Sally Magnusson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Children's Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Sally Magnusson is a Scottish writer, author, and broadcaster.

She has done everything from writing fiction and nonfiction books to founding Playlist for Life, a charity, and presenting flagship news and current affairs programs on the BBC. In 2020 Playlist for Life was named overall winner of the GSK Impact Awards. In 2024 it was named Scottish Charity of the Year.

She first found the power that personal music could have for people who lived with dementia while caring for her mother. After her mother passed she wrote Where Memories Go, a campaigning memoir. She learned while researching it that personal music’s power was a real phenomenon that was also backed up by scientific research.

Sally established Playlist for Life through a desire to be able to share the things that she had learned with other families who were dealing with dementia. Magnusson was the chair of the charity for seven years and is still on the board in the position of honorary president, continuing to support its mission.

The author holds five honorary degrees from various Scottish Universities. She was given an MBE in 2023 for her work with dementia. Sally is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

Her parents are Icelandic journalist/broadcaster Magnus Magnusson and her mother is Mamie Baird, a Scottish newspaper journalist. Sally grew up in Glasgow with houses that were always full of stories. She would later be a newspaper reporter and broadcast journalist, making other people’s experiences and stories into articles, interviews, programs, and books.

She was brought up in Scotland but has always felt a sense of connection to her homeland of Iceland. That’s where her grandparents started their family before they moved to Edinburgh in 1930. She has talked about this in her memoir Dreaming of Iceland: The Lure of a Family Legend, and set her first adult novel The Sealwoman’s Gift in the country during the 17th century. The Shapeshifter’s Daughter also features the author’s Icelandic heritage.

In 2014, Sally was the recipient of the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for Writing. She was also shortlisted for the Saltire Literary Book of the Year Award for Where Memories Go. She is married to her husband Norman. They have children and reside together in Scotland in the countryside.

Sally studied English Literature and Language at the University of Edinburgh. After that she joined The Scotsman newspaper in 1979 as a graduate trainee reporter before joining the Sunday Standard of Glasgow as a news and feature writer.

Sally would work as a reporter on the weekly TV show Current Account for BBC Scotland and then was invited to join Sixty Minutes’ presenting team in London for the new BBC1 daily news magazine. After the show did not do well, Sally presented London Plus for a year. She then became part of the Breakfast Time red sofa in 1985, serving as an anchor for a decade. She would begin presenting Reporting Scotland from Glasgow in 1998 for BBC Scotland.

Sally has traveled for the BBC’s Songs of Praise, presented current affairs documentaries for the BBC, and presented the Friday edition of BBC2’s Daily Politics. She has been anchor for a variety of BBC1 daytime programs, such as ‘Britain’s Secret Shame’ and ‘Britain’s Streets’. Magnusson presented A Family of My Own as well, a series on adoption and fostering.

She won a Scottish BAFTA in 1996 and a Royal Television Society Award in 1998. A BBC Scotland documentary received a Scottish BAFTA nomination in 2009. In 2007, she was given a place in the Scottish Academy of Merit by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland for services rendered to the media. In 2022, she led the BBC’s live commentary of Queen Elizabeth II’s lying at rest in Edinburgh and commentated on the ceremony of King Charles III receiving the Honours of Scotland.

In 2024, the BBC released a documentary called Sally Magnusson: Alzheimer’s, A Cure, and Me. She is a conference host and presented on radio for many years, presenting Tracing Your Roots on Radio 4 and Sally on Sunday on Radio Scotland. She presented Sunday Morning and then a number of interview series, such as Dad Made Me Laugh. She has also presented Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and Radio 3’s Night Waves.

The Ninth Child is a 2020 novel by Sally Magnusson. Looking for a new book to read that puts together Scottish folklore and hidden history? Check out this book that author Sarah Haywood praises as ‘An absolute triumph’.

In the Loch Katrine waterworks in 1856, a Highland wilderness is being transformed into an industrial wasteland quickly. Isabel Aird is shocked when her husband is picked doctor to a waterworks being built miles from the city. Isabel has had a series of miscarriages but finds comfort in the type of place where she can feel her unborn children’s presence and figure out what her Victorian society life is for.

Clean water is being attempted to be brought to Glasgow, but the tunneling and digging is so deep that some think that the land of faery itself could be disturbed. This is a place where the membrane between the modern world and the old unseen places is very thin.

Isabel is pregnant and can only wait, but there is a darker presence out there that has also decided to wait. This book is inspired by the strange death of minister Robert Kirke in the 17th century, set in an era two centuries later when engineering was doing well but women were not doing as well comparatively. Find out what happens by getting a copy of The Ninth Child from Sally Magnusson!

The Shapeshifter’s Daughter is a 2025 novel by Sally Magnusson. This is a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick 2025 and it was also longlisted for the 2025 Highland Book Prize. Check it out and see what you think!

Hel was the queen of the underworld before she was a hideous monster. She was cast out of Asgard as a girl by Odin the Allfather, and now is destined to be the goddess of death. She is a half beauty and a half crone who has ruled for ages in the darkness of Niflheim, welcoming death’s travelers to her icy prison. When a memory shifts in her one day, she looks for the sun in Midgard, the place that humans have made home.

Helen Firth has a terminal cancer diagnosis and decides to go back to Orkney after 40 years so that she can make peace with the past. Thorfinn Coffin will help her deal with the reasons she has returned and as the two spend time together, they get closer.

Meanwhile, Hel is intrigued by Helen. She has a past to deal with, but will she be shocked to find that she is more than who she believes she is? Read The Shapeshifter’s Daughter to find out!