Most Popular Books by Iain Banks

A fascinating journey through Scotland''s famous distilleries with legendary author Iain Banks No true Scotsman can resist the allure of the nation''s whisky distilleries. In an absorbing voyage as interesting to non-drinkers as to true whisky connoisseurs, sci-fi and literary author Iain Banks explores the rich heritage of Scottish whisky, from the largest and most famous distilleries to the smallest, most obscure operations. Whisky is more than a drink: it''s a culture, a binder that joins together people, places and products far across Scotland''s rugged terrain. Switching from cars to ferries to bicycles, Banks crisscrosses his homeland, weaving an engrossing narrative from the strange people, fascinating traditions, and downright bizarre places he encounters on his journey down Scotland''s great golden road.

''One of the most brilliant first novels I have come across'' Telegraph ''One of the top 100 novels of the century'' Independent ''Brilliant...irresistible...compelling'' New York Times ''Macabre, bizarre, and impossible to put down'' Financial Times ''Read it if you dare'' Daily Express The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels. ''Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I''d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That''s my score to date. Three. I haven''t killed anybody for years, and don''t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.'' Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.

''Charming, sad, comic... the funniest, truest rock biopic yet'' Observer Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He''s made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he''ll regret for ever. He has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold on to them both, though not to much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? As he contemplates his life, Daniel realises he has only two problems: the past and the future. He knows how bad the past has been. But the future - well, the future is something else. Praise for Iain Banks: ''The most imaginative novelist of his generation'' The Times ''His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers'' Ken MacLeod, Guardian ''His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent'' Neil Gaiman ''An exceptional wordsmith'' Scotsman

''Establishes beyond doubt that Iain Banks is a novelist of remarkable talents'' Daily Telegraph Graham Park is in love. But Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him. They are. Quiss, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle castle, is forced to play interminable impossible games. The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him. But he must find an answer before he knows the question. Park, Grout, Quiss - no trio could be further apart. But their separate courses are set for collision. Praise for Iain Banks: ''The most imaginative novelist of his generation'' The Times ''His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers'' Ken MacLeod, Guardian ''His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent'' Neil Gaiman ''An exceptional wordsmith'' Scotsman

In Scotland, a self-appointed executioner dispenses justice to fit the crime. Thus the lenient judge who let a rapist go is punished by being raped, while a man who killed is killed in turn. By the author of The Wasp Factory.

Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its world-destroying detonations is about to reach the Masaq Orbital, home to the Culture. Major Quilan has supposedly come to take the exiled Composer Ziller back to their war-ravaged home world, Chel. But despite the major''s civilized veneer, his true mission may be the death and destruction of an entire civilization.

''Banks once again demonstrates his extraordinary dark powers of imagination'' Sunday Times Hisako Onada, world-famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako''s ship is captured, it is not long before the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on the cello... Praise for Iain Banks: ''The most imaginative novelist of his generation'' The Times ''His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers'' Ken MacLeod, Guardian ''His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent'' Neil Gaiman ''An exceptional wordsmith'' Scotsman

''A deeply satirical and thought-provoking thriller'' Sunday Express A couple of ice cubes, first, then the apple that really started it all. A loft apartment in London''s East End; cool but doomed, demolition and redevelopment slated for the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending a mid-week wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the roof towards the deserted car park a hundred feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment''s remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center... Praise for Iain Banks: ''The most imaginative novelist of his generation'' The Times ''His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers'' Ken MacLeod, Guardian ''His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent'' Neil Gaiman ''An exceptional wordsmith'' Scotsman

Set in a war-torn country not unlike Bosnia, this internationally bestselling novel concerns a band of soldiers who find refuge in a rural castle.

Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time ... Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones ... And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt ... And everything is about to change ... For this is the time of the encroachment and, although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, yet sill they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery. The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures.

When Prentice McHoan returns to his home town of Gallanach he meets a former girlfriend of his missing uncle Rory, who provides him with a folder of Rory''s writings that inspires him to seek out the man who had disappeared eight years earlier.

A beautiful, ambitious woman pursues the ultimate prize in a wickedly satirical novel about a highly secretive transglobal organization.

''Fierce contemporaneity, an acrobat imagination, social comment, sardonic wit... the peculiar sub-culture of cult religion is a natural for Banks'' The Times A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing... Innocent in the ways of the world, an ingenue when it comes to pop and fashion, the Elect of God of a small but committed Stirlingshire religious cult, Isis Whit is no ordinary teenager. When her cousin Morag - Guest of Honour at the Luskentyrian''s four-yearly Festival of Love - disappears after renouncing her faith, Isis is marked out to venture among the Unsaved and bring the apostate back into the fold. But the road to Babylondon (as Sister Angela puts it) is a treacherous one, particularly when Isis discovers that Morag appears to have embraced the ways of the Unsaved with spectacular abandon... Praise for Iain Banks: ''The most imaginative novelist of his generation'' The Times ''His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers'' Ken MacLeod, Guardian ''His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent'' Neil Gaiman ''An exceptional wordsmith'' Scotsman

A desperate young man becomes entangled with a Scottish crime family in this “brilliant, irresistible” novel from the author of The Wasp Factory (The New York Times). Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth, Scotland. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth has a beach that can be beautiful on a sunny day. But on a bleak day, Stonemouth seems to have nothing to offer but fog, cheap drugs, and gangsters—and a suspension bridge that promises a permanent way out. Stewart got out five years ago. He didn’t jump, he just ran—escaping the Murstons, a local family of mobsters. But now their patriarch has died, and in an uneasy truce, Stewart has returned home for the funeral. His long exile has also kept him away from Ellie Murston, and if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll avoid a reunion—and the topic of his old classmate Callum Murston’s untimely death. But once he’s back, Stewart steps squarely into the minefield of his past, and as he wrestles with feelings of guilt and loss, he makes some dark discoveries and his homecoming takes a lethal turn. A quick drop into the cold, gray Stoun is starting to look like an option worth considering. The basis for a BBC series, Stonemouth is a darkly witty, “beguiling” tale of warring clans, broken hearts, brotherhood, and the long, hard process of growing up—if you can stay alive long enough to try (The Guardian).