The most recommended books about the Scottish Highlands

I’ve always had a fascination with the past. After graduating with an Honors degree in English Literature, with a minor in History, I spent years working as an English Language Teacher, while I wrote stories in my free time. Writing is a compulsion for me. It’s my escape and entertainment – my solace in tough times. Now, as a full-time author, I’m lucky enough to get to spend my days in Ancient and Medieval Scotland. I write the kind of stories I love to read: with vibrant characters, richly researched settings, and action-packed adventure romance that transports readers to forgotten times and imaginary worlds.

I am a retired history teacher with 36 years of teaching experience in high school and college. I am also a passionate world traveler and for over four decades led students on overseas tours.  In 2012 (the year I retired from teaching) I released my first novel, Widder’s Landing set in Kentucky in the early 1800s. One of my main characters came from a family of Irish Catholics—and he is featured in Rebels Abroad. Ireland has always fascinated me and in my nine trips to the country, I smelled the peat fires, tasted the whiskey, listened to the music and the lyrical tales told by the tour leaders—and came to love the people.

When I think of the distant past, I imagine it being populated by those who were a bit closer to the magical world than we. The men (or were they wizards?) who raised the standing stones. The druids of the ancient Celtic world. Figures like Arthur, Robin Hood, and the Viking shamans who harbored a kinship with the waters, with the trees, and with the land. The magic of the past is like a song played on a harp, the echoes of which still waft through our world. Some of us can hear those echoes yet, and some of us write about them.

Since early childhood, I was fascinated by aircraft, space travel, and racing cars. I watched the Apollo missions with wonder and CanAm racing on Wide World of Sports with equal enthusiasm. I built models and flew missions of imagination. The floor of my bedroom became many tracks laid out with masking tape. Making the transition to real cars was more difficult but my passion for sci-fi, space adventure, and speed marches on to this day. Star Trek was a huge enabler that drove me to see the world differently, and sixty years later, it still does. The road of our own discovery is an endless one.

Growing up in a snowy, rural mountain town of less than 500 people, I became fascinated with humanity's will to survive the elements at an early age because I often had to do so myself. Add in a mysterious force or an escaped killer wandering through the hills outside a secluded cabin, and you've got my favorite thriller subgenre: Trapped and secluded. It wasn't until my third novel, The Excursion, that I realized my longtime dream of writing a survival thriller influenced by dozens of books and movies. Today, I live in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, but the mountains are close. And so are the secluded cabins.

I’ve been writing poems since an inspirational period of study in Stirling in my twenties, when I did a lot of hill walking in the Scottish Highlands. For me, poetry that doesn’t move you, that doesn’t make you feel, is just words on a page. I love poems that make you shiver as they incongruously bear the full load of life’s mystery. I like all kinds of poetry but have a special place reserved for nature poems, poems that find the heart and soul in the landscape, rivers, and wildlife.

As a child growing up in a rural community in the isle of Lewis, there were very few books I read which had any real connection with my local environment. This changed in my late teenage years when I encountered some of the books I mentioned here, together with some works about rural communities and islands in Ireland. I loved the way these books – including poetry, drama, non-fiction, short stories, and novels – opened my eyes and enabled me to see familiar surroundings in new and enlightening ways. The legacy of this still persists within me today.

I grew up in Yorkshire and spent many happy hours as a teenager wandering about the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, looking at giant Henry Moores in the rolling landscape. I subsequently trained as an art historian and have spent the last thirty years writing about art, from the YBAs to our prehistoric roots. A Little History of Art was borne out of this journey. Increasingly I have been drawn to researching what art can tell us about British history. My bookshelves groan with monographs but these five volumes have helped me think more deeply about Britain’s landscapes and its past. I hope they will do the same for you.

I freely admit to reading romances―"Nurse Janes," as one of my teachers used to call them―whenever I need a break from heavier material or just from life. While I have some favorite authors (who doesn't?), I do not limit myself to any particular era or style of romance. To me, romance has many shades and flavours, and I enjoy them all. Believe you me, choosing just five to recommend was no piece of cake.

I’ve always had a fascination with the past. After graduating with an Honors degree in English Literature, with a minor in History, I spent years working as an English Language Teacher, while I wrote stories in my free time. Writing is a compulsion for me. It’s my escape and entertainment – my solace in tough times. Now, as a full-time author, I’m lucky enough to get to spend my days in Ancient and Medieval Scotland. I write the kind of stories I love to read: with vibrant characters, richly researched settings, and action-packed adventure romance that transports readers to forgotten times and imaginary worlds.