Nina Allan Books in Order

A critical study rather than a novel, this book examines how madness, illness, and death appear across Vladimir Nabokov's fiction. It is a focused academic work for readers interested in Allan's scholarship as well as her imaginative writing.

Allan's first collection gathers subtle, eerie stories rooted in recognisable places and lives. The title novella, along with pieces like Terminus and The Vicar with Seven Rigs, shows her early gift for turning small disturbances into lasting unease.

One of Allan's time-bent Martin Newland stories, this piece follows a younger Martin living in the shadow of an older brother and a reality that won't hold still. It blends family unease with the eerie logic of alternate lives.

This linked collection follows Martin Newland through time slips, altered histories, and parallel versions of his life. Watches, grief, and the mysterious Owen Andrews tie the stories together, giving the book the feel of a haunting novel in fragments.

A compact early story in which Allan takes an ordinary surface and lets something darker show through. It is atmospheric, unsettling work, built less on shock than on the slow feeling that reality has slipped a little sideways.

Seven stories, including the title piece about young Melodie and the unsettling Ballantine, make up this collection. Allan moves through future England, private grief, and quiet horrors, letting each story feel intimate even when the world starts to tilt.

In these linked stories, horror film star Ruby Castle appears in fragments, rumours, and other people's memories. The book circles fame, obsession, and tragedy, building a portrait that grows stranger each time reality and fantasy overlap.

This novella reworks the myth of Arachne through a science fictional lens. Set against the fierce landscape of southern Greece, it is a story about art, ambition, rivalry, and what happens when creative desire becomes a dangerous transformation.

Set in the unsettled aftermath of war, this novella follows Dennis Beaumont, an idealistic man drifting badly off course. Allan mixes psychological damage, class tension, and uncanny folklore into a brief story with the weight of a much larger novel.

After a minor accident alters his perceptions, university-bound Willy Randle becomes convinced that the people around him are not what they seem. His search for answers leads him toward Irongrove Lodge and a nightmare that keeps deepening.

Set in the uneasy borderland between an old village and the sprawl of a major airport, this novella follows lives shaped by change, displacement, and longing. Allan turns a very local landscape into something tender, expansive, and quietly uncanny.

In a near future scarred by ecological collapse, a child's disappearance links illegal smartdog racing, buried violence, and a distant young woman heading toward an uncertain fate. Allan turns several storylines into a tense, emotional puzzle.

When Julie returns twenty years after vanishing, she tells her sister Selena she has been living on another planet. The novel balances family trauma, memory, and possible alien contact, never letting you settle on one easy explanation.

Andrew Garvie, a gifted dollmaker, begins corresponding with Bramber Winters, a woman confined to an institution on Bodmin Moor. Their growing bond, and the eerie fairy tales of Ewa Chaplin, turn this into a strange, tender rescue story.

This collection gathers fourteen stories from across more than a decade of Allan's work, from early pieces to A Princess of Mars. It is a strong map of her range, mixing speculative fiction, ghostly unease, intimate character work, and formal play.

Photographer Cath returns to the Isle of Bute to document murder houses and is drawn back into a childhood familicide. As she and newcomer Alice reopen the case, island folklore and memory make the past feel dangerously alive.

Rachel's boyfriend Frank disappears after falling deeper into online conspiracies and talk of an alien war. With help from private detective Robin, she follows clues through Bach, paranoia, and a pulp science fiction story that may not be fiction at all.

Set in Aberdeen in 1934, this novel begins with eight-year-old Helen Priestly sent out to buy bread and never coming home. Allan uses the real case to explore neighbourhood life, grief, and the uneasy line between record and story.