For the Love of Willie

One of the List's Best Scottish Books of All Time

Peggy is sixteen, ambitious and wants to get a job to help her rise above her current predicament. Soon, she is employed at Willie Roper's corner shop. But before long, her situation goes from bad to worse as she falls in love with her married, older employer.

Looking back to her misspent youth, Peggy, now in a psychiatric hospital, is turning her teenage exploits into a romance novel and is trying to get her bedfellow, the duchess, to read the manuscript – but she would rather read a Mills and Boon.

As we read both sides of the tale, we learn about the fate of young Peggy and how she came to be in the duchess's company; the novel culminates in a surprising narrative punch.

'A book that remains both shocking and quietly revolutionary' – Heather Parry

'Agnes Owens' hallmarks have been a frank irony, a deadpan gothic quality and a down-to-earth insistence on the surreality of most people's normality' – Ali Smith

Published to celebrate Agnes Owens' centenary year in 2026.



Agnes Owens was married twice and raised seven children, and worked as a cleaner, typist and factory worker. Her books include People Like That and For the Love of Willie, which was shortlisted for the 1998 Stakis Prize. Her short stories appeared alongside those of her friends and fellow authors James Kelman and Alasdair Gray in Lean Tales. Bad Attitudes, which consists of two novellas ('Bad Attitudes' and 'Jen's Party'), was longlisted for the 2003 Saltire Literary Awards. She died in 2014.

Heather Parry is a Glasgow-based writer and editor, originally from South Yorkshire. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She is also the author of a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You, and her first nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, was released in 2024 as part of 404 Ink's Inklings series.



'I cannot wait for a new generation of readers to re-discover the work of Agnes Owens'



'Agnes Owens is part of a Golden Age in Scottish literature'



'Agnes Owens' hallmarks have been a frank irony, a deadpan gothic quality and a down-to-earth insistence on the surreality of most people's normality'