Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, wrote 44 Scotland Street as an episodic book. The narrative was initially serialized in The Scotsman on January 26, 2004, and ran every weekday for six months. The book preserves the original's 100+ small chapters. It was influenced in part by Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a well-known serial narrative. It is the first book in the same-named series. As of 2021, the series contains 15 novels.

Pat, a student on her second gap year and a cause of concern for her parents, is approved as a new renter at 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh's exceedingly posh New Town, along with her different housemates and neighbors. She falls in love with her narcissistic flatmate Bruce, meets the interesting and outspoken anthropologist Domenica Macdonald and her friend Angus, and works at an art gallery for Matthew, whose affluent father has given him the gallery as a sinecure post.

Pat notices to Matthew (who knows absolutely nothing about art) while working at the gallery that one of their paintings appears to be a work by Samuel Peploe. After the gallery is broken into, Matthew urges Pat to keep the picture at their flat until they can determine whether it is a real Peploe, but Bruce donates it to a South Edinburgh Conservative Association raffle. Matthew and Pat ultimately find it and return it to the (real-life) writer Ian Rankin. The other major plotline involves five-year-old Bertie, who is dominated by his arrogant and intelligent mother Irene - he has a Grade Six on the saxophone, speaks fluent Italian, and is incredibly knowledgeable about a variety of things. After being expelled from his nursery school, Irene sends him to Dr. Fairbairn for psychotherapy, where he continuously misinterprets Bertie's simple want to be a normal five-year-old boy.

Detailed information:

Author: Alexander McCall Smith

Genre: Serial novel
Published: 2004-2005

Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/97875

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is Ransom Riggs' debut modern fantasy novel. The story is conveyed through a blend of narration and finding pictures from the author's list of collectors' personal archives. This young adult novel was supposed to be a picture book showing images Riggs had gathered, but on the recommendation of an editor at Quirk Books, he used the photographs as a guide to piece together a narrative. Riggs was a picture collector, but he needed more for his narrative. At the Rose Bowl Flea Market, he met Leonard Lightfoot, a well-known collector, and was introduced to other collectors. As a consequence, a novel about a youngster who follows clues from his grandfather's old pictures, legends, and his grandfather's dying words leads him on an adventure to a big abandoned orphanage on Cairnholm, a fictional Welsh island, was born.

The novel was a New York Times best-seller. It topped the Children's Chapter Books list on April 29, 2012, after being on the chart for 45 weeks, and stayed there until May 20, when it fell to fourth place. Critics have lauded the book for its inventive use of antique images in sepia tone and surrealist form, as well as its strong characters and setting. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, the first in a series, is filled with intriguing vintage photographs collected by the author and is especially appealing to younger audiences and readers looking for an adventure in a Welsh setting.

Detailed information:
Author: Ransom Riggs
Genre: Young adult literature, fantasy
Published: June 7, 2011
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/9460487

The Orkney Islands in Scotland are the core of ancient Britain, famous for its Neolithic heritage, which dates back 6,000 years. The ancient ruins and rich scenery of the islands, fringed by the volatile North Sea, enable the imagination to run wild, and few writers have harnessed that creative energy as successfully as Naomi Mitchison, whose Early in Orcadia (1987) travels back to prehistoric Orkney. While the people of Mitchison's ancient planet struggle to earn a living on the islands, two of them build a sailing ship and set off. Early in Orcadia is a narrative of adventure, suffering, and survival that provides a unique viewpoint on ancient Orkney.

Early in Orcadia was first published in 1987 and consists of five stories placed hundreds of years apart in time and dealing with various individuals, but all situated in a specific region of Orkney during the Stone Age. Mitchison connects them officially by interpolating passages of truth and explanation between the fictional scenes, and by speculating in her own voice on what occurred in prehistory, as far as archaeological study can tell us, and how it fits into today's reality.

The slightly jarring leaps from one narrative to the next show that human evolution was not a fully smooth and flawless process. There must have been pivotal instances when a big discovery or innovation occurred. The book's structure demonstrates its subject, which is that there are startling developments but only one tale running from the beginning to the present day, and that story is the story of humanity.

Detailed information:
Author: Naomi Mitchison
Genre: Historical, fiction
Published: 1987
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/4668285-early-in-orcadia

Ann Cleeves' 2006 novel Raven Black received the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for finest crime fiction of the year. Raven Black is the first of Cleeves' "Shetland" mysteries, a series of eight novels divided into two quartets set in Shetland. Ann Cleeves' Raven Black, winner of Britain's famous Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, presents a scintillating suspense series to US mystery lovers.

It's a frigid January morning, and Shetland is covered with snow. Fran Hunter is trudging home when her attention is pulled to a burst of color on the icy ground, ravens hovering overhead. Catherine Ross, her adolescent neighbor, has been strangled. The calm island's residents are fixated on one man—loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. When investigator Jimmy Perez and his mainland colleagues insist on expanding the probe, the entire village is shrouded in suspicion and terror. Catherine's neighbors lock their doors warily for the first time in years, as a murderer lurks in their midst. Raven Black has a strong sense of location and eloquently conveys the struggle between old and new ideals that pervade the novel's secluded island community.

Detailed information:
Author: Ann Cleeves
Genre: Mystery, fiction, cultural, thriller
Published: 2006
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/58702748

There are dozens of little, windswept, craggy specks of land dotting the British Isles, but picture 21 more of them, replete with communities, superstitions, and politics. In Invisible Islands, Scottish author Angus Peter Campbell presents readers to 21 fantastical islands of his own design (2006). The book is the author's first in English; all of his earlier works were written in Gaelic. In Invisible Islands, Campbell's acquaintance with Gaelic culture and the scenery that distinguish the islands of the North Atlantic Ocean and nearby waters shows through vividly.

The Invisible Islands is a collection of twenty-one brilliantly produced fictions, each revealing a different island in the fabled archipelago of the Invisible Islands. These Islands, which were inspired by Calvino and Borges' talent, are unforgettable, inventive, and iconic. As you go beneath the water from Armaigh to the Brandenburg Gate and the Forbidden City, from the distant holy island of St Einean's to the towering dome of the Sistine Chapel, the real and the unreal collide. The Islands, while steeped in genuine and legendary history and culture, are completely contemporary and cosmopolitan. These elegantly written fables, both humorous and humane, remind you that life is truly fantastic.

Detailed information:
Author: Angus Peter Campbell
Genre: Cultural, fiction
Published: September 4, 2006
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/2478399

The Blackhouse is the first novel of Scottish writer Peter May's Lewis Trilogy, a suspense thriller. The majority of the action takes place on the isolated and weather-beaten Isle of Lewis off the coast of northern Scotland. Detective Inspector Finlay Macleod (known as Fin), an island local, is dispatched from his Edinburgh police station to investigate the death of a man who, it turns out, was the bully in Fin's school. The method of the crime is similar to one Fin investigated recently in Edinburgh, thus there is a potential of a common offender.

The chapters alternate between present-day occurrences written in the third person and Fin's youth written in the first person as the novel progresses. As the story develops, it becomes clear that Fin and his childhood experience are inextricably related to the murder. The Blackhouse was awarded the 2011 Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE, a readers' reward for the finest novel by a European author published in France, in 2011. The Blackhouse won Peter May the 2013 Barry Award for Best Novel. The Blackhouse earned the Barry Award for Best Novel of the Year in 2013 at the Bouchercon convention in Albany, New York. The novel was made into a full-cast BBC Radio serial with four 30-minute episodes.

Detailed information:
Author: Peter May
Genre: Mystery, fiction, cultural, thriller
Published: February 1, 2011
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/10305247

Michael Morpurgo's children's book Why the Whales Came was first published in 1985 by William Heinemann (UK) and Scholastic (US). It takes place in 1914 on the island of Bryher, one of the Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall. 'Why the Whales Came' is about Gracie Jenkins, a ten-year-old girl who lives on Bryher, a tiny island off the western coast of Britain, in 1914. Gracie's Father had told her to stay away from the Birdman. The Birdman lives alone in a home that stands alone on a hill in the island's south. Gracie's father has stories about him that he believes are too heinous to tell her.

The Birdman used to reside on Samson Island, which is said to be cursed. Gracie and her pal Daniel have built a fleet of toy boats. When the lake where they typically sail their boats is overrun by irate swans, Daniel persuades Gracie to accompany him to a cove near the Birdman's cabin. She is terrified, but she eventually accepts. They soon find themselves on the most terrifying trip of their life. Gracie's father also serves in the military and is reported missing in combat. The whales in the novel are narwhals, which have a long, spiraling horn on the front of their heads. Gracie and Daniel discover a narwhal's horn on their journey. They must later determine whether to assist a stranded narwhal. The narwhal is then rescued. Later, the Birdman returns to Bryher, and he is greeted warmly by all.

Detailed information:
Author: Michael Morpurgo
Genre: Childrens, fiction, historical, animals
Published: June 24, 1985
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/1289436

The Isle of Man is one of the most populous of the tiny islands in the British Isles, being approximately equidistant between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. However, in Safe House (2012), one of the island's residents has gone missing, and a London-based detective, Rebecca Lewis, is brought in to investigate the case. Safe House is one of the rare works based on the Isle of Man and is a gripping and immensely violent book by British writer Chris Ewan.

When Rob Hale awakens in the hospital following a motorbike accident, he is informed that Lena, the lady he claims was traveling with him, does not exist. The lady he portrays is eerily similar to his recently departed sister - Laura. But has he truly envisioned her? Rob sets out to discover who Lena is and where she has gone. He is assisted by Rebecca Lewis, a London-based private investigator who has gone to the Isle of Man at his parents' request to investigate his sister's suicide. But who is Rebecca, and how did she know about his sister? Rob and Rebecca work together to solve the mystery of who kidnapped Lena. They discover that even on an island where everyone knows everyone else, everyone has a secret and that sometimes staying, and fighting is better than hiding.

Detailed information:
Author: Chris Ewan
Genre: Mystery
Published: January 1, 2012
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/13538955

Colm Tóibín's novel The Heather Blazing was published in 1992. It was the author's second work, and it enabled him to pursue a career as a full-time fiction writer. The intensity of the text, as well as the emotional strain created by the colder eye with which the events are seen, earned him a loyal audience both at home and abroad. It received the Encore Award for a second novel in 1993. Tóibn visits the seashore and the hamlet of Wexford on a regular basis, where the erosion of the Wexford shoreline acts as a metaphor for change in Eamon's life. Tóibn's descriptions of the land and water are so vivid and intense that the environment almost becomes a character in the novel.

The novel follows Eamon Redmond, a judge in Ireland's Irish High Court in the late twentieth century. It reconstructs his relationships with his wife and children over the course of his life, as well as memories of a boyhood scarred by his father's death. The narrative material is the County Wexford landscape and the loss of the father, which Colm Tóibn would return to in The Blackwater Lightship. The title comes from a phrase in the song "Boolavogue", especially "a rebel hand set the heather burning". The narrative also follows the evolution of Fianna Fáil from Éamon de Valera's austere republicanism and style to the corruption of the Charles Haughey era. This work is supposed to have made Tóibn the heir of John McGahern. The mood of McGahern's novel Amongst Women is comparable to that of this book.

Detailed information:
Author: Colm Tóibín
Genre: Fiction, cultural, European, literature
Published: 1992
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/1052644

Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth was published in 2000. It follows the lives of two wartime buddies, Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and Englishman Archie Jones, and their families in London after the war. The story focuses on Britain's connection with Commonwealth immigrants. White Teeth received several awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2000, the Whitbread Book Award in the category of best debut novel in 2000, the Guardian First Book Award, the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize, and the Betty Trask Award. It was featured on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 novels by Commonwealth authors chosen to commemorate Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022.

White Teeth (2000) by English writer and essayist Zadie Smith is a novella about diversity and the struggle for immigrants and natives alike to make sense of their cultural identity, set in a rough North London area. Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, two World War II soldiers and unusual buddies, are at the heart of the tale. The cultural melting pot that is Smith's North London locale lends White Teeth a contemporary air, despite the fact that the author begins the novel in the 1970s. The book provides readers with a unique look of modern London, which is very different from the metropolis popularized by nineteenth-century novelists.

Detailed information:
Author: Zadie Smith
Genre: Fiction, contemporary, novels
Published: April 1, 2000
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/3711