Scottish Mysteries

1869, Sutherland, Scotland. There's a Gold Rush going on in the Glens of Suisgill and Kildonan. When representatives of the Pan European Mining Company arrive to investigate, one of the prospectors is found bludgeoned to death, odd inscriptions discovered on stones nearby. Meanwhile Solveig McCleery is trying to open up the coal mines at Brora, and it's not long before another body turns up. And from faraway Archangel in Russia, a Master Mast-Maker suddenly decides to leave his work, his family, and take a ship over to Scotland, to Sutherland, and to Kildonan... Discovering how all three strands are connected will lead you through this richly researched and engagingly atmospheric novel from beginning to end.

19th century Scotland. Ardnamurchan Peninsula on the west coast is inhabited by mining folk and crofters eking out a living from the unforgiving land, turning a blind eye to the smugglers who plague the coast. Harold, Simmy's brother, pulls a bag of bones out of the water near his home and, not long afterwards, a man is viciously attacked and left for dead. He is the assistant to Gustav Wengler, eccentric owner of the local lead mines and creator of the strange monuments known as the White Cathedral. How can they be connected? And what is the relevance of the unusual sundial in Ockle churchyard, well known to both Harold and Simmy? Smugglers and sundial, a Floating Chapel and a foreigner heading their way from Denmark. Someone needs to find out what it's all about before more lives, including Simmy's and Harold's, are torn apart.

Hestan Island, marooned in the Solway Firth, tethered to the mainland at low tide by a causeway called The Rack. Hestan is home to two men quietly living out their lives, until a boy is almost crushed to death in their tiny copper mine after which the horrors of their shared past begins to unravel. As truths are revealed we are taken back through the bloody wars of Crimea and the lands of the Tartars; to book burnings, betrayals, and the bonds of men who find themselves in dire circumstance. It is not long before terrible secrets are laid bare. The third in acclaimed writer Clio Gray's Scottish Mysteries, Hidden Pasts explores the history of a little known part of Scotland and provides a compelling tale of how small events can echo down the years, with deadly consequences.