My second novel, The Ossians, is back from the dead today. My publisher Orenda Books have produced a brand new edition with a beautiful cover by Mark Swan and a terrific introduction by Val McDermid. Special thanks to Karen Sullivan at Orenda, as always.

You can buy the paperback here or at your local independent bookshop.
You can buy the ebook here.

What is The Ossians about?

Connor is twenty-four: brilliant, broken, and out of control. He’s the swaggering frontman of The Ossians, a Scottish indie band on the brink of signing a major record deal.

Desperate to make their mark, they set off on a two-week winter tour across Scotland’s cities and hinterlands ― a last-ditch attempt to find fame, purpose, and themselves.

But the tour soon spirals into a surreal, chaotic odyssey. From seedy bars and snowbound towns to a final, defining Glasgow gig, the band hurtles through a whirlwind of seagull massacres, botched drug deals, a mysterious stalker, radioactive beaches, bomb-testing ranges, epileptic fits, riotous Russian submariners, deadly storms, epiphanies, regular beatings and random shootings.

Raw, darkly funny and wild with energy, The Ossians is a gloriously anarchic story of rock’n’roll obsession, national identity and self-destruction ― and what it means to belong: in a band, in a country, in a life unravelling at speed.

What did people say about The Ossians back in the day?

Folk were losing their shit (not really, but they said nice things):

‘Packed with seedy, sticky bars, sullen punters and morose reflections in deteriorating weather, there is an atmospheric beauty to The Ossians’ ― Independent on Sunday

‘The authentic ring of a man who’s been there’ ― The Guardian

‘Johnstone is good at describing the excitement, boredom, sniping and bonhomie of a touring band at the transit-van end of the career arc’ ― The Times

‘A blast’ ― Scotland on Sunday

‘A powerful and moving commentary on the country and its defining myths’ ― Ian Rankin

‘A drug-fuelled, counterclockwise state-of-the-nation rock ’n’ roll tour captures where we were at better than any modern novel I’ve read’ ― Irvine Welsh

‘So exhilaratingly authentic, you can hear the chords and smell the vomit’ ― Christopher Brookmyre

‘A gripping, compelling road trip around modern Scotland’ ― Niall Griffiths

‘This is This Is Spinal Tap for Scotland’s lost generation. Johnstone has taken a small story of a small band lost in a small country and created an epic’ ― Ewan Morrison

‘Entertains in the uncharted corners of an unseen Scotland’ ― The List