S G MacLean Bio

Shona MacLean was born in Inverness, Scotland and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. She studied at Dingwall Academy and then on to Aberdeen University where she received an MA and a PhD in History. 

Her writing career started while living on the Banffshire coast and raising her four children. She has published two historical crime fiction series under the name S.G. MacLean, and uses Shona MacLean to write and publish historical fiction. 

As S.G MacLean, Shona is the author of the Alexander Seaton and the Damian Seeker series, both set in the 17th Century. Her first novel, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot award and shortlisted for the Saltire first book and the CWA Historical Dagger awards. The Damian Seeker series has landed her with two CWA Historical Dagger awards. 

Today, she is back living near Inverness with her husband and dog. 

Alexander Seaton 

Alexander Seaton didn’t set out to be an embittered teacher. He has led a life of many difficulties, and wanted to be a minister and wanted to marry his best friend’s sister before a fall from grace saw him lose it all and end up in a serious mental health crisis. 

The Alexander Seaton series is a set of four novels, set in Scotland and Ulster in the 1620’s and 1630’s, right before the outbreak of the English Civil War and with religious wars raging on the Continent. While each novel is a stand-alone story, each featuring a mysterious death, they come together to tell Alexander’s story, and his psychological and emotional progress. 

As the son of a Scottish blacksmith and an Irish mother, Alexander was born and raised in the town of Banff, when Calvinism was rigidly followed. A series of life changing events sees Alexander teaching in a school instead of in the ministry, and doomed to eternal damnation sees him take to the drink. 

Captain Damian Seeker 

The Damian Seeker series came through inspiration from a documentary on seventeenth century London, and the arrival of the first coffee house in the 1650’s.  MacLean’s publishers were keen to have a book set in London, and as Alexander Seaton was not the right character for this location, she had to come up with something else. 

The original London coffee houses were a place where people from all walks of life could meet, smoke a pipe, take in the new brew and exchange news and gossip. At a time of Royalist plotters, Cromwellian soldiers and intelligence agents, MacLean initially planned out a series of several characters centred around a fictional coffee house. A chat with the editor made her realise she needed a detective character, and after a walk through the misty Scottish Highlands, the Captain Damian Seeker series came to life. 

Seeker is a Yorkshire man, tough, intelligent, tall and a feared Captain in Oliver Cromwell’s guard in 1650’s London. He is loyal to the republic and is a high-level investigator responsible for internal security, tracking down conspiracies and investigating crimes, often without an authority to act. 

S.G MacLean books in order

Alexander Seaton books 

• Redemption of Alexander Seaton (2008)

• A Game of Sorrows (2010)

• Crucible of Secrets (2011)

• The Devil’s Recruit (2013)

Damien Seeker books 

• The Seeker (2015)

• The Black Friar (2016)

• Destroying Angel (2018)

• The Bear Pit (2019)

• The House of Lamentations (2020)

• The Winter List (2023

Standalone novels

• The Bookseller of Inverness (2022)

• The Cromarty Library Circle (As Shona MacLean) 2026