Search results for ""canongate books""

A complete volume of the writer's poetry and songs includes previously unpublished pieces, draws on extensive scholarship and Burn's own letters, and offers supplemental information about his life, early hardships, political beliefs, and literary contexts.

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A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEARForty years after John Edgar Wideman's first book of stories, comes this stunning collection that is vital reading for anyone interested in the state of America today. Its subjects range from Michael Jordan to Emmett Till, from distrust of authority to everyday grief, from childhood memories to the final day in a prison cell.A boy stands alone in his grandmother's house, unable to enter the room in which his grandfather's coffin lies, afraid the dead man may speak, afraid he won't speak. Freddie Jackson's song 'You Are My Lady' plays on the car radio as a son is brought to a prison cell in Arizona. A narrator contemplates the Atlanta child murders from 1979.Never satisfied to simply tell a story, Wideman continues to push form, with stories within stories, sentences that rise like a jazz solo with every connecting clause, voices that reflect who he is and where he's from, and an exploration of time that entangles past and present. Whether historical or contemporary, intimate or expansive, the stories here represent a pioneering American writer whose innovation and imagination know no bounds.

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Robert the Bruce had himself crowned King of Scots at Scone on a frozen March morning in 1306. After years of struggle, Scotland had been reduced to a vassal state by Edward I of England and its people lived in poverty. On the day he seized the crown Bruce renewed the fight for Scotland's freedom, and let forth a battle cry that would echo through the centuries. Using contemporary accounts, Ronald McNair Scott tells the story of Scotland's legendary leader, and one of Europe's most remarkable medieval kings. It is a story with episodes as romantic as those of King Arthur, but also one which belongs in the annals of Scottish History, and has shaped a nation.

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AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZEA GUARDIAN BEST MEMOIR OF 2023A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023AN iNEWS BEST BOOK TO GIFTJohn Niven's little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. In 2010, after years of chaotic struggle against the world, he took his own life at the age of 42.Hoping for the best while often witnessing the worst, John, his younger sister Linda and their mother, Jeanette, saw the darkest fears they had for Gary played out in drug deals, prison and bankruptcy. While his life spiralled downward and the love the Nivens shared was tested to its limit, John drifted into his own trouble in the music industry, a world where excess was often a marker of success.Tracking the lives of two brothers in changing times - from illicit cans of lager in 70s sitting rooms to ecstasy in 90s raves - O Brother is a tender, affecting and often uproariously funny story. It is about the bonds of family and how we try to keep the finest of those we lose alive. It is about black sheep and what it takes to break the ties that bind. Fundamentally it is about how families survive suicide, 'that last cry, from the saddest outpost.'

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'Chilling and poised, I loved it' MAGGIE O'FARRELLThe Breakstone family arrange themselves around their daughter Heather, and the world seems to follow: she is the greatest blessing in their lives of Manhattan luxury. But as Heather grows, her radiance attracts a dark interest and their perfect existence starts to fracture. A very different life, one raised in poverty and in violence, is beginning its own malign orbit around Heather.

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Brothers and Keepers is John Edgar Wideman's seminal memoir about two brothers - one an award-winning novelist, the other a fugitive. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother Robby, details the subsequent trials that resulted in a sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system.A gripping, unsettling account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, tenderness and guilt that connect him to his brother and measures the distance that lies between them.

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Ordesa - a small Spanish town in the Pyrenees - is where our narrator was born, a place his father loved dearly, a place suffused with memories. Now, forty-six years later, he returns to the valley with his own children on a summer vacation. His parents are dead, his marriage has ended and he's struggling to piece together the bits of himself.Single and living in an apartment he hates, clinging to snatched moments of quality time with his apathetic children, newly sober and with his career on the wane, the ghosts of the narrator's family besiege him, but also bring him hope. Out of despair, he writes this chronicle, this homage, this memoir of his family: grandparents whose photos were never taken, whose funerals were never attended, parents unable to show their love. Maybe the tragedy of life itself is not death, but truly realising the importance of family only once they've passed. Perhaps this trip to Ordesa can help him fall in love with life - his life - once more.A masterwork of autofiction from Spanish literary icon Manuel Vilas, Ordesa is a deeply moving meditation on identity, nationality, family, loss and the passing of time.

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'Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.'Rachel Carson was one of the most important environmental thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. This collection brings together previously unpublished work, essays, field journals, speeches, articles and letters to create a biography of Carson's thought: a deeply personal picture of her evolution as an environmentalist and activist.Lost Woods reveals a profound insight into the fragility of the natural world and our impact on it, and the birth of Carson's lifelong campaign to bring international attention to the monumental challenges facing us. That we are finally becoming aware of the environmental emergency is thanks in no small part to her.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING Wishing to leave behind the isolation of her Orkney island life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. She rents a loftbed in a shared flat and starts to look for work - and for love - through the screen of her phone. The Instant tells of the momentous year that follows, encountering the city's wildlife in the most unexpected places, tracing the cycles of the moon, the flight paths of migratory birds and surrendering to the addictive power of love and lust.

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WINNER OF THE JHALAK PRIZE 2023WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2023A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022: POLITICS'No memoir like it' Independent'Travis Alabanza writes with such generosity and ease even the most provocative suggestions start to seem obvious . . . Profound and funny' SHON FAYE'Will challenge, empower and move your soul' Glamour'Lucid and glorious' YRSA DALEY-WARDIn None of the Above, Travis Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them as a Black, mixed race, non-binary person. Some are deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or offensive, some celebratory; sentences that have impacted them for better and for worse; sentences that speak to the broader issues raised by a world that insists that gender must be a binary.Through these seven phrases, Travis Alabanza turns a mirror back on society, giving us reason to question the very framework in which we live and the ways we treat each other.

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Laisve is a refugee in a destroyed city-island, hunted in Raids and haunted by the spirits of her drowned mother and brother. She dives into the river and finds herself travelling between times and waterways that will connect her with people from the past and future. Among them are a group of workers constructing a colossal monument to freedom for a young and bustling nation. But exactly what - and whom - will that liberty represent?As Laisve drifts into their histories, she schools seekers in the ways of dreams, love and the ultimate aim of liberty: to free the next generation from the chains of this one.

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Martin Luther King Jr is a political visionary, human rights activist, preacher, scholar and martyr. Chaym Smith is his dark mirror, a violent, cynical criminal with a mind and talent to mimic King's. When Smith begins to act as King's double at rallies, the contradictions and strange similarities between the two men set one question into sharp focus - is evil inherent or a product of circumstance? Dreamer is a multi-layered masterpiece, capturing Civil Rights-era America in a snapshot of racism and brutality, revolution and hope.

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In the village of Cronchie, a wealthy family are found brutally murdered. The Devil Stone, an heirloom rumoured to bring death if removed from their home, is the only thing stolen. The key suspects are known satanists. But when the investigating officer disappears, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to investigate. Caplan knows she is being punished for a minor misdemeanour when she is seconded to the Highlands, but she's confident she can quickly solve the murders and return home to her fractious family. But as she closes in on the truth, it is suddenly her life, not her career, that is in danger.

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The princess is taking her over, bodily and mentally. Dr Babs Halliwell is no longer herself.A young girl is plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea. In her diaries, she chronicles the intrigues of courtly life and her own extraordinary existence.Two hundred years later, the Red Queen's ghost haunts Dr Babs Halliwell, an Oxford academic obsessed with her memoirs and possessed by the many parallels with her own complicated past. But why and how does she keep the Red Queen's story alive?The inimitable Margaret Drabble offers a rich and atmospheric historical novel, where the dead wander among the living and ask what it means to be remembered.

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1919, Siberia.Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under military rule, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian railway. One night a stranger, Samarin, appears from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison, insisting a cannibal is on his trail. Only Anna, a beautiful young widow, trusts his story. When a local shaman is found dead, suspicion and terror engulf the isolated community, which harbours a secret of its own . . .

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Introducing Professor Teigan Craft, a neurodiverse forensic psychologist getting into the minds of Birmingham''s most twisted killers.No one has seen reclusive Emma Matheson for years. But when her mummified remains are found in the cellar of a property in Birmingham during a renovation, the chilling discovery raises more questions than answers.Forensic psychologist Professor Teigan ''Tig'' Craft from Central University is called in to assist DCI Steve Thompson''s team with the investigation, and her shrewd observations on her first police case quickly profile a ruthlessly efficient killer. So ruthless they have struck more than once? As Teigan uncovers a number of cold murder cases involving young women linked by geography and time to Emma''s terrible fate, Thompson is unconvinced by her theories and unconventional style. Can they learn to work together to catch a serial killer before another tragedy strikes?

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Painter and amateur sleuth Georgia O''Keeffe investigates a tragic death when she returns to Taos in the second instalment of this twisty historical mystery set in the 1930s by multi award-winning author Kathryn Lasky.Step aside Miss Marple, Eugenia Potter, and Kinsey Millhone - Georgia O''Keeffe is the new sleuth in town! Award-winning author Katherine Hall PageNew Mexico, 1935. Painter Georgia O''Keeffe is at her friend Mabel Dodge Luhan''s home, Los Gallos, a house inhabited by a colorful range of artists, authors and society figures, to attend the memorial service of the renowned writer D.H. Lawrence.Georgia has been commissioned to design the stained-glass windows for the small memorial chapel in Lawrence''s honor. But when she checks to see how the light comes through the glass, another much more horrible sight awaits her: beloved Navajo potter Flora Namingha is dead, her face smashed in with a stone . . .With

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Angela''s new case is full of dark secrets and scandal, but shocking events closer to home prove to be her biggest challenge yet . . .Nobody in Chouteau Forest expected one of their most prominent citizens, socialite Selwyn Skipton, to be found dead in such salacious circumstances: strangled on satin bedsheets, a red letter A brutally stapled to his chest, in his private apartment above the Chouteau Forest Chocolate Shoppe.Selwyn was a good man. He gave to charity, supported local causes, and was married to his wife for more than twenty years. What did he do to deserve such a terrible end?As Death Investigator Angela Richman investigates, she uncovers Selwyn''s dark secret, but also faces an unexpected, chilling conundrum closer to home . . .

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Zubaida is on a journey to unearth the past. It will lead her from the corridors of Harvard to the scorching deserts of Pakistan, and the bones of an ancient whale. It will carry her back to Bangladesh, and the dark horrors of a ship-breaking yard. Here - deep inside a beached ocean liner, steeped in mystery and tragedy - lies the key to her story. And a lifeline to the man she loves, but whose heart she may never win back.Echoing with loneliness and longing, The Bones of Grace is a story of lost love and conflicted identity; of the urgent need to discover who we are, before we can truly belong anywhere and truly love anyone.

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In this astounding book, David Eagleman entertains forty fictional possibilities of life beyond death. With wit and humanity, he asks the key questions about existence, hope, technology and love. These stories are full of big ideas and bold imagination.This audiobook assembles a stellar cast of readers who bring the scenarios of SUM brilliantly alive: Gillian Anderson, Emily Blunt, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Jack Davenport, Lisa Dwan, David Eagleman, Noel Fielding, Kerry Fox, Stephen Fry, Clarke Peters, Lemn Sissay and Harriet Walter.

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