The Maiden – Winner of the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year

Our summary description

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

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is taken from her home and lodged in the Tolbooth, accused of murdering her lover, James Forrester. The city wastes little time in deciding who she is. Pamphlets and broadsides tell a familiar story of scandal and sin, leaving no room for uncertainty or restraint.

Only a year earlier, Lady Christian had entered marriage with every expectation of comfort and status. Her fall is swift, and the charge against her carries a particular weight in a world eager to punish women who step beyond its narrow bounds. Desire becomes evidence. Reputation becomes motive.

The Maiden moves through seventeenth-century Edinburgh with a clear eye for its streets, its laws, and its appetite for spectacle. As the trial unfolds, the novel asks how guilt is constructed, and by whom. In a city where justice is public and mercy scarce, truth proves harder to grasp than judgment, and the scaffold waits patiently for a story to settle into certainty.