89-year-old spinster, Janet Stouter, takes pleasure in raking up scandals, old and new, about her neighbours. She also relishes refusing her two nephews the money they seek to bolster their businesses. When a retired glass worker gives her some arsenic to kill the rats in her garden, she hatches a plan to test them. She tells them about the arsenic and waits for them to prove themselves worthy of inheriting when she dies. Whoever attempts to kill her will be her sole heir; if both do, of c...

A tender, uplifting family story set in Aberdeenshire, sweeping from the early years of this century to the present day. Mysie Lonie was only sixteen when her drunken father sold her for thirty pounds as wife to ugly, middle aged Jeems Duncan. Taken to live on his croft, Rowanbrae, she tried hard to make the best of her lot and, in time, bore Jeems two sons - Jamie, the light of her life, and unhappy, difficult Sandy. In 1913, as the storm clouds of war gather, love comes with unexpected f...

This is the extraordinary story of a remarkable woman.Doris Davidson was born in Aberdeen in 1922, the daughter of a master butcher and country lass. Her idyllic childhood was shattered in 1934 with the death of her father, after which, in order to make ends meet, her mother was forced to take in lodgers. In part due to her father's sudden death, Doris left school at fifteen and went to work in an office, gradually rising through the ranks until she became book-keeper. Marriage to ...

The brow of the Gallowgate is where Albert Ogilvie buys his property in 1890 - the shop he has dreamed of for years, and above it, a house with nine rooms to accommodate the large family he and his beloved wife, Bathie, desire. As their babies are born - there will be eight in all - Albert employs three sisters, one after another, as nursemaids. Bathie finds Mary and Jeannie Wyness more than satisfactory, but Bella, the youngest, is troublesome and sly, and creates a set of distressing cir...

The Shadow of the Sycamores traces the fortunes of the Rae family, from Henry Rae's birth in 1871, when his drunken father, a blacksmith, forgets the name chosen for him, to his old age in the 1940s. We follow Henry's story as he leaves home at 13 to work as orra loon at a farm and eventually meets his beloved future wife, Fay, when he finds a new job at The Sycamores, a nursing home for the mentally disordered and the elderly. Events take a dramatic turn when their son, Jerry, under-garde...

Willie Fowlie's grandmother calls him a 'nickum' - he is a mischievous Aberdeenshire boy who often acts instinctively, bearing little or no consideration for the consequences of his actions. When he is eleven, his playful antics lead to a full-blown murder enquiry, but it is soon recognised that the hunt is based on nothing more material than Willie's imagination. Four years later, however, Willie witnesses a real murder, but believing that his eye-witness testimony is simply another fabri...

A novella and collection of short stories by Scotland's favourite novelist. Two men sit petrified on Christmas Eve at the thought of spending it in supernatural company; a young family makes a tense Cross-channel trip in fear of some unspecified threat; an old man contemplates jumping to his death at the thought of being evicted from the house in which he has lived all his life. In this book, Doris Davidson looks back over an immensely successful writing career in a collection of twenty sh...

The Shadow of the Sycamores traces the fortunes of the Rae family, from Henry Rae's birth in 1871, when his drunken father, a blacksmith, forgets the name chosen for him, to his old age in the 1940s. We follow Henry's story as he leaves home at 13 to work as orra loon at a farm and eventually meets his beloved future wife, Fay, when he finds a new job at The Sycamores, a nursing home for the mentally disordered and the elderly. Events take a dramatic turn when their son, Jerry, un...

Marion Cheyne is young, poor and ambitious. Her humble village roots and poorly paid job offer few opportunities and Marion feels trapped in a dead-end existence. So when an unexpected chance to escape presents itself, Marion grabs it, ignoring the moral implications of her actions, and sets out on a new life far away in Aberdeen. Years later and the struggling servant girl Marion has been transformed into Marianne, wife of the heir to Castle Lyall, and every inch the lady of the glen. Mor...

The sequel to her novel 'Brow of the Gallowgate', Doris Davidson's latest novel follows the fortunes of the Ogilvie family through the World War II. Olive is determined to have her cousin Neil as her husband and won't allow anything or anyone to get in her way. So when her younger cousin Queenie is evacuated from London and begins to attract Neil's attention, Olive does all she can to avert the relationship. When warnings and threats fail, Olive concocts a web of lies to blacken Queenie's ...

Young Cissie McGregor flees to Dundee with her stepmother Phoebe after her abusive, drunken father has destroyed their family. There, for a while, she finds happiness - with Bertram Dickson, son of the wealthy mill-owner who is Cissie's and Phoebe's employer. But, too late, she finds Bertram has not married her for love. After she bears him the son they've yearned for, he takes the first excuse to throw her out on the streets - keeping her beloved child. Cissie has known the worst before. ...

Something is terribly wrong at Symphony Hall. Luigi Spadafini, the symphony's star conductor, has been murdered-and the entire orchestra has confessed to the crime. This is the mess that Detective Lieutenant Pratt walks into one Saturday morning. Overworked and tired, he's also saddled with Detective Ellis, the newest member of the homicide squad and still very wet behind the ears. With both the mayor and several big shots from the symphony's board of directors demanding a speedy resolutio...