Dead Lies Dreaming by Charles Stross. Supernatural horror crime caper, part of Laundry files series but without any of the actual Laundry. Ok, pacey and quite entertaining but short on interesting ideas. Characters felt quite cartoonish and not hugely interesting, with one or two exceptions.
The King in the North-The Pictish Realms of Fortriu and Ce, by Gordon Noble and Nicholas Evans. A compendium of articles mainly about a recent archeology/history project investigating the Northern Picts, covering the Black Isle down to Stonehaven.
I'd thought i was going to be reading a history that i'd just not learned much about, but it turns out that this is proper Dark Ages stuff on the edges of history. There's also not a huge amount of archeology. It's not pop history but it's also not academic Journals, so it was quite easy to read (occasionally having to look up words, like "vallum") without having that tendency to fill in unknowable details. I really enjoyed it.