The Charles Low Book Club
2026 Selections
February 9, 2026
Now We Shall Be Free by Andrew Miller (421 p.) FIC
The Low Library Book Club’s choice for our February meeting is Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller.
Our discussion will take place on February 9, 2026, at 5:30 pm (EST) via Zoom. All are welcome.
Email Cathy McCullough Les at library@detroitscots.com for the Zoom invitation or if you have any questions.
Here is a description of the story:
A stunning historical novel with the grip of a thriller, written in richly evocative, luminous prose. One rain-swept February night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain’s disastrous campaign against Napoleon’s forces in Spain. Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind – he cannot talk about the war or face the memory of what happened in a village on the gruelling retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he sets out instead for the Hebrides, with the vague intent of reviving his musical interests and collecting local folksongs. Lacroix sails north incognito, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail, with orders to kill. The haven he finds on a remote island with a family of free-thinkers and the sister he falls for are not safe, at all. Winner of the Highland Book Prize, 2018.
2025 Selections
November 10, 2025
How to Kill a Witch: the patriarchy’s guide to silencing women by Claire Mitchell (320 p.) HIST
Scotland, 1563: Crops failed. People starved. And the Devil’s influence was stronger than ever—at least, that’s what everyone believed. If you were a woman living in Scotland during this turbulent time, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch.
During the chaos of the Reformation, violence against women was codified for the first time in the Witchcraft Act—a tool of theocratic control with one chilling to root out witches and rid the land of evil. What followed was a dark and misogynistic chapter in history that fanned the flames of witch hunts across the globe, including in the United States and beyond.
In How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the popular Witches of Scotland podcast, unravel the grim yet absurdly bureaucratic process of identifying, accusing, trying, and executing women as witches. With sharp wit and keen feminist insight, they reveal the inner workings of a patriarchal system designed to weaponize fear and oppress women.
This captivating (and often infuriating) account, which weaves a rich tapestry of trial transcripts, witness accounts, and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, exposes how this violent period of history mirrors today’s struggles for justice and equality. How to Kill a Witch is a powerful, darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of superstition, bias, and ignorance, and a warning to never forget the past… while raising the question of whether it could ever happen again.
September 15, 2025
White Nights (Shetland #2) and Red Bones (Shetland #3) by Ann Cleeves (392 p., 340 p.) MYS
White Nights:
It’s midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws an elaborate party to launch an exhibition of her work at The Herring House, a gallery on the beach. The party ends in farce when one the guests, a mysterious Englishman, bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where he’s come from. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter, and Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that the man has been murdered. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bella’s musician nephew, is murdered, too. But the detective’s relationship with Fran Hunter may have clouded his judgment, for this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.
Red Bones:
An island shrouded in mist and a community with secrets buried in the past . . .
When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find – or a more contemporary mystery?
Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson – his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.
The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.
Surrounded by people he doesn’t know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there’s another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again.
June 9, 2025
To Be Continued by James Robertson (324 p.) FIC
A madcap Highland adventure from the Booker-longlisted author of And The Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack.
Douglas Findhorn Elder is in a sorry state. He’s just turned fifty, split up from his girlfriend and been pushed out of his job in an ailing national newspaper. On the night of his birthday, he makes an unexpected new friend: a talking toad. So begins a wild goose chase that will lead Douglas out of his cosy house in Edinburgh and across the country – all the way to crumbling Glentaragar House in the distant West Highlands. Awaiting him along the journey are a semi-criminal hearse driver, a hundred-year-old political firebrand grandmother, a split-personality alcoholic/teetotaller, an elaborate whisky-smuggling conspiracy, a mysterious woman with a rather enchanting Greek nose, and maybe even a shot at redemption.
In this gloriously surreal romp, James Robertson proves once and for all that the important things in life – friendship, romance, a very fine malt whisky – come when you least expect them
April 14, 2025
Set Adrift Upon the World: the Sutherland Clearances by James Hunter ( 416 p.)
They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But in 1821 set adrift they were – thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned. Some people died. The land was given over to sheep farmers. Families who were cleared from their tenancies sailed to Canada. Some of the men signed up to fight in Ireland, France, South Africa and New Orleans when there was little alternative.
Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode, involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish county. What was done in the course of that episode was planned and carried out by Britain’s wealthiest couple and their employees.. Most of those involved wrote a great deal about their actions, intentions and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist.
Here James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances – a gripping, moving, definitive account of a people’s struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster.
Winner of Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year.
February 10, 2025
Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford (279 p.) FIC
1927: When Fred Lawson takes a summer job on St. Kilda, little does he realize that he has joined the last community to ever live on that beautiful, isolated island. Only three years later, St. Kilda will be evacuated, the islanders near dead from starvation. But for Fred, memories of that summer – and the island woman, Chrissie, with whom he falls in love – will never leave him.
1940: Fred has been captured behind enemy lines in France and finds himself in a prisoner-of-war camp. Beaten and exhausted, his thoughts return to the island of his youth and the woman he loved and lost. When Fred makes his daring escape, prompting a desperate journey across occupied territory, he is sustained by one thought only: finding his way back to Chrissie.
The Lost Lights of St Kilda is a sweeping love story that crosses oceans and decades. It is a moving and deeply vivid portrait of two lovers, a desolate island and the extraordinary power of hope in the face of darkness.
Past Years’ Books
|
11/18/2024 – News of the Dead by James Robertson (384 p.) FIC 9/16/2024 – The Salt and the Flame by Donald S. Murray. (288 p.) FIC 6/10/2024 – The Art of Dying (Raven & Fisher, #2) by Ambrose Parry (409 p.) MYS 4/8/2024 – The Way of All Flesh (Raven & Fisher, #1) by Ambrose Parry (409 p) MYS 2/12.2024 – Home by John Mackay (256 p.) FIC 11/13/2023 – The Bookseller of Inverness by S.G. Maclean (416 p.) MYS 9/18/2023 – Of Stone and Sky by Merryn Glover (376 p.) FIC 6/12/2023 – Laidlaw by William McIlvanney (224 p.) MYS 4/10/2023 – Kidnapped (David Balfour, #1) by Robert Louis Stevenson. (288 p.) FIC 2/13/2023 – Death of a Chief (John MacKenzie, #1) by Douglas Watt. (183 p.) MYS 11/14/2022 – Croft in the Hills by Katherine Stewart. (159 p.) MEMOIR 9/19/2022 – Two Closes and a Referendum by Mary McCabe. (369 p.) FIC 6/13/2022 – As the Women Lay Dreaming by Donald S. Murray. (288 p.) FIC 4/11/2022 – The Royal Stuarts: a History of the Family that Shaped Britain by Allan Massie. (370 p.) HIST 2/14/2022 – The Sopranos by Alan Warner. (336 p.) FIC 11/8/2021 – The Story of My Boyhood and Youth by John Muir. (256 p.) BIO 9/20/2021 – The Blackhouse (Lewis Trilogy, book #1) by Peter May. (386 p.) MYS |
6/14/2021 – Clanlands by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish. (297 p.) TRAVEL/MEMOIR 4/12/2021 – Sunset Song ( Scots Quair, #1) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. (269 p.) FIC 2/8/2021 – The Game of Kings (Lymond chronicles, #1) by Dorothy Dunnett. (568 p.) FIC 12/14/2020 – The Mermaids Singing (Tony Hill, #1) by Val McDermid. (464 p.) MYS 10/12/2020 – 44 Scotland Street (44 Scotland Street series, #1) by Alexander McCall Smith. (325 p.) FIC 6/1/2020 – Shetland Bus: a WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Adventure by David Howarth. (248 p.) HIST 3/2/2020 – White Rose Rebel by Janet Paisley. (391 p.) FIC 1/6/2020 – Entry Island by Peter May. (448 p.) MYS 11/4/2019 – Raven Black (Shetland series, #1) by Ann Cleeves. (384 p.) MYS 9/9/2019 – Whisky Galore by Compton MacKenzie. (304 p.) FIC 6/3/2019 – Waverley, Or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since (Waverley novels, #1) by Walter Scott. (491 p.) FIC 4/1/2019 – Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan. (304 p.) FIC 2/42019 – Witch Hunt by Jack Harvey ( pseud. of Ian Rankin). (451 p.) MYS |