James Robertson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Itchy Coo Books

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

James Robertson
James Robertson was born in the year 1958 and is a Scottish writer that grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire. James has published novels, as well as poetry and short story collections.

“Joseph Knight” was named the Saltire Society Book of the Year 2003/04 and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. “The Testament of Gideon Mack” was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in the year 2006. “And the Land Lay Still” won the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award in the year 2010.

James also established an independent publishing imprint known as Kettillonia, which produces the occasional pamphlets and books of short prose and poetry. He is also one of the co-founders and the general editor of the Scots language imprint Itchy Coo, which produces book in Scots for young people and children.

James’ debut novel, called “The Fanatic”, was released in the year 2000. His work is from the mystery, literary fiction, and general fiction genres.

“The Fanatic” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2000. Spring of 1997. Hugh Hardie needs a ghost for his Tours of Old Edinburgh, and Andrew Carlin is a perfect candidate. So with stick, cape, and plastic rat, Carlin gets paid to scare the tourists, while pretending to be the spirit of Colonel Weir, a religious extremist that was burned at the stake back in 1670.

However who even was Weir? Carlin’s research pulls him right into the past and, especially, to James Mitchel, who is imprisoned in the year 1674 for the attempted assassination of the Archbishop of St. Andrews. Through Mitchel and Carlin’s story, this reveals a rather extraordinary history about Scotland: a story about betrayals, witch hunts, disguised identities, smuggled journeys, and Puritan exiles.

This is a fascinating bit of Edinburgh history and folklore that has been woven into a poignant commentary on reality, memory, and modern Scotland.

“Joseph Knight” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2003. Sir John Wedderburn, who was exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden’s conclusion in the year 1746, made his fortune, alongside all three of his brothers as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. During the 1770s, he came back to Scotland in order to marry and re-establish the name of the family. He brought Joseph Knight, a black slave, with him and a token of his years spent in the Caribbean.

Now, in the year 1802, Sir Wedderburn is settling his estate, and has hired Archibald Jamieson, a solicitor’s agent, to look for his former slave. The past has been haunting Wedderburn ever since Culloden, and since he last saw Knight, in court some twenty-four years prior in a case which went right to the heart of Scottish society, which pitted black against white, master against slave, and rich against poor. As long as Knight remains missing, Wedderburn is never going to be able to escape his past. But what is he going to do if Jamieson’s hunt is a successful one?

And what effect is this reopening of old wounds going to have on those around him? At the same time, while Jamieson attempts to unravel Joseph Knight’s real story he starts questioning his true motivation. How could he possibly find a guy that doesn’t wish to be found?

This is a tour de force and a gripping tale about the search for a life which stretches over the course of sixty years, moving from the plantations of Jamaica to the battlefields, from the back streets of Dundee to Enlightenment Edinburgh. This is a moving narrative of identity, ideas, and history, which dramatically retells a fascinating yet forgotten bit of Scottish history.

“The Testament of Gideon Mack” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 2006. Set in contemporary Scotland, this book uses the literary device of a found manuscript the testament of Gideon Mack that fell into a journalist’s hands. Mack, the son of the manse, grew up in an austere and frosty house, that was dominated by his joyless dad. Unable to believe in God, he’s much more attracted by the forbidden cartoons that air on television.

Son and dad clash lethally one day and it might be guilt which pushes Mack to take a career up in the Church. This minister, that doesn’t even believe in God, an afterlife, or the Devil, one day finds a standing stone in the middle of a wood where there wasn’t any before. Unsure about what to make of such an apparition, Mack’s whole life starts unraveling dramatically until the instant that he gets swept right into a mountain stream, that pours down into a chasm before it vanishes underground.

Miraculously he emerges some three days later, having been battered but is still alive. He appears to have lost his mind though, since he claims that he met the Devil while he was underground. To this tale, Robertson adds a wealth of insight about the mood that post-war Scotland had while on the brink of the social revolution of the Sixties, and dramatizes the country’s battles with staying true to its history as it swam within the powerful current of Americanization.

“The Professor of Truth” is the fifth stand alone novel and was released in the year 2013. Alan Tealing (a university lecturer), twenty-one years after his daughter and wife got murdered during the bombing of a plane over Scotland, still doesn’t know the truth about what actually happened that horrible night.

Obsessed with the details of what he’s since been calling The Case, he is certain that the man that got convicted of this atrocity was not actually responsible, and that he himself has been deprived not just of justice, but also of any opportunity of escaping from his enduring grief.

When this American intelligence officer, who is seemingly terminally ill and determined to settle accounts before dying, shows up on his doorstep with some information about one key witness in the trial, one fateful series of events gets set in motion.