The Bookseller of Inverness: a gripping historical thriller from the double prizewinning author

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She has written four highly acclaimed historical thrillers set in Scotland, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton (shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger), A Game of Sorrows , Crucible of Secrets and The Devil's Recruit , and a series of historical thrillers set in Oliver Cromwell's London.

And I think I wanted more of the bookseller and less of the conspiracy which is idiotic of me, because that's another book. And any World’s Fair is a great choice for time travel – personally I think I’d go for the Great Exhibition though.Nice to see you back after your time-travelling adventures in hibernation and your long walk home from Alaska! The Bookseller of Inverness, a story of revenge and murder set in the Highlands in 1752, was a long time coming. It soon becomes clear that someone is seeking revenge against people who betrayed the Jacobite cause in the earlier rising, in 1715.

Culloden, and its aftermath are very much part of the Highland consciousness, and for me, to embark on a novel around them was to go where angels fear to tread. The Chicago World Fair has been on my time machine list ever since I read The Devil and the White City a few years ago. I enjoyed this one too, although I do wish more authors would focus on other periods of Scottish history apart from the Jacobites. I did read Alexander Seaton a few years ago, and although I don’t really remember much about the story now, I know I enjoyed it at the time.

I enjoy historical fiction and seeing the Bookseller of Inverness thought I would try Scottish History. He looks for a missing book of forbidden names bought as part of the book collection owned by the Old Fox, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, that appears to hold the answer as to why certain people are being found dead. But Jacobite hopes are still simmering, and those loyal to the cause constantly await word from France where Prince Charlie and his father live in exile, ready to raise the clans and fight again. What is to follow is a fantastic and intriguing 18th Century story about loyalty and betrayal, honour and cowardice between clans versus clans, where self-preservation for family and betrayal towards close friends are common, and retributions against traitors are necessary in certain situations, and all this in a bid to survive a time of turmoil and gruesome death during the Jacobite risings, and the subsequent brutal quelling of these risings by the Duke of Cumberland. The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter.

I enjoyed reading descriptions of the surrounding countryside, where I have family connections, and there is an increasing air of tension as old resentments surface and revenge is enacted. The latter stages of the book take on aspects of the thriller, and again MacLean handles this very well.She also incorporates some subplots that touch on wider topics such as the slave trade and indentured servitude. I had previously read the first in the Seeker series, and found it frankly dull and populated by cardboard characters.

Edinburgh-based Charco Press, founded by Samuel McDowell and Carolina Orloff, aims to change the current literary scene to make room for a kind of literature that has been overlooked’ and ‘expose the UK reader to new and exciting voices. Set in Scotland in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising, the ‘bookseller’ of the title is Iain MacGillivray, a survivor of the Battle of Culloden.The story woven around the historic facts is interesting, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable and leaves me hoping for more. He feigns death but then we meet him again several years later, now working as a bookseller of Inverness. Traumatised and scarred, his face brutally slashed, he makes it out alive with the Redcoats patrolling the corpses of his Jacobite comrades by feigning death. Yes, the Jacobites get a bit wearing after a while, but I enjoyed this one more than her Seeker series which is set in Cromwell’s England, and for some reason just didn’t work for me at all.