New breakfast read. Nothing quite like that moment when you decide on your next book.

Aberdeen friends! I’m going to be talking about Aberdeen friends (Nan Shepherd and Agnes Mure Mackenzie, mainly) for Bookweek Scotland. Come if you can! aberdeencity.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spyd...

I was out on my bike for the 1st time in ages today, just 3 miles to a hotel in the next village for lunch with a friend. It poured all the way home and I was soaked and mud-splattered and felt brilliant. So liberating to get somewhere under your own steam, to feel you've got one over on "them".*

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

I have received so many adulatory AI-generated emails from "book reviewers" today alone that I will probably just skip the Booker and head straight for the Nobel Prize. Or something.

In-putting names for a highland history project, and wondering how it is that the MacDonalds have not simply taken over the earth. Also recalling a story of a friend of my husband's being bumped from a flight from Stornoway because airline security could not cope with 8 Norman Macleods on 1 flight.

Out now!

Time to repost this…

For everyone who ever wondered if reading Wuthering Heights when they did is why they are the way they are.

This is my new book (26/026). It's the 1st time in years that I'll be published as 'Shona' rather than 'S.G.'and I am very happy to be reclaiming my name. It's about a reading society formed in a northern Scottish town in the 1830s. Drama ensues. (My mother-in-law crocheted the shawl 🧶)

Big Coat.

This forthcoming novel by @shonamaclean.bsky.social looks great! 'Had us at 'circulating library' & '1831'! 😍https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Shona-MacLean/The-Cromarty-Library-Circle/32495124 #CromartyLibraryCircle

25 Oct 1514: d. Bishop William Elphinstone #otd in #Edinburgh, the founder of #Aberdeen University (SHowe)

The Seeker series, books 1-3. New covers out today for stories of espionage and other 17th Century shenanigans in Cromwellian London and York.

View from an Edinburgh bus stop.

Don't think I will ever see these old engine sheds and not think about Thomas and Henry and Gordon.

Thei wante us talkinge alone on our phones to a demon thei created, and not goinge places and being wyth each othir yn art and joy and communitye. Thei want cinemas to shut downe, and broadwaye to go darke. Thei want wryteres to stop writinge. Thei want to sell us hell and have us pay for it.

It is a great read! The whole series was just fabulous

It's very refreshing to read a contemporary novel - Anna Beer's 'Death of an Englishman', where the protagonist travels the country by train or bike as she attempts to solve the mystery, and where her most important bit of tech is her paper notebook.

I would love the Scottish Parliament to be sovereign, but credit where credit's due: the HP are pretty impressive. Also, it's an amazing, multicultural city with less and less car traffic every time I visit. It's an argument against the peddlers of prejudice and ignorance - long may it hold out.

Yesterday's programme from the Cromwell Association's 2025 Study Day in London, where it was joyous to be able to express my sheer bewilderment at popular culture's never-ending obsession with the Tudors. My fellow-panellists gave much more coherent answers to the question.

We are thrilled that A WOMAN OF OPINION has been shortlisted for the Saltire Book Awards 2025! A huge congratulations @seanluskauthor.bsky.social! 🎉

True story

I love that if you know where to look, you will see that the city of Aberdeen has positioned its statues of Scottish heroes Denis Law and Robert Bruce so that they are saluting each other.

Up to number 5 in historical mysteries is nice on my first day. Great to see @shonamaclean.bsky.social at no 1

Heading to Lochaber on a workr trip I was just going to put on jeans and a jumper, but then I thought of the much-loved couple I used to visit when I was down there, sadly long-gone, him at 97, her at 103. The mantra, 'What would Auntie Louie say?'came into my head. Skirt and good boots it is, then.

Preparing for a panel discussion next Saturday at the Cromwell Association day in London by re-reading this novel I wrote over 10 years ago, I'm thinking, 'Where on earth was I going with that?' and having rising anxiety about the amount of things I was going to have to tie up by the end.

#Scotstober #Haiku #Trachled(DoricScots) Trachled wis ih loon Fae plouterin throu ih dubs An affa scunner Worn down was the farm-boy From trudging through the mud An awful hassle

Can’t decide what to buy on Prime Day? Try: absolutely nothing, and then go support indie bookstores instead 📚

Reading a story where someone has gone into an archive and been given a cup of tea and now All the Archivists are Screaming.

I love that The Archers are trending on a Sunday night. It feels like revenge for all the times an American politician I've never heard of is trending, and I tell myself not to look, but I look.

I cancelled my Audible subscription months ago (all the reasons), but I've been missing my audiobooks. Somehow @libro.fm had passed me by, until I heard about it from @nairnbooks.bsky.social Now very happy. Thanks, Sam. My 1st choice is Dorothy Dunnet's 'Niccolo Rising'. and I'm off to C15th Bruges!

Have started the Big Clean in advance of friends coming to stay next weekend and am getting into corners that might *occasionally* be missed. Wondering how we are still alive.

So good to see HIGNFY back. Not sure if the best bit was Sheila Hancock in general, or when Paul Merton said, 'Haven't we done Trump? Can't we move on to something else?'

Coorie in close bairns - that hizzie Amy is on her wey... "The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last; The rattling show'rs rose on the blast; The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd; Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow'd: That night, a child might understand, The Deil had business on his hand."

Still Life with Red Jumper

Rest in Peace Jane Goodall 🕊️

Just finished the last Seeker novel The House of Lamentations by @shonamaclean.bsky.social . I'm going to miss that taciturn Yorkshireman. I'd love a sequel set in America but wonder if Robert Harris has covered it too much already in Act of Oblivion. Is a return possible?

Going through the proofs of my forthcoming novel, which will be my 12th in 18 years, my new editor has sent me a query about an M-dash and I am mortified to tell her how cossetted I have been, and how far above my pay grade the vaguest notion of the correct use of the M-dash is.

Donkeys at my local animal sanctuary having a party to celebrate one of them living there for 20 years.

Up until today, if you'd asked me, I'd have said I didn't like ballet. But then, out of curiosity as to how they'd treat her story, I went to see Scottish Ballet's 'Mary, Queen of Scots'. It was one of the best things I've ever seen on stage. Just spectacular.

I'm reading the excellent "The Black Friar" by @shonamaclean.bsky.social. A character called Marchamont Nedham has been introduced as the Proctorate's "mouthpiece to the masses... he would write whatever it paid him most to write, regardless of any truth". From that description I immediately...1/2

I'm reading through page proofs of my new book and scrolling ahead to check something in the Author's note at the back, I caught myself thinking, 'Careful not to see the end by accident, in case you find out what happens,' and I think I should maybe get up now and do something else.

So utterly sick of the religion of 'Digital '. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

@shonamaclean.bsky.social Mrs M has (again!) deserted me for some dude named Damien Seeker. Apparently he's a tall, good-looking, intelligent Yorkshireman. The fact that I don't measure up to someone who's been dead for over 300 years is hurtful. 😭 Shame on you Shona!

The sculpture of "Homeless Jesus"'outside St Mary's Cathedral on Picardy Place is a well positioned reminder of the Beatitudes and a highlighting of our responsibilities to our neighbours

I failed to watch the 1st episode of the new Slow Horses series tonight, and I just don't know what I'm doing with my life.

Apparently, in Kenya, there are B*stard bushes, which have very large, lethal thorns. Also in our garden, according to the house painter.

Despite being completely blind since the age of 12, opera tenor Andrea Bocelli cycles with the guiding hand of his partner, Veronica Berti Happy #BicycleBirthday, Andrea! Born September 22, 1958