Search results for ""canongate books""

'Some five years ago, I sought solace from the ways of the world by stepping into the embrace of an ancient oak tree . . . From the first meeting, there grew a strange sense of attachment I did not consciously recognise until I later began to realise the significance that trees, and oak trees especially, can have in our lives.'James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying the Honywood Oak. A colossus of a tree, it would have been a sapling when Magna Carta was signed. Initially visiting the tree for escape and solitude, in time he learns to study it more closely. He examines how our long-standing dependency on oak trees has developed and morphed into myth and legend.The Oak Papers is a stunning, meditative and healing book about the lessons we can learn from the natural world, if only we slow down enough to listen.

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The Secret History of Here is the story of a single place in the Scottish Borders. The site on which Alistair Moffat's farm now stands has been occupied since prehistoric times. Walking this landscape you can feel the presence and see the marks of those who lived here before. But it is also the story of everywhere. In uncovering the history of one piece of land, Moffat shows how history is all around us, if only we have the eyes to see it. Taking the form of a journal of a year, this is a walk through the centuries as much as the seasons, offering a glimpse into the lives of those who came before, as well as those who live here now.

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What are we not seeing?Our naked eyes see only a thin sliver of reality. We are blind in comparison to the x-rays that peer through skin, the mass spectrometers that detect the dead inside the living, or the high-tech surveillance systems that see with artificial intelligence.And we are blind compared to the animals that can see in infrared, or ultraviolet, or with 360-degree vision. These animals live in the same world we do, but they see something quite different when they look around. In The Reality Bubble, Ziya Tong illuminates this hidden world and takes us on a journey to examine ten of humanity's biggest blind spots. What she reveals is not on the things we didn't evolve to see but, more dangerously, the blindness of modern society. Fast-paced, utterly fascinating and deeply humane, this vitally important new book gives voice to the sense we've all had - that there is more to the world than meets the eye.

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Reconciliation, published here for the first time in the English language, is an understated masterpiece of the Japanese 'I novel' tradition (a confessional literary form). Naoya Shiga's novella is a quietly devastating reflection on all kinds of reconciliation: from his own familial reunion, to the universal need to reconcile ourselves to the inevitability of ageing, loss and death.

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'Bailey's prose sparkles' The Times'Puzzle solvers and historians will love this mystery' Booklist'Murderously dark and delightful' MELISSA BAILEYSUPERSTITION. MURDER. VENGEANCE.Tabitha Hart earns a scandalous living in London, with whichever gentleman has enough coin for her company. But in the summer of 1752, her mother urgently summons her home to the village of Netherlea and, with reluctance, she returns. However, she is greeted by the news that her mother has died in disturbing circumstances.Finding cryptic notes in her mother's almanack, Tabitha is determined to discover the truth, but the superstitious villagers are wary of her. Only the enigmatic Nat Starling is prepared to join her, as she sets out to uncover her mother's killer. But soon the summer draws to a close and snow sets in, cutting off Netherlea from the outside world. As an unknown killer prophesies their deaths, Tabitha and Nat now face the darkest hours of their lives.

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In Letters of Note: Fathers, Shaun Usher collects together remarkable correspondence by and about fathers, including proud parental words of love, advice from experienced dads to new ones, as well as letters from both frustrated and adoring offspring.Includes letters by:Anne Frank, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jawaharlal Nehru, Groucho Marx, Che Guevara, Ted Hughes Katherine Mansfield, Fergal Keane, Arthur Conan Doyle, Samuel Bernstein & many more

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I am the product of a blank generation. I live for kicks. I live for me.Birkenhead, 1979. The Pack, a violent mob of Stanley-knife-wielding football hooligans, follow their team across the Northern wastelands to their away games - earning a reputation as the nastiest crew in the Third Division. For the young working-class men with no way out, their lives revolve around the fashion, the music and the mayhem. But for two of them, Carty and Elvis, escaping towards a different future might mean leaving each other behind.Quickly gaining cult status when first published, Awaydays is both a powerful evocation of a time and a culture, and a poignant coming-of-age story about finding your identity, escaping your circumstances and the unspoken intensity of male friendships.

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AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZEA GUARDIAN BEST MEMOIR OF 2023A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023John Niven''s little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. After years of chaotic struggle against the world took his own life at the age of 42.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 best 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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Based on over eighty hours of interviews with Lovelock and unprecedented access to his personal papers and scientific archive, Jonathan Watts has written a definitive and revelatory biography of a fascinating, sometimes contradictory man.James Lovelock is best known as the father of Gaia Theory, the idea that life on Earth is a self-sustaining system in which organisms interact with their environments to maintain a habitable ecosystem.Lovelock''s life was a chronicle of twentieth-century science, and somehow he seemed to have a hand in much of it. During the Second World War he worked at the National Medical Research Institute, where his life-long interest in chemical tracing began. In the 1960s he worked at NASA. He worked for MI5 and MI6 during the Cold War. He was a science advisor to the oil giant Shell, who he warned as early as 1966 that fossil fuels were causing serious harm to the environment. He invented the technology that found the hole in the Ozone layer.

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THE INSTANT IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERA GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024A NEW STATESMAN FICTION HIGLIGHT OF 2024AN OBSERVER FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024AN IRISH TIMES FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024What if we ride out tonight?What if we ride out and never once look back?October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen

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One missing child. Two murders. A midsummer nightmare. A woman enters a Glasgow police station to report her son missing, but no record can be found of the boy. When Detective Harry McCoy, seconded from the cop shop across town, discovers the family is part of the cultish Church of Christ''s Suffering, he suspects there is more to Michael''s disappearance than meets the eye.Meanwhile reports arrive of a string of poisonings of down-and-outs across the city. The dead are men who few barely notice, let alone care about - but, as McCoy is painfully aware, among this desperate community is his own father.Even as McCoy searches for the missing boy, he must conceal from his colleagues the real reason for his presence - to investigate corruption in the station. Some folk pray for justice. Detective Harry McCoy hasn''t got time to wait.

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''Poetic, candid and utterly compelling'' - FREYA BROMLEY''Absolutely remarkable'' - LYNN BARBER''Reads with the tension of a thriller, illuminating the world of elite sport, both the struggle and sacrifice'' - CATHY RENTZENBRINK''An embodied water odyssey'' - LIDIA YUKNAVITCHThis is not a story about making history.Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell was once a double British Champion and the first Black woman ever to swim for Great Britain. As her body and mind are sharpened through gruelling training, press scrutiny and the harshness of adolescence, Rebecca charts her career''s ascent and her singular love of the water, before explaining why she walked away from it all.A compulsive and unforgettable study of intensity, These Heavy Black Bones meditates on Blackness, identity and the ecstasy of peak physical performance, and lays bare the pressures within the swimming world.

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In May 1924, the BBC broadcast a miracle to the world: a wild nightingale singing a duet with a remarkable young cellist called Beatrice Harrison. Over a million people tuned in to hear this live performance, which Beatrice repeated with a nightingale for the BBC every spring until 1942. These broadcasts transformed the public interest in nightingales - a species already in decline. If Beatrice''s duets with the nightingales touched a chord with the world, her own life proved to be as musical, free-spirited and inspiring. From her early years as a musical prodigy to recording with the most important composers of the day and playing for the wounded in the Second World War, this timely reissue of Patricia Cleveland-Peck''s classic book recounts Beatrice''s rich life vividly and features a new introduction by Maria Popova.

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It's midsummer's day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle's friend and fellow Infinite, MC², is arrested for the crime!To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it's too late?

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A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2016Shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2017Longlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 20171950. A teenage girl is brutally murdered in a forest. But, somehow, her baby survives.1976. A mysterious and charming young man returns to the remote coastal village of Mulderrig, seeking answers about the mother who, it was said, had abandoned him on the steps of a Dublin orphanage.With the help of its oldest and most eccentric inhabitant, he will force the village to give up its ghosts. Nothing, not even the dead, can stay buried forever.

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In The Pattern in the Carpet the award-winning and beloved writer Margaret Drabble explores her own family story alongside the history of her favourite childhood pastime - the jigsaw. The result is an original and moving personal history about remembrance, growing older, the importance of play and the ways in which we make sense of our past by ornamenting our present.

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It turns out that two is a million more kids than one.Adam Mansbach famously gave voice to two of parenting's primal struggles in Go the Fuck to Sleep and You Have to Fucking Eat. Now Fuck, Now There Are Two of You tackles a new addition to the family and all the fears and frustrations attendant to the simple, math-defying fact that two is a million more kids than one. As you probably know by now, you shouldn't read it to a child.

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'Powerful' Barack Obama'Searing' New York TimesHow do you comfort a man who has just lost his best friend?How does it feel to see fear in your wife's eyes?What does it mean to come home? In one of the most acclaimed and celebrated collections of stories for years, Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.

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In a single eye-opening year two women, worlds apart, experience parallel awakenings. In New York, Jane Takagi-Little lands a job producing a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, exposing some unsavoury truths - about the meat industry and herself. In Tokyo, housewife Akiko Ueno diligently prepares the recipes from Jane's programme. Struggling to please her husband, she increasingly doubts her commitment to the life she has fallen into. As Jane and Akiko both battle to assert their individuality on opposite sides of the globe, they are drawn together in a startling story of strength, courage and love.

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Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize 2013.At the tender age of fourteen, Richard Holloway left his home town of Alexandria, north of Glasgow, and travelled hundreds of miles to be educated and trained for the priesthood at an English monastery. By the age of twenty-five he had been ordained and was working in the slums of Glasgow. Through the forty years that followed, Richard touched the lives of many people as he rose to one of the highest positions in the Anglican Church. But behind his confident public faith lay a restless heart and an inquisitive mind. Poignant, wise and fiercely honest, Leaving Alexandria is a remarkable memoir of a life defined by faith but plagued by doubt.

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'Brimming with magic, passion and history' New York Times'Captivating from the very first page' Jennifer EganShortlisted for the Fiction category in the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean LiteratureShortlisted for the Kitschies Red Tentacle AwardDiscovered amidst a tangle of sea grape trees, Moshe Fisher's provenance is a thing of myth and mystery; his unusual appearance, with blueish, translucent skin and duo-toned hair, only serves to compound his mystique. Equally feared and ridiculed by peers as he grows up, he finds a surprising kindred soul in the striking and bold Arrienne Christie, but their complex relationship is fraught with obstacles that tear them apart as powerfully as they are drawn together. Beginning in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica's independence from colonial rule, A Tall History of Sugar's epic love story sweeps between a rural Jamaica, scarred by the legacies of colonialism, and an England increasingly riven by race riots and class division.

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'Completely original. Unique, in fact' Philip PullmanI Get Loud, the follow-up to the exquisite I Go Quiet, sees the introverted heroine go out into the world as she gains confidence in her voice and makes a friend for the first time. It is a tale of the emboldening nature of the imagination, the redemptive power of friendship and why we should all embrace our own beautiful, singular weirdness.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATIONA BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES, WATERSTONES AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST READBeastly is the 40,000-year story of our changing kinship with the animal world - from the smallest microbe to the largest creature that ever lived. Exploring this relationship through history, culture, science and inspiring examples, Carew makes the passionate case that animals are the key to the planet''s future health, but only if we can save them.

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'Inventive and original' The Times'Fans of intelligent historical fiction will be enthralled' Hilary MantelShortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionLonglisted for the Orwell Prize for Political FictionThree journeys. One road.England, 1348. A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a proctor sets out for a monastery in Avignon and a young ploughman in search of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais. In the other direction comes the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe.To Calais, In Ordinary Time is an exploration of love, death and power, against the backdrop of catastrophe.

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Five thousand years after leaving the Cretan Labyrinth, the Minotaur - or M as he is known to his colleagues - is working as a line chef at Grub's Rib in Carolina, keeping his horns down, trying in vain to put his past behind him. He leads an ordered lifestyle in a shabby trailer park where he tinkers with cars, writes and re-writes to-do lists and observes the haphazard goings on around him. Outwardly controlled, M tries to hide his emotional turmoil as he is transported deeper into the human world of deceit, confusion and need.

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In Letters of Note: New York, Shaun Usher curates a collection of extraordinary written exchanges about the Big Apple, from the marvelling of wide-eyed newcomers and the devoted outpourings of native citizens, to the frustrated outcries of the dispossessed and the fond reminiscences of old-timers. Includes letters by: Italo Calvino, Ralph Ellison, Kahlil Gibran, Helen Keller, Martin Scorsese, Saum Song Bo, Anaïs Nin & many more

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'England's funniest crime writer' The Times'Charming and full of surprises' BooklistStrange things happen in the picture-postcard English village of Lindsay Carfax. When a young man falls into a quarry, it takes nine days to find the body. When rowdy hippies descend on the village, they're given nine days to leave. When an outspoken schoolmaster is kidnapped for nine days, he stays eerily quiet after his release.Now Albert Campion has come to town - meaning to investigate all this strangeness. But whoever is behind the unusual goings-on quickly makes it very clear that his nosing around is not welcome. Undeterred by threats, Campion is determined to expose the criminal masterminds hiding in this sleepy village.

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'Ms. O'Connell is, quite simply, a hell of a storyteller, a master of plot, a tart observer of the social scene' FRANK McCOURT'Few pages are turned without revealing new, surprising twists . . . a clever, enjoyable read' The TimesSIX FRIENDS. THREE SECRETS. ONE MURDER. Maggie is set to marry the man of her dreams. Desperate for one wild last night out on the town before her big day, she gathers her closest girlfriends to hit the bars and party until dawn.Only things go wrong - horribly wrong.When Angie's body is found in the park the following morning, their night to remember quickly becomes a nightmare they all wish they could forget. Under police scrutiny, how far will Maggie and her friends go to keep their secrets? Far enough to protect a killer?

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FAMILIES. SOMETIMES THEY'RE A BLOODY NIGHTMARE . . . Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours and self-denial. Loads of self-denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clara gets attacked on the way home from a party, she and her brother Rowan finally discover why they can't sleep, can't eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation and can't go outside unless they're smothered in Factor 50.With a visit from their lethally louche Uncle Will and an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically.

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'He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed 'Truth! Truth! Truth!' we have no choice left but confess - he was a woman.'A young man in the court of the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, the beautiful Orlando seems to belong everywhere and nowhere. One morning, Orlando awakens transformed - transported into the eighteenth century, and the body of a woman.One of the twentieth century's defining imaginings of queer identity, Orlando is a book of radical possibilities -boy and girl, past and future, nature and magic, life and history, love and literature. One of the most thrilling love letters in all literature, it trespasses thrillingly over the borders of place, time and self.

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In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines and we shiver when the cold wind blows.For over a century, the murder ballad has held a prominent place in American roots music, although its origins lie in Britain and Scandinavia. These songs tell raw stories of unrequited love, betrayal, violence, life, and death. Inspired by classics of the genre such as "Pretty Polly" and "Long Black Veil," as well as contemporary songs by Steve Earle, Nick Cave, and Gillian Welch, Erik Kriek has crafted five graphic narratives that embody the spirit of the murder ballad tradition and prove that the deepest darkness harbors tales that daylight would never tolerate.Eerie, bloody, wistful, and strange, In the Pines will lead you down to the very heart of the forest - where the wild roses grow and where the ghosts wander, their long-buried secrets unfurling in song.

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Tom Gauld has created countless iconic strips for the Guardian over the course of his illustrious career. A master of condensing grand, highbrow themes into panel comics, his weekly strips embody his trademark sense of humour while simultaneously opening comics to an audience unfamiliar with the artistry that cartooning has to offer. Funny but serious, these comics allow Gauld to put his impressive knowledge of history, literature and pop culture on full display - his impeccable timing and distinctive visual style setting him apart from the rest.This postcard set celebrates more than a decade of Gauld's contributions to the Guardian, with fifty of his most beloved strips, on everything from Samuel Beckett's sitcom pitches (such as Waiting for Kramer, a show where two men await the arrival of a man named Kramer who never comes), 'Procrastination for Creative Writers, a 10-Week Course' and 'Poetry Anthologies for People Who Don't Like Poems'. Witty and beautifully drawn, The Snooty Bookshop will make you laugh at least fifty times, guaranteed.

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Are you evil?In Making Evil, Julia Shaw uses a mix of science, popular culture and real-life examples to investigate the darker side of human nature. How similar is your brain to a psychopath's? How many people have murder fantasies? Can AI be evil? Do your sexual proclivities make you a bad person? Who becomes a terrorist? This is a surprising and wickedly entertaining exploration of a darkly compelling subject.

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When Kent Nerburn received a letter from Jennifer, a young woman questioning her calling to spend her life in the arts, the writer and artist was struck by how closely her questions mirrored the doubts and yearnings of his own youth. Nerburn resolved that he would write his own letter: a letter of welcome and encouragement to all young artists setting out on the same strange and magical journey, sharing the wisdom of a life spent working in the arts. From struggles with money and the bitterness of rejection, to spiritual questions of inspiration and authenticity, Dancing With the Gods offers insight, solace and courage to help young artists on the winding road to artistic fulfilment. Tender and joyous, it is a celebration of art's power to transform the darkest of human experience and give voice to the grandest of human hopes.

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If he is to become a man, what sort of man should Thomas Page McBee be?To find out, McBee must confront the suffering he has endured at the hands of men: the abuse he endured as a child from his father, and the violent mugging which almost killed him as an adult. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood, and reclaim his body on his own terms. Powerful, uplifting and profound, Man Alive is a story about transformation; about freedom, and love, and finding the strength to rebuild ourselves as the people we are meant to be.

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The kids (and canines) of Peanuts know a thing or two about how tough life can be. But with a philosophical approach to the trials and tribulations of growing up - from not being able to talk to the girl you like, to having an idiot brother who won't take your flawless advice - they're never short of the small comforts, and the great wisdom, that can help us get by.

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Magic Child, a fifteen-year old Indian girl, wanders into the wrong whorehouse. She is looking for the right men to kill the monster. The monster that lives in the ice caves under the basement of Miss Hawkline's yellow house.Richard Brautigan takes the reader on a heroic, magical adventure through Eastern Oregon. The Hawkline Monster confirms his place as one of the twentieth century's most exciting writers.

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Raised by his grandmother in Tennessee, Gil Scott-Heron's journey from humble beginnings to becoming one of the most uncompromising and influential songwriters of his generation is a remarkable one. In this, his heartfelt, beautifully written and posthumously published memoir, we are given bright insights into the music industry, New York, the civil-rights movement, modern America, governmental hypocrisy, Stevie Wonder and our wider place in the world. It is also a fitting testament to the generous brilliance of Gil Scott-Heron and to the Spirits that guided him.

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THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERRobert Webb tried to follow the rules for being a man: Don't cryDrink beerPlay rough Don't talk about feelingsLooking back over his life he asks whether these rules are actually any use. To anyone.

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As a teenager, Harriet Shawcross stopped speaking at school for almost a year, retreating into herself and communicating only when absolutely necessary. As an adult, she became fascinated by the limits of language and in Unspeakable she asks what makes us silent. From the inexpressible trauma of trench warfare and the aftermath of natural disaster to the taboo of coming out, Shawcross explores how and why words fail us. From the mountains of Nepal to New York's theatre district she travels the world meeting people who constantly wrestle with language. She studies the work of George Oppen, a poet who couldn't write a line for twenty-five years, interviews Eve Ensler whose play The Vagina Monologues gave voice to the truths of female sexuality, and meets the founders of The Samaritans who have been listening silently to those in need since the 1950s. A beguiling mix of memoir, history, literary criticism and investigative journalism, Unspeakable is a moving and unprecedented study of the power of silence.

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In California her name was Aden Grace Sawyer. In Pakistan she must choose a different name - Suleyman - and take on a new identity as a young man. She has travelled a long way to begin her new life, and she'll travel further to protect her secret.But once she is on the ground, Aden finds herself in more danger than she could have dreamed. Faced with violence and loss, she must make intense and unimaginable choices that will test not only her faith, but her understanding of who she is.Compelling, unnerving and timely, Godsend is a subtle masterpiece of empathy: a study of what it means for a person to give themselves to their faith, and how far they will go from home to find a place to belong.

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EVERYTHING IS MADE OF MAGIC . . .Effie Truelove and friends Lexy, Wolf, Maximilian and Raven must use their magical skills to defeat the Diberi, a corrupt organisation intent on destroying the worlds at Midwinter. But during a visit to the Otherworld, Effie is mistaken and imprisoned for being a galloglass - a dangerous, selfish islander.Can Effie and her friends reunite before total destruction is wreaked upon the universe?

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The Missing of the Somme has become a classic meditation upon war and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

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The women of the tiny town of Fetter-Rothnie have grown used to a life without men, and none more so than the tangle of mothers and daughters, spinsters and widows living at the Weatherhouse. Returned from war with shellshock, Garry Forbes is drawn into their circle as he struggles to build a new understanding of the world from the ruins of his grief.In The Weatherhouse Nan Shepherd paints an exquisite portrait of a community coming to terms with the brutal losses of war, and the small tragedies, yearnings and delusions that make up a life.

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From the grimly gothic Not to Disturb to the razor-sharp dissection of manners The Takeover and the mordantly brilliant The Only Problem, in a panoramic sweep taking in the shores of the Italian lakes to the castles of Geneva, Muriel Spark casts her unflinching gaze over the continent and onto some of the odder specimens of human nature abounding there. By turns savage, witty and profound, Spark's Europe reaffirms Muriel Spark as one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century.

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'I loved Fear of Dying. I found it irreverent, funny, tender and very wise and it made me feel more alive' RACHEL JOYCE, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Vanessa Wonderman is smart, sexy - and sixty. After a lifetime of crazy families, New York high society and playing a soap opera archvillain bitch, she's not ready to give up yet.But life's not so carefree any more. Her parents are dying, her husband's in hospital and her wild-child daughter is pregnant.So when she signs up to a casual encounters site, she's thinking of leaving her wifelife behind - at least for a little bit. However, the most painful parts of your past always have away of surprising you. Will she learn in time how to live, how to love, how to be fearless?

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A collection of previously unpublished letters from America's cult icon on the art of writing.Charles Bukowski was one of our most iconoclastic, raw and riveting writers, one whose stories, poems and novels have left an enduring mark on our culture. On Writing collects Bukowski's reflections and ruminations on the craft he dedicated his life to. Piercing, unsentimental and often hilarious, On Writing is filled not only with memorable lines but also with the author's trademark toughness, leavened with moments of grace, pathos and intimacy. In the previously unpublished letters to editors, friends and fellow writers collected here, Bukowski is brutally frank about the drudgery of work and uncompromising when it comes to the absurdities of life and of art.

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