Drug addiction, murder and the adventures of a cartoon family all feature in a selection of literary works chosen to represent modern day Scotland.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh and Alasdair Gray's Lanark are on a shortlist of 10 books picked by the public as the best way to define life in Scotland.

The top titles also include The Broons Annual, which follows the lives of Sunday Post comic strip favourites Maw, Paw and the rest of the family.

Trainspotting was turned into a film

Works by Iain Banks, Ian Rankin and Alan Warner also feature in the shortlist which was compiled to celebrate World Book Day on 6 March.

A nationwide poll was held late last year to find the books that say the most about modern England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Readers were invited to vote for a book that they felt described their country most accurately.

A shortlist of 10 was chosen for each country, with one book from each list going forward to the final.

Trainspotting, which was immortalised on the big screen by actors Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle, and Iain Banks' The Crow Road, which was adapted for a BBC television drama series, are among the favourites on the Scottish shortlist.

Interlinked stories

The Broons Annual, produced by DC Thomson, and One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night, by Christopher Brookmyre, also feature.

Brookmyre's work centres around a reunion of former pupils of an ordinary Glasgow high school.

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner and Alasdair Gray's Lanark also make the shortlist.

The only woman to feature is Janet Paisley, for her collection of interlinked stories called Not for Glory.

Scotland's shortlist

The other books are: Dave Brown and Ian Mitchell's Mountain Days and Bothy Nights; Des Dillon's Me and Ma Gal; and Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin - the 11th Inspector Rebus novel.

World Book Day is a joint initiative set up by publishers, booksellers and librarians.

Listeners of BBC Radio Four's Today programme and readers of the Metro in Scotland are also able to vote for the book they feel most representative of their country.

Organisers said Scotland's shortlist was split equally between humour and darkness.