Written at 33.9° SSet at 57.5° N
I'm Iwan Ross. I write gothic mysteries set in the mist of the Scottish Highlands, where old houses remember and the dead stay because they choose to. My first, Elm Brook Manor, has found more than 15,000 readers around the world.
The books
You don't need to know a title to find your way in. Pick the kind of story you're in the mood for. Every book links to its page with buying options for Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and more.
The Haunted Highlands Series, also called The McTavish Chronicles. Author Coby McTavish moves to the Highlands to rebuild his life and finds the dead have other plans. Atmospheric gothic mysteries with ghosts, curses and love that outlasts death.
Free ebookElm Brook ManorBook 1 · Start here
The Haunting of Serpent's ManorBook 2
Reader favouriteKeepers of the LighthouseBook 3
Serenity FallsBook 4
The Mourning RingBook 5
One for SorrowBook 6“Gripping from the start to the end… a perfect balance between atmosphere and momentum.”A reader on Elm Brook Manor
Prefer one big read? Get the series as Volume One (Books 1–3), Volume Two (Books 4–6) or all six together.
The Highlands University of Ghostology. Britain is losing its ghosts, and Coby McTavish is handed a lectern and told to find them. Darkly comic, with Tudor royalty in the corridors.
Dreams that aren't safe and a mansion on a storm-wracked coast. One sitting, lights on.
A masked city with a quiet rebellion, and a man with sixty minutes to escape a building set for demolition.
My memoir. A childhood where nowhere was home, and what it took to keep going.
What corporate taught me
Tell the story.
For years I was a lead technical writer at a payments company. The job came with an endless run of presentations, and my manager took every one of them apart.
One day I looked at yet another deck and finally saw what was missing. It wasn't telling the story. I binned it and built a new one around the story instead. When I delivered it, my manager had nothing to say, and the senior e-commerce manager sat there with her jaw open.
That was the lesson I'd come for, so I resigned and started writing full time. I never had a mentor, so I taught myself the rest: the covers, the formatting, the metadata, even the software I use to keep my series straight.
Everything I make now starts in the same place. Find the story first, and the rest follows.
For booksellers, publishers & press
My books sell to readers in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. I'd like Cape Town and the rest of South Africa to have them too. If you run a bookshop, a distribution list, a festival, a book club or a radio slot, I'd love to talk.
I'm based in Cape Town and available for signings, talks, book club visits and interviews.
Also from my desk
For authors
Editorial reviews and back-cover blurbs for independent authors. I read the whole book, then write the line that sells it. Backed by copy-editing and feature journalism qualifications from the University of Cape Town.
Visit BlurbCraft Studio →For writers & editors
Readers spotted continuity slips in my books: an eye colour that changed, a name that shifted. So I built a story bible that tracks characters, threads and timelines across one book or a whole series, with a ledger of every continuity problem until it's fixed. Windows app, free for 30 days.
See StoryLedger →For the kitchen
The cooking blog I run with my wife, Marna, a former professional chef. Plenty of the international dishes on it are mine, and a range of Scottish recipes is on the way.
Cook with Smoking Chimney →
