. The inspiration for her was this magnificent…
We see this as a relay – complete with dystopian baton-passing – more than as a straight race. After all, Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale came many years before Gillian Phillip‘s Bad Faith; and 1984 well before both. The theocratic premises are similar. In Bad Faith, there is a Putinesque collusion between the political leader and the One…
Gordon Brown’s stylish Craig McIntyre road-trip thriller rips along. It combines intrigue, action, sparky dialogue and the alarmingly possible. And that ‘alarmingly possible’ verges on probable given the twists and turns in American politics over the last few months. So we thought you might like a taster. Here’s the prologue + chapter 1. Enjoy. (Note that it’s a…
When Kath Anderson, a Scot, moved to Boston to study, she came across free-fitness movement November Project™. It started in Boston, USA as a way of some friends keeping fit during the winter months. Soon it spread, and now it can be found in cities throughout America. More recently, it’s reached Europe. Kath went along to…
Why ‘Revolution(s)’? Because what we call the Russian Revolution was really 2 revolutions: one first short-lived, the second the Bolsheviks coming to power. BBC TV’s Newsnight ran a feature on the Russian Revolution (we’ll stick with the singular now!) on 20 Feb 2017. So we thought we’d join in and provide you with this extract…
We’re thrilled to announce the forthcoming publication of A Rainbow In The Basement, a magical novel by former H2O singer Ian Donaldson. We think you’re going to be blown away by this one. It’s a novel about a lot – our lot. It’s about life & death, love & loss, hope & despair, belief &…
A sneak preview of the spines and rear covers for Gordon Brown’s blistering Craig McIntyre thriller series. What colour is your world?
Thriller-writer Gordon Brown (not the former PM) will be previewing his new McIntyre novel Deepest Wounds on 21 Feb in Aberdeen. The joint event with Quentin Bates will be part of the Granite Noir Book Festival. Click here for event details and tickets. Deepest Wounds is an explosive novel with sinister undertones. It’s fiction, but…
For some reason these scenes didn’t make the final edit for the BBC’s Planet Earth II. No idea why. Perhaps they’re saving them for the director’s cut?
Genesis and Phil Collins have been in the news and on TV screens these last few nights. Just for fun we’ve looked at which of our book titles relate to Genesis songs. (We haven’t stretched to Phil Collins songs yet.) One is fairly obvious. The other link is more tenuous and, as it doesn’t relate…
Great in-depth interview with author Theresa Talbot about penning her sociological crime novel Penance. Gives a real insight into her lead character Oonagh O’Neil, along with very useful advice for aspiring authors. Our favourite line (talking about trying to find an agent/publisher): ‘You can be the best peach in the box… Some people just don’t…
Although it LOOKS quite Christmassy (unless you’re in Scotland, in which case snow can mean it’s Winter, Spring or Autumn…), this gem from Emma Barnes is actually an all-year-round story. It won the Fantastic Book Awards. And rightly so. It’s insightful (especially about adults) and heart-warming. Adults: beware of lumps forming in your throats if you’re reading…
PRESS RELEASE For immediate release Strident to carry Neetah Books list Independent Scottish publisher Neetah Books is partnering with fellow independent Strident Publishing as it launches its list. Neetah specialises in books by well-known Scots. Its first was Habbie to Jeely-Eater, the humorous and poignant autobiography of Alexandria-based minister Ian Miller, known, amongst other…
Good news if you, or someone you know, is a Robertson, or a descendent of one. The Robertsons: Clan Donnachaidh in Atholl has just come back into print. It’s a meticulously researched history of the clan written by its current chief, James Irvine Robertson. The clan includes Duncans and Reids in addition to Robertsons. You…