The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey
Win 1 of 3 copies of Hangman’s Gap by Rachel Amphlett – QUEENSLAND, Australia
Five Great Twisty Thrillers set on remote SCOTTISH ISLANDS
16th March 2025
Five Great Twisty Thrillers set on remote SCOTTISH ISLANDS.
Scotland provides a verdant backdrop to a good thriller and a remote island increases the frisson of anticipation. Here we have brought together five great twisty thrillers – sometimes with a spool of Gothic – to transport you a faraway, and sometimes hostile land, populated by unique characters, all at the mercy of the winds and the rain. There is a storm brewing…..
The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
When a small bone at the centre of a famous sculpture is revealed to be human, three people become intimately connected by the secrets and lies that put it there.
Set on a Scottish tidal island connected to the mainland for just a few hours each day, and home to only one inhabitant, The Blue Hour asks questions of ambition, power, art and perception.
Isolation Island by Louise Minchin
IT’S A PRIZE ANYONE WOULD KILL TO WIN…
Ten celebrities have arrived to take part in the most gruelling – and lucrative – reality survival show ever devised: two weeks completely alone on a remote Scottish island, in the depths of winter.
With a production team that seems incapable of keeping them safe, a gathering storm and the unrelenting gaze of hidden cameras, the contestants are stretched to the limit as they try and outshine their fellow competitors and hide their darkest secrets.
But when a contestant winds up dead, it soon becomes clear that the players are not just fighting for the prize, but for their lives.
Small Fires by Ronnie Turner
Evil runs through this cursed island
And these wicked sisters are about to make it burn…
When sisters Lily and Della Pedley are persecuted for the shocking murder of their parents, they flee from their home in Cornwall to a remote and unnamed island in Scotland – an island known for its strange happenings, but far away from the whispers and prying eyes of strangers.
Lily is terrified of what her sister will might do next, and she soon realises that they have arrived at a place where nothing is as it seems. A bitterness runs through the land like poison, and the stories told by the islanders seem to be far more than folklore.
Della settles in too easily, the island folk drawn to her strangeness, but Lily is plagued by odd and unsettling dreams, and as an annual festival draws nigh, she discovers that she has far more to fear than she could ever have imagined. Or does she…?
Chilling, atmospheric and utterly hypnotic, Small Fires is a contemporary gothic novel that examines possession, generational trauma, female rage, and the perilous bonds of family – an unsettling reminder that the stories we tell can be deadly…
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
Grady calls his wife as she’s driving home to share some exciting news. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by a cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there . . . but his wife has disappeared.
A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.
Wives think their husbands will change, but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change, but they do.
The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
Alone in the world, Elspeth Swansome takes the position of nanny to a family on the remote Scottish island of Skelthsea.
Her charge, Mary, hasn’t uttered a word since the sudden death of her twin, William – just days after their former nanny disappeared.
No one will speak of what happened to William. Just as no one can explain the hypnotic lullabies sung in empty corridors. Nor the strange dolls that appear in abandoned rooms. Nor the faint whistling that comes in the night . . .
As winter draws in and passage to the mainland becomes impossible, Elspeth finds herself trapped.
But is this house haunted by the ghosts of the past?
OR THE SECRETS OF THE LIVING . . . ?
BONUS BOOK
The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey
A gripping and atmospheric debut crime thriller set on an isolated Scottish island…
A mysterious death
On a small island off the coast of Scotland, an isolated community is grieving. Eighteen-year-old Alan Ferguson was found at the foot of the lighthouse – an apparent suicide.
Two detectives trapped on an island
DIs Georgina Lennox and Richard Stewart are sent to investigate. But a raging storm keeps them trapped on the island for four days. And the locals don’t take kindly to mainlanders.
A village full of suspects
As George and Ritchie question the island’s inhabitants, they discover a village filled with superstition and shrouded in secrets.
But someone wants those secrets to stay buried. At any cost.
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016
The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.
Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. ‘His Bloody Project’ is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.
If you can think of any further titles to add, to share your thought in the comments.
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So pleased to see The Wolf Tree on your list. It’s a terrific debut, gripping, atmospheric and deliciously creepy.
1 Comment
Thank you. It’s hard to choose from so many books