Independent Scottish Booksellers

  Every book chosen by a bookseller.





Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars

  Independent Scottish Bookshop





Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
  Free Delivery on orders of £25+

Paper Thistle Book Reviews

At Paper Thistle, we write a review for every book we sell, specialising in Scottish fiction. Each review considers character, writing style, tone, and overall reading experience, offering a thoughtful introduction to what awaits on the page.

Book Review: Surgeons’ Hall

The wax hand on the Exhibition stand glowed under gas-light. Jem Flockhart slipped it into[...]

Book Review: Squeaky Clean

Davey Burnet’s shift at the East-End car-wash should have been just another night. Then he[...]

Book Review: The Salt and the Flame

April 1923: the liner strains free of Stornoway harbour and Mairead leaves the Isle of[...]

Book Review: Phantom Limb

Gillis stood at his church door, his sprinting years behind him. Then, in the pit[...]

Book Review: The Gracekeepers

North danced with her bear on the deck of the Excalibur while the sea rose[...]

Book Review: Things We Say in the Dark

In a deserted Icelandic house a writer waits. Outside the window, shadows gather. Inside, she[...]

Book Review: Now She is Witch

Alone and bleeding in the woods, Lux buries her mother in the poison garden. A[...]

Book Review: The Ninth Child

Trossachs, 1850s. Isabel Aird follows her doctor husband to the Loch Katrine works, where gunpowder[...]

Book Review: Music in the Dark

Rutherglen, 1884. Jamesina Ross keeps her history buttoned to the throat - until a lodger knocks and[...]

Book Review: Murder Ballad

Isobel Duguid stepped into the limelight with a voice as wild as the Firth’s tides,[...]