Scotland has a rich literary tradition spanning history, fiction, and travelogue. For historical context, Michael Lynch's Scotland: A New History is thorough and readable; Fitzroy Maclean's A Concise History of Scotland is shorter. John Prebble's books on the Highland Clearances are passionate and devastating.
James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson covers Skye, Coll, and Mull and remains one of the finest Scottish travelogues. Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy and Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (with scenes on Mull and in Edinburgh) are the essential historical novels.
For modern fiction, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting captures Edinburgh's darker side unflinchingly. James Kelman's How Late It Was How Late (1994 Booker Prize) and Alasdair Gray's Lanark are essential Glasgow reads. Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a sharp portrait of 1930s Edinburgh. Compton Mackenzie's Whisky Galore is lighter relief — the comic tale of a whisky shipwreck on a Hebridean island.