The Bookseller of Inverness: an absolutely gripping historical thriller from prizewinning author of the Seeker series

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It is where Iain MacGillivray is left for dead on Drumossie Moor, next to the dead body of his beloved cousin, Laclan. The backdrop is a brilliantly portrayed insight into the aftermath of Culloden and the impact of defeat on the Highland Jacobites, full of stories of cruelty, courage and conflict. As I wrote the book, I could not shake off the consciousness of my father’s generation of native Highlanders whose lives had been blighted by having to go through a war of their own. This is a difficult and complex period of British history and yet it evoked the post Culloden Inverness and its inhabitants so clearly that I became totally engrossed. If you have ever wanted to go back in time to a dangerous yet captivating period of history, this is the book for you.

I enjoy historical fiction and seeing the Bookseller of Inverness thought I would try Scottish History. My knowledge of the conflict between Stuart and Hanover supporters, especially from the point of view of the Scottish Highlanders, is limited, but the author created a believable, detailed and fascinating world. I wasn’t at all familiar with London, I’d hardly ever been there, I didn’t know the layout, the topography, there was a huge amount of work to be done. The novel explores the impact of the Jacobite rebellions upon three different generations of highlander families, as well as, provides a tightly plotted adventurous mystery.HNS Awards have helped discover and launch the author careers of Michel Faber, Ruth Downie, Hilary Green, Martin Sutton, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Nikki Marmery, Margaret Skea, Warwick Cairns, Katherine Mezzacappa and Elizabeth Macneal.

She takes the Jacobite side, as is de rigueur in modern Scotland – a bit like the Spanish Civil War, this period of history has been written mostly by the losers, and we all now like to pretend we’d have been Jacobites for the romance of it, however ahistorical that might be.With ‘The Bookseller of Inverness’ proving such a positive experience, I definitely will be reading more of MacLean’s novels.

Shona MacLean, author of two well-received historical series, adopts initials for her latest sortie into historical crime fiction.S.G MacLean writing paints to life the story in front of you and does an exceptional job with weaving facts and fiction together creating a truly memorable story. Come the summer of 2020 however, conversations with my editor and others suggested that such an uncertain time was really not the right one to make such a significant shift of period or genre.

Many were put onto prison ships to be taken to England for trial and execution, or transported to indentured servitude in North America or the Caribbean. The books had taken me to London, Oxford, York and Bruges, all places I had had very little knowledge of beforehand. Places seem to retain a lot of the spirit of what happened, who lived there, you can’t shake it off. I didn't enjoy this quite so much as MacLean's Civil War sequence, simply because I never fell in love with the Stewarts, even as a child.A fabulous read from this author , quite history laden but that was right up my street , and the storyline brought it alive for me . Most of the characters in the book are fictional, although many of them, as I discovered from the author’s note, are based on the lives and experiences of real people.