Extract: Tombstoning, by Doug Johnstone

PUBLICATION DATE: 12th FEBRUARY 2026
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances. You
were the last person to see him alive. What do you do?

If you’re David Lindsay from Arbroath, you leg it – and don’t go
back. Not for fifteen years.

Then Nicola Cruickshank – yes, that Nicola, the girl you always
fancied but never had the guts to speak to – gets in touch. She
wants you back for a school reunion. At the very place it happened.
Of course you say yes. Not to lay ghosts to rest, but because you
still fancy Nicola.

The thing is, if you are David Lindsay, then returning to Arbroath
isn’t going to bring closure. Because when someone else tumbles
off the cliffs – an act the locals now call tombstoning – David has a
choice: run away again, or finally find out why people around him
keep dying…

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Review: The Big Chill, by Doug Johnstone

Haunted by their past, the Skelf women are hoping for a quieter life. But running both a funeral directors’ and a private investigation business means trouble is never far away, and when a car crashes into the open grave at a funeral Dorothy is conducting, she can’t help looking into the dead driver’s shadowy life.

While Dorothy uncovers a dark truth at the heart of Edinburgh society, her daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their own struggles. Jenny’s ex-husband Craig is making plans that could shatter the Skelf women’s lives, and the increasingly obsessive Hannah has formed a friendship with an elderly professor that is fast turning deadly.

But something even more sinister emerges when a drumming student of Dorothy’s disappears, and suspicion falls on her parents. The Skelf women find themselves immersed in an unbearable darkness – but
could the real threat be to themselves?

Fast-paced, darkly funny, yet touching and tender, the Skelf family series is a welcome reboot to the classic PI novel, whilst also asking deeper questions about family, society and grief.

Publication Date: 20th August 2020

Price: £8.99

Published By: Orenda Books

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