In twenty years behind the till in The Bookshop, Wigtown, Shaun Bythell has met pretty much every kind of customer there is - from the charming, erudite and deep-pocketed to the eccentric, flatu...

The Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2020.

Claire Cox's poetry collection which won this category in the Wigtown Poetry Prize 2020, beautifully set by Gerry Cambridge.

Siberia's story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos - grand instruments created d...

A bookshop love story Jessica Fox is living in Hollywood, a 26-year-old filmmaker with a high-stress job at NASA. Working late one night, craving another life, she is seized by a moment of inspi...

A complete collection of Scottish fairy tales, myths and legends, bound in a beautiful new edition. From the mysterious cat-faced lady whose magic allows a servant girl to attend a prince's ball...

The urgent, explosive story of Russia's espionage efforts against the West from the Cold War to the present - including their interference in the 2016 presidential election. Like a scene from a ...

Would you like to buy a book as a gift, but don't know which one to choose? 

Why not give a Wigtown Festival Bookshop Gift ...

Firths and estuaries are liminal places, where land meets sea and tides meet freshwater. Their unique ecosystems support a huge range of marine and other wildlife: human activity too is profound...

The British Isles are remarkable for their extraordinary seabird life: spectacular gatherings of charismatic Arctic terns, elegant fulmars and stoic eiders, to name just a few. Often found in th...

Welcome to Iceland, a very small nation with a very large number (two hundred and sixty five) of (mostly) very small museums. Founded in the backyards of houses, begun as jokes or bets or memori...

One of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions - a faith, an ideology, a religion - that goes far beyond the life of the individual.

Paul Stewart has returned to Scotland to continue his successful career. His agent and girlfriend, Gloria, has arranged for him to write The Philosophy of Food in Six Easy Chapters, a project he...

Everyone knows what happened to Alva's mother, all those years ago. But when dark forces begin to stir in Ormscaula, Alva has to face a very different future - and question everything she though...

'I can't bear the thought of a world without Michael Longley, yet his poetry keeps hurtling towards that fact more and more urgently as it stretches in an unflinching way beyond comfort or certa...

Loch Katrine waterworks, 1856. A Highland wilderness fast becoming an industrial wasteland. No place for a lady.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordi...

Discover this extraordinary lost classic of nature writing - a fable about wildness and the desire to escape - beautifully illustrated by beloved artist and The Lost Words creator Jackie Morris....

When Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of Bess, reads in the newspaper that huge ancient bones have been discovered in a Kentucky swamp, he leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and y...

Buried beneath layers of flesh, our hearts pump, our lungs inflate, our kidneys filter. These organs, and others, are essential to our survival but remain largely unknown to us. In Beneath the S...

McMillan's Galloway, a witty and irreverent look at contemporary Dumfries and Galloway, provides a suitably individualistic snapshot of a place which operated for so long as an independent entit...

A wonderfully illustrated and sumptuous collection of nursery rhymes for all ages, including many favourite rhymes as well as some that will be a delightful discovery. Originally published as Th...

'Sometimes - not often - a book comes along that feels like Christmas. Philip Hensher's timely, but timeless, selection of the best short stories from the past 20 years is that kind of book.

Aya is eleven years old and has just arrived in Britain with her mum and baby brother, seeking asylum from war in Syria. When Aya stumbles across a local ballet class, the formidable dance teach...

Bringing sixteenth-century Languedoc vividly to life, Kate Mosse's number one bestselling novel The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love, betrayal, war, adventure, conspiracies and divid...

Wild swimming changes lives. The thrill of plunging - or dipping a toe - into open water brings joy, confidence, adventure and friendship. It can wash away stress and sadness, pain and grief.

From the beginning of time, high above the hidden valley, Snow Leopard has sung the stars to life, the sun to rise and the moon to wax and wane. She has woven words of protection to keep the hid...

This book is not meant to be read from cover to cover. It is a book for dreamers. Slight of word, rich of image, its purpose is to ease the soul.

The paintings between these covers were w...

Fifty-something librarian Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a ...

From the award-winning poet and playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic story and a lyrical exploration of pride, power and female revenge. There is somethi...

From the multi-award-winning author of Orangeboy, an addictive mystery that refuses to let you go long after you turn the final page. Can Becks piece the jigsaw together and find her sister befo...

It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition.

She is going to travel to the o...

From the widely renowned author Andrew O'Hagan, a heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship. Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 198...

Seven years after her mother's death, Leonie Charlton is still gripped by memories of their fraught relationship. In May 2017, Leonie trekked through the Outer Hebrides in the company of a frien...

When Tamsin Calidas first arrives on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, it feels like coming home. Disenchanted by London, she and her husband left the city and high-flying careers to mov...

As the temperature rises in Gaborone, Precious Ramotswe, founder of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, wonders whether the heat could be the reason that business is particularly slow. Luckily, ...

Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of Dara McAnulty's world, from spring to summer, autumn to winter, on his home patch, at school, in the wild and in his head.

Evocative,...

Miami, 1963. A young boy from Louisville, Kentucky, is on the path to becoming the greatest sportsman of all time. Cassius Clay is training in the 5th Street Gym for his heavyweight title clash ...

In the hilltop town of Barga, everyone holds their breath. Even the bells fall silent. Everything Vittoria Guidi knows and loves is at risk.

German troops occupy the mountains around her ...

For well over a thousand years, the country has only ever been forged and then been held together through the use of aggression - brutal, merciless terror and warfare directed against its own pe...

Spell Songs is a musical companion piece to The Lost Words: A Spell Book by author Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris. This mixed media CD is accompanied by sumptuous illustrations from ...

The book that has taken root in schools across Britain, inspired creative thinkers, young and old, and restored the vanishing poetry of nature. All over the country, there are words disappearing...

In the aftermath of Ireland's financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through ...

Will Ashon's dazzling study gets to the heart of hip hop, pop culture and the history of contemporary America.

Ashon tells, in 36 interlinked 'chambers', the story of Enter the Wu-Tang (3...

In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado ...

Scotland's history has been told many times, but never exclusively by its women. This book takes a unique perspective on dramatic national events as well as ordinary life, as experienced by wome...

Stories do not have to be long. In the space of a couple of sentences - or even a page or two - we may see the human heart exposed in a way that is more powerful than occurs in many much longer ...

This is not about being ready, it's not even about being fierce, or fearless, it's about being free.  Michael waits in the stage wings, wearing a pink wig, pink fluffy coat and black heels. One ...