The Edinburgh skating club is a fiction book that tells the story of one woman, eighteenth-century poet Alison Cockburn, and her challenge given by her good friend Katherine Hume to live as a man in order to infiltrate the infamous male-dominated society, the Edinburgh Skating Club. This mission will take them through the sights, sounds and faces of Enlightenment Edinburgh, from Old Town to New Town and from joyous friendship to a deep affection that will shape their futures.

And in the present, art historian Claire Sharp receives a mysterious request: to settle once and for all the true provenance of the iconic painting Reverend Robert Walker (1755 - 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch, well-known as ‘The Skating Minister’, part of the National Galleries of Scotland collection.

Imaginative, romantic and ultimately moving, this time-shift adventure celebrates the women overlooked by history and, above all, love, in all its unexpected forms.

Edinburgh-born author Michelle Sloan has been fascinated since she was a child and visited the National Galleries of Scotland with her father and the story behind it inspired her to write her first adult book. Sloan trained as a primary school teacher and studied drama and arts journalism.  The picture book The Fourth Bonniest Baby in Dundee was her first publication.