Arachnid Press, 91 Columbia Avenue, Livingston (2025)

25/12/2024

A game of secrets and lies. ‘Bloody Orkney’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland, mainly in Orkney, during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

The Ring of Brodgar stone circle and henge has stood on Orkney’s West Mainland for over 4,000 years and, as well as appearing on the front cover, it has a part to play in the story. This modern photograph shows a scene that has changed little since three of the central characters were here in November 1942.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-blork/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-blork/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s November 1942. Bob Sutherland, Monique Dubois and the Military Intelligence 11 team fly in to review security in Orkney, home to one of the most important and most heavily defended naval anchorages in the world.

But an unidentified body has been found. It becomes clear that powerful men have things they’d rather keep hidden and MI11’s arrival threatens the status quo. Then Bob stumbles over a ghost from his past and things get far too personal.

He and Monique are called away to resolve a crisis at a secret experimental base at Gruinard Bay in Wester Ross. When they return to Orkney, they find that the rules have been rewritten and they are in very real danger.

24/12/2024

How many deaths to end a war? ‘Eyes Turned Skywards’ is a fast-paced thriller set mainly in northern Scotland during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

The fictional Sarclet Castle, south of Wick, appears at several points in the book and its rose garden is visited by the central character. Sarclet Castle is partly based on the Castle of Mey on the north coast of Caithness, shown in this modern photograph, with some internal elements borrowed from Eilean Donan Castle.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-ets/index.html

Wing Commander Robert Sutherland has left his days as a pre-war detective far behind him. Or so he thinks. On the 25th of August 1942 the Duke of Kent, brother of King George VI, is killed in northern Scotland in an unexplained air crash and a second crash soon after suggests a shared, possibly sinister, cause.

Bob Sutherland is tasked with visiting the aircraft’s base in Oban and the first crash site in Caithness to try to uncover who might have sabotaged one, or both, of the aircraft.

Set against the background of a country that is far from united behind Winston Churchill and the ever-present threat from the enemy, we follow Bob as he unravels layers of deceit and intrigue far beyond anything he could have imagined.

23/12/2024

Relentless pursuit and a grisly murder. ‘Hide and Seek’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Stirling Castle and more widely across Scotland during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

This modern image shows Kyle of Lochalsh railway station, the terminus of the Kyle Line across northern Scotland. The station has an important part to play in the story as it builds towards its climax.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-has/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-has/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s April 1943. Medical student Helen Erickson is followed from London to her aunt’s farm in Perthshire. What do her pursuers want?

Meanwhile Monique Dubois is attending a secret meeting at Stirling Castle when an old adversary is murdered in a chilling echo of a dark episode in the castle’s history. Bob Sutherland and the MI11 team are called in and discover that almost everyone who knew the victim had a motive.

Helen disappears and it becomes clear that national security is at stake. Monique sets out to find the missing woman before anyone else does, even if it means killing to protect her. Can Monique find Helen? Can Bob track down the killer at Stirling Castle? And just how dangerous have things become for both of them?

22/12/2024

When the hunter becomes the prey. ‘The High Road’ is a fast-paced contemporary thriller set mainly in central Scotland and the far north-west.

Balnakeil is home to a stunning beach, an austere mansion, and the ruined Balnakeil Church. The church is visited by the book’s central character as he explores the area in which he believes he should focus his search for his missing cousin.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-thr/index.html

Callum Anderson is in Scotland to scatter his father’s ashes when he’s asked by a cousin to look for her missing sister, Alexandra. With his life in London in tatters and suspended from duty by the Metropolitan Police, why not?

It soon becomes clear that Alex is on the run from a local criminal. But someone much more dangerous is after her too and sees Callum as a means of finding her and adding to a trail of bodies that extends across two countries.

After a brief entanglement with a Police Scotland anti-terrorist operation, Callum drops off the radar to follow the only lead he has left, which takes him to the far north-west of Scotland. But can he find Alex before his own hunter finds him?

21/12/2024

A city at peace in a world at war. ‘The Stockholm Run’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland and Sweden during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

Stockholm Central Station plays a pivotal role as the story moves towards its climax. This modern image shows a mural in the station formed from a large photograph of it in 1943, at the time it is visited by the two central characters.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-tsr/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-tsr/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s March 1943. The death of an intruder reveals a hidden military bunker at Dundas Castle near Edinburgh, a living relic of an anti-invasion scheme from earlier in the war. Bob Sutherland and the Military Intelligence 11 team follow a trail that leads to a much larger secret, buried beneath Edinburgh Castle.

As the mystery in Edinburgh unravels, Bob Sutherland and Monique Dubois are sent to Stockholm, a city supposedly at peace in a world at war. There they are to take delivery of a message of critical national importance.

Or is it all a carefully crafted trap? Both encounter ghosts from the past in Sweden. Can their relationship survive what they uncover? Will they live long enough for that to matter?

20/12/2024

You can’t ask a dead man who pulled the trigger. ‘A Tangled Web’ is a fast-paced contemporary thriller set in northern Scotland.

The beach at Oldshoremore in Sutherland is one of the most magnificent beaches anywhere. It is close to the home of one of the central characters and serves as a backdrop to the story as it develops. The beach also appears on the cover of the book.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-atw/index.html

Callum Anderson returns to north-west Sutherland to help local GP Jenny Mackay investigate the death of her husband. The authorities say he committed su***de but she’s convinced he was murdered.

As an accountant and a councillor, Iain Mackay was an upstanding pillar of society. Or was he? Callum soon discovers that Iain lied to everyone who thought he loved them: especially his wife and his daughters. He was also a philanderer, a blackmailer and thoroughly corrupt. The possible motives for both murder and su***de begin to mount.

What Callum discovers puts his fledgling relationship with Jenny under real strain. But that becomes the least of their problems when they come up against people who have already killed and would have no qualms about killing again.

19/12/2024

One broch, two millennia, three murders. Ken Lussey’s new novel ‘Thicker Than Water’ is a compelling murder mystery set in northern Scotland.

The Castle of Old Wick enjoys a spectacular location above cliffs on the coast south of Wick in Caithness. It is visited by the book’s central characters as their hunt for a killer gathers pace.

The fictional Sarclet Castle on the east coast of Caithness south of Wick is the focal point for much of the story and close to the scene of three murders. It is partly based on the real Castle of Mey on the north coast of Caithness, shown here.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-ttw/index.html

Callum Anderson and Jenny Mackay are spending Hogmanay at Sarclet Castle in Caithness when they are asked to investigate the brutal murder of a young woman at nearby Sarclet Broch in 1943, a woman whose ghost is believed to haunt the castle.

What seems the coldest of cold cases is not the first murder of a young woman at the broch: there was another nearly two thousand years earlier. Nor is it the last. On the day that Callum and Jenny arrive, there is a third fatal stabbing there.

Their investigation into the 1943 murder uncovers shoddy police work and the possibility of a serial killer: but can anything be proved after eight decades? Meanwhile they find themselves drawn into the increasingly dangerous hunt for the latest murderer.

18/12/2024

When the past comes back to haunt you. ‘The Danger of Life’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

The busy port of Mallaig lies at the end of the ‘Road to the Isles’. This modern photograph shows it in beautiful weather: quite unlike the stormy day on which a deadly manhunt reaches its climax here in the book.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-dol/index.html

It’s October 1942. Group Captain Robert Sutherland’s first week in charge of Military Intelligence 11's operations in Scotland and northern England is not going smoothly. His efforts to find out who is behind an attempt to steal an advanced reconnaissance aircraft from a military airfield in Fife have not been helped by the death of the would-be thief.

An unwanted complication comes via a telephone call from Monique Dubois in MI5 in London. An operation she’s been running in Glasgow has gone badly wrong and she wants him to intervene before it’s entirely compromised.

Worse still, an investigation into a murder at the Commando Basic Training Centre in the Highlands takes a grim turn and Bob is drawn in personally. In Lochaber, the present war intersects with another conflict that took place two centuries earlier: with deadly consequences.

17/12/2024

How far would you go to right a wrong? ‘The House With 46 Chimneys’ is a spooky adventure story for younger readers involving a two-century-old family mystery and the haunting of Dunmore Park, a ruined house in central Scotland.

This distant view of the ruins of Dunmore Park shows the sheer size of the house - and over half the remaining chimneys that give 'The House With 46 Chimneys' its title.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-h46c/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-h46c/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

Life changes dramatically for Kaleb, Jude and Sequoia when they move to live with their aunt in a rural corner of central Scotland. But then life is changing dramatically for everyone. It’s the beginning of April 2020, the early days of the coronavirus lockdown. The roads are nearly empty of cars and the blue skies almost clear of aeroplanes.

Three local children they meet – in a socially distanced way – draw them into a two-century-old family mystery involving the haunting of the nearby ruins of Dunmore Park, 'The House With 46 Chimneys'. As the book builds to its climax, the children are faced with a decision. Do they try to right a wrong that was done in 1828, a wrong that has had consequences ever since? Or is doing so simply too dangerous?

16/12/2024

The siege is over but the war goes on. Ken Lussey’s new novel ‘The Eye of Horus’ is an atmospheric World War Two thriller with settings that move from the Highlands of Scotland via Gibraltar to Malta.

This modern photograph shows part of Manoel Island in Malta’s Marsamxett Harbour. As shown here it looks ripe for redevelopment. During the war it was used as a base by the Royal Navy's 10th Submarine Flotilla and the island is visited several times by the book’s two central characters as the story develops.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-eoh/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-eoh/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s June 1943. Bob and Monique Sutherland are on honeymoon in Kyle of Lochalsh when an unexpected visitor arrives to spoil their idyll.

They agree to travel to Malta to search for two missing men, a young naval lieutenant and an MI6 officer who has disappeared while looking for him. The aerial siege of the island is over and the tide of war has turned but, after three years of bombing, Malta remains a shattered place.

The available leads produce more questions than answers and progress is impeded by lies. As Bob and Monique come closer to discovering what became of the two men, events take a dangerous turn and their priority shifts from enjoying their honeymoon to surviving it.

15/12/2024

How many deaths to end a war? ‘Eyes Turned Skywards’ is a fast-paced thriller set mainly in northern Scotland during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

This modern image shows Dunrobin Castle railway station in Sutherland. It was built as a private station for Dunrobin Castle in 1902 and now serves as a seasonal request stop on the Far North Line. The station plays a background role as the story builds towards its climax.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-ets/index.html

Wing Commander Robert Sutherland has left his days as a pre-war detective far behind him. Or so he thinks. On the 25th of August 1942 the Duke of Kent, brother of King George VI, is killed in northern Scotland in an unexplained air crash and a second crash soon after suggests a shared, possibly sinister, cause.

Bob Sutherland is tasked with visiting the aircraft’s base in Oban and the first crash site in Caithness to try to uncover who might have sabotaged one, or both, of the aircraft.

Set against the background of a country that is far from united behind Winston Churchill and the ever-present threat from the enemy, we follow Bob as he unravels layers of deceit and intrigue far beyond anything he could have imagined.

14/12/2024

When the hunter becomes the prey. ‘The High Road’ is a fast-paced contemporary thriller set mainly in central Scotland and the far north-west.

Ullapool in Wester Ross has a background role in the story as it develops. The central character visits as major works on the inner harbour and Shore Street near completion. These are shown in this photograph which was taken at the time he was here.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-thr/index.html

Callum Anderson is in Scotland to scatter his father’s ashes when he’s asked by a cousin to look for her missing sister, Alexandra. With his life in London in tatters and suspended from duty by the Metropolitan Police, why not?

It soon becomes clear that Alex is on the run from a local criminal. But someone much more dangerous is after her too and sees Callum as a means of finding her and adding to a trail of bodies that extends across two countries.

After a brief entanglement with a Police Scotland anti-terrorist operation, Callum drops off the radar to follow the only lead he has left, which takes him to the far north-west of Scotland. But can he find Alex before his own hunter finds him?

13/12/2024

A game of secrets and lies. ‘Bloody Orkney’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland, mainly in Orkney, during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

Ness Battery near Stromness helped guard the western entrance to Scapa Flow during the war and can still be visited today, as it was by the book’s characters in November 1942. The highlight of any tour is the mess hall, which is simply breathtaking. Three of the internal walls of a very large room are covered by huge murals that depict scenes of rural Kent.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-blork/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-blork/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s November 1942. Bob Sutherland, Monique Dubois and the Military Intelligence 11 team fly in to review security in Orkney, home to one of the most important and most heavily defended naval anchorages in the world.

But an unidentified body has been found. It becomes clear that powerful men have things they’d rather keep hidden and MI11’s arrival threatens the status quo. Then Bob stumbles over a ghost from his past and things get far too personal.

He and Monique are called away to resolve a crisis at a secret experimental base at Gruinard Bay in Wester Ross. When they return to Orkney, they find that the rules have been rewritten and they are in very real danger.

12/12/2024

A city at peace in a world at war. ‘The Stockholm Run’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland and Sweden during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

During the war, Melville House in Fife served as the Scottish HQ of the highly secret Auxiliary Units, small units with concealed bases dispersed across the country intended to act as a guerrilla army in the event of a German invasion. The house is visited by three of the book’s characters as the story takes shape.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-tsr/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-tsr/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s March 1943. The death of an intruder reveals a hidden military bunker at Dundas Castle near Edinburgh, a living relic of an anti-invasion scheme from earlier in the war. Bob Sutherland and the Military Intelligence 11 team follow a trail that leads to a much larger secret, buried beneath Edinburgh Castle.

As the mystery in Edinburgh unravels, Bob Sutherland and Monique Dubois are sent to Stockholm, a city supposedly at peace in a world at war. There they are to take delivery of a message of critical national importance.

Or is it all a carefully crafted trap? Both encounter ghosts from the past in Sweden. Can their relationship survive what they uncover? Will they live long enough for that to matter?

11/12/2024

Relentless pursuit and a grisly murder. ‘Hide and Seek’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Stirling Castle and more widely across Scotland during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

This modern image shows the Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle, which was used as the education centre for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders’ regimental depot in World War Two and is visited by the book’s main characters.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-has/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-has/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s April 1943. Medical student Helen Erickson is followed from London to her aunt’s farm in Perthshire. What do her pursuers want?

Meanwhile Monique Dubois is attending a secret meeting at Stirling Castle when an old adversary is murdered in a chilling echo of a dark episode in the castle’s history. Bob Sutherland and the MI11 team are called in and discover that almost everyone who knew the victim had a motive.

Helen disappears and it becomes clear that national security is at stake. Monique sets out to find the missing woman before anyone else does, even if it means killing to protect her. Can Monique find Helen? Can Bob track down the killer at Stirling Castle? And just how dangerous have things become for both of them?

10/12/2024

One broch, two millennia, three murders. Ken Lussey’s new novel ‘Thicker Than Water’ is a compelling murder mystery set in northern Scotland.

The fictional Sarclet Castle on the east coast of Caithness south of Wick is the focal point for much of the story and close to the scene of three murders. It is partly based on the real Castle of Mey on the north coast of Caithness, shown here.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-ttw/index.html

Callum Anderson and Jenny Mackay are spending Hogmanay at Sarclet Castle in Caithness when they are asked to investigate the brutal murder of a young woman at nearby Sarclet Broch in 1943, a woman whose ghost is believed to haunt the castle.

What seems the coldest of cold cases is not the first murder of a young woman at the broch: there was another nearly two thousand years earlier. Nor is it the last. On the day that Callum and Jenny arrive, there is a third fatal stabbing there.

Their investigation into the 1943 murder uncovers shoddy police work and the possibility of a serial killer: but can anything be proved after eight decades? Meanwhile they find themselves drawn into the increasingly dangerous hunt for the latest murderer.

09/12/2024

You can’t ask a dead man who pulled the trigger. ‘A Tangled Web’ is a fast-paced contemporary thriller set in northern Scotland.

This is the Dornoch Castle Hotel, standing in the heart of Dornoch in Sutherland. The castle developed on the site of a palace used by the Bishops of Caithness from the 1200s and the hotel has a small but significant part to play as the story develops.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-atw/index.html

Callum Anderson returns to north-west Sutherland to help local GP Jenny Mackay investigate the death of her husband. The authorities say he committed su***de but she’s convinced he was murdered.

As an accountant and a councillor, Iain Mackay was an upstanding pillar of society. Or was he? Callum soon discovers that Iain lied to everyone who thought he loved them: especially his wife and his daughters. He was also a philanderer, a blackmailer and thoroughly corrupt. The possible motives for both murder and su***de begin to mount.

What Callum discovers puts his fledgling relationship with Jenny under real strain. But that becomes the least of their problems when they come up against people who have already killed and would have no qualms about killing again.

08/12/2024

The siege is over but the war goes on. Ken Lussey’s new novel ‘The Eye of Horus’ is an atmospheric World War Two thriller with settings that move from the Highlands of Scotland via Gibraltar to Malta.

This modern photograph shows the Rotunda of Mosta in Malta. It narrowly avoided destruction in 1942 when a bomb passed through the dome during a service and landed amongst the congregation without exploding. It is visited by the book’s two central characters as they follow the trails of the men they are seeking.

Find out more and buy the eBook as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-eoh/index.html
Buy the paperback edition here:
https://www.arachnid.scot/book-eoh/buy.html
If you wish this can be signed and dedicated by the author at no extra cost.
For a limited time only, paperback sales are P&P free for UK purchasers.

It’s June 1943. Bob and Monique Sutherland are on honeymoon in Kyle of Lochalsh when an unexpected visitor arrives to spoil their idyll.

They agree to travel to Malta to search for two missing men, a young naval lieutenant and an MI6 officer who has disappeared while looking for him. The aerial siege of the island is over and the tide of war has turned but, after three years of bombing, Malta remains a shattered place.

The available leads produce more questions than answers and progress is impeded by lies. As Bob and Monique come closer to discovering what became of the two men, events take a dangerous turn and their priority shifts from enjoying their honeymoon to surviving it.

Arachnid Press