Pine – The spine-chilling Sunday Times bestseller

Our summary description

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

Lauren lives with her father, Niall, on the edge of a Highland village where the pine forest presses close and privacy is an illusion. One night, driving home from a local search, they find a woman lost on the road. Niall brings her back to their house. By morning, she has vanished, leaving behind more unease than explanation.

In Pine, the disappearance settles into the fabric of daily life, disturbing the fragile routines Lauren depends on. The village watches. Stories shift. The forest seems to listen. As Lauren moves through adolescence, grief, loyalty, and fear become tangled, and the boundary between safety and threat grows thin.

Francine Toon writes with a sharp eye for landscape and silence, capturing the wild intensity of rural childhood and the pressure of being known too well. Pine draws on gothic unease without spectacle, letting tension gather slowly through atmosphere and withheld truth. What lingers is not just what happened to the missing woman, but what the land itself might be holding, and how far a community will go to protect its own version of events.