Search results for ""canongate books""

The immortal valet, Jeeves, shimmers to Bertie Wooster's assistance time and again in the first volume of these side-splittingly funny tales. Whether saving a cabinet minister from a marauding swan, rescuing Bertie's chums from bowls of proverbial soup, or arranging unhingeing performances of 'Sonny Boy', Jeeves' genius (and Wodehouse's) is unparalleled. Especially concerning the extraordinary incident of the punctured hot-water bottle! Tuppy Glossop, Bingo Little, Sippy Sipperly, even Bertie's formidable Aunt Agatha - all have reason to be grateful to Jeeves. But Jeeves' greatest achievements is, of course, in saving Bertie from himself.

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This is the wonderful journal of Cassandra Mortmain, aged 17. A heartwarming and completely original coming-of-age story, it is the account of one year in her life and that of her extraordinary family. With great wit and sensitivity Cassandra reveals her eccentric father with writer's block, her clever younger brother Tom, and eldest sister Rose, beautiful, bored, and mainly interested in marrying a rich man. Then there is their stepmother Topaz, a rather exotic artist's model, and Stephen who works for the family and is hopelessly in love with Cassandra. When two young American men, Simon and Neil, arrive to live nearby, the lives of this intimate community are changed forever. Cassandra records the events in her diary from the crumbling castle, which is their home. The result is marvellously funny and genuinely moving.Emilia Fox the narrator, is one of Britain's best-loved television and radio actors, and star of Silent Witness.

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The thoughts of schoolboy William Brown; "That actor bloke Martin Jarvis has helped me rekord this audio. He thinks he can tork like me, but he can't. I sound better. So pay no attenshun to him. Jus' listen to me tellin' you 'bout the most important things in life!" LISTINGS: 1. My Summer Holiday 2. What's Wrong with Civilizashun, 3. The Job I'd Like Best 4. Commonsense About Holidays, 5. School is a Waste of Time 6. My Day in London 7. Something Like a Change 8. I'll Tell You What's Wrong with Christmas 9. Home for the Holidays 10. William's Christmas Presents 11. Christmas Day with William 12. New Year's Day

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'TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS, YOU THINK YOU'VE SEEN IT ALL. . .'Remshi is the oldest vampire in existence. He is searching for the werewolf named Talulla, whom he believes is the reincarnation of his long lost - and only - love. But he is not the only one seeking Talulla. Hunted by the Militi Christi, a religious order hell-bent on wiping out werewolves and vampires alike, Remshi and Talulla must join forces to protect their families, fulfil an ancient prophecy and save both their lives.

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What secrets are hiding in your family tree?Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment . . .A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers.

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Villa Diodati. 1816.In a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and his young wife Mary, gathered for the summer. For three glittering months, this party of young bohemians would share their lives, charged with sexual and artistic tensions. It was a period of extraordinary creativity from which would emerge some of the masterworks of the Romantic period, including Frankenstein. But there were two other guests at the villa that summer, for whom the season would not be so rosy. With Byron came his young physician, John Polidori, a man with literary aspirations of his own. And joining Mary was her step-sister, the beautiful Claire Clairmont. For Byron and the Shelleys, their stay by the lake would serve to immortalise them in the annals of literary history. But for Claire and Polidori, the Swiss sojourn would scar them forever.

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A beautifully designed and darkly comic collection of work, this book gathers together the best of Shrigley's work, old and new. It is a celebration of the surreal world of one of our finest contemporary artists.

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THE PACIFIC is a gripping piece of historical writing following the extraordinary true stories of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy carrier pilot fighting in the Pacific region during World War II. Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August 1945, five men - Austin Shofner, Vernon Micheel, Sidney Phillips, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone - fought the key battles in the war against Japan. From the debacle in Bataan, to the miracle at Midway and the relentless vortex of Guadalcanal, the war led one to the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot and the others to the coral strongholds of Peleliu, the black terraces of Iwo Jima and the killing fields of Okinawa, until at last the survivors enjoyed a triumphant, yet uneasy, return home. In THE PACIFIC Hugh Ambrose focuses on the struggles and triumphs of these men who put their lives on the line for the allied forces. The book is the official companion to the HBO miniseries THE PACIFIC, executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman - the producers of the Emmy®-winning 2001 miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS.

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The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States was a defining moment in American history. After years of failed policies, Barack Obama was given the chance to reclaim the American dream. He proved himself to be a new kind of leader - one who could bring people together, be honest about the challenges we all face and move his nation forward. Change We Can Believe In outlines his vision for America and its standing in the world.

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In the aftermath of the Great War, Non Davies wakes one morning to find her husband crouching underneath the kitchen table in a cold sweat, shouldering an imaginary rifle. What has changed her Davey so completely? A clue arrives inside a mysterious letter, which takes her to London in search of the answer. When she returns home, Non finds that the dark secrets of Davey's past are working their way ever closer to the surface. She has to summon all her courage and compassion to restore her beloved husband and guard the fragile happiness of her war-weary village.

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Some secrets are best left buried . . . Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here?

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As a boy, Hardeep Singh Kohli knew where home was: Glasgow. But everyone else always assumed he was Indian. Because surely he couldn't be British, with his brown skin and turban? Thirty years later, Hardeep sets out on a journey to discover where he is really from. His story is as hilarious as it is moving.

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With behind-the-scenes gossip creating as much drama as the movies themselves, Hollywood in 1967 showcased the future of film in more ways than one. From the anti-heroes of Bonnie and Clyde and the illicit sex of The Graduate to the race relations of In The Heat of the Night, suddenly no subject was taboo. This was a time of turbulence as hip young filmmakers embodying the restlessness and rebellion of a changing America wrought radical changes to the traditions of cinema. Scenes from a Revolution is an exceptional analysis of the films shortlisted for the Best Picture Academy Award of 1967 as well as an illuminating window into the popular culture of the time.

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When down-at-heel Glasgow conjurer William Wilson gets booked for a string of cabaret gigs in Berlin, he's hoping his luck's on the turn. There were certain spectators from his last show who he'd rather forget. Like the one who's now a corpse. Amongst the showgirls and tricksters of Berlin's scandalous underground Wilson can abandon his heart, his head and, more importantly, his past. But secrets have a habit of catching up with him and, as he gets sucked into certain lucrative after-hours work, the line between what's an act and what's real starts to blur.

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In January of 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who will be their new neighbours; the beach nomads of Australia. "These people mixed with ours," wrote a British observer soon after the landfall, "and all hands danced together." What followed would determine relations between the peoples for the next two hundred years.Drawing skilfully on first-hand accounts and historical records, Inga Clendinnen reconstructs the complex dance of curiosity, attraction and mistrust performed by the protagonists of either side. She brings this key chapter in British colonial history brilliantly alive. Then we discover why the dancing stopped . . .

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Complicated Shadows paints a detailed and accurate portrait of an intensely private and complex individual. It draws on nearly 50 exclusive interviews with schoolmates, pre-fame friends, early band members, journalists as well as members of The Attractions, producers, collaborators and musicians from all stages of his life and career.Thomson also unearths many previously unknown details about Costello's early years and his personal life, as well as examining his entire musical output using the recollections of those who were there at the time, the majority of whom have never talked on the subject before.

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Since 1981, when Alasdair Gray's first novel Lanark was published by Canongate, his characters have aged as fast as their author. The Ends of Our Tethers shows the high jinks of many folk in the last stages of physical, moral and social decrepitude - a sure tonic for the young. The first work of fiction in over six years by one of Britain's most original and brilliant writers, this wonderful (and very funny) new collection reaffirms Gray's position as a master of the short story. The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray - experimental, mischievous, wide-ranging but also subtly connected. And as always the work is hallmarked with his highly engaging prose style, dry wit and fecund imagination. These thirteen tales challenge prejudice, question social imbalances and explore human foibles. In 'No Bluebeard', a socially reclusive man, veteran of three marriages, meets a disturbed and eccentric woman desperate to remain hidden from her family. In 'Job's Skin Game' a father develops a skin condition in response to the emotional shock of losing his two sons in the September 11th attacks and his fortune in the dot-com crisis. The exquisite pleasure he takes from scratching and peeling his dead epidermis becomes his sole preoccupation and a metaphor for what is ultimately a wholly sane response to tragedy. 'Wellbeing' offers a politically charged dystopian vision of a future Britain as seen through the eyes of a once-revered writer, now homeless yet stubbornly refusing to move to a more hospitable country as 'there are better ways of living than being happy, but they require strength and sanity.' Beautifully produced and illustrated throughout with Gray's distinctive drawings, this is an important and highly accessible collection.

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In the early 1800s, Rachel Greenhow, a young Quaker, goes missing in the Canadian wilderness. Unable to accept the disappearance, her brother Mark leaves his farm in England, determined to bring his sister home.What follows is a gripping account of Mark's odyssey and his travels with the voyageurs - the men who canoe Canada's fur-trade route. As adventure and discovery propel the plot forward, Elphinstone takes the reader back in time and intertwines the story with enduring themes of love, war and family ties.

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Featuring the novels: Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, Sailor's Holiday, Sultans of Africa, Consuelo's Kiss and Bad Day for the Leopard Man The Wild Life of Sailor and Lula presents Gifford's best prose work as he originally conceived it: six inter-locking novels which chart the riotous and stormy lives of Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune - the horribly likeable, sex-driven, star-crossed lovers immortalised in David Lynch's movie Wild at Heart.Masterful with dialogue, and always full of vitality and humour, these novels show a writer at the height of his - considerable - talent. As Elmore Leonard said of him, "Gifford cuts right through to the heart of what makes a good novel readable and entertaining . . . the way Barry Gifford does it, it's high art."

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Na'ama Newman wakes up one morning to a new reality. Her husband Udi, formerly a healthy, active tour guide, announces that he can no longer move his legs. The paralysis is diagnosed as psychosomatic - Udi has gone on strike and Na'ama must cope with the crisis, while balancing the demands of work and motherhood.The plot moves swiftly from this starting point, and Shalev depicts the complexities of intimate relationships with daring perceptiveness. It is a unique and intense novel, compulsively readable and extraordinarily insightful.Husband and Wife brilliantly captures the vulnerability and deceptive comforts of lives intertwined, as well as the near impossibility of setting out to disentangle them without any casualties. With this novel, Zeruya Shalev is sure to gain the renown in the UK that she already enjoys around the world.

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Lucca Montale, a 32-year-old Danish actress, is rushed into hospital after a motor accident. She is severely injured after a head-on collision with a lorry. Robert, the doctor responsible for treating her, is obliged to break the news that she may never see again.Robert and Lucca are both suffering the after-effects of love. He has sought refuge in controlled resignation since his divorce. She has rushed into dramatic, desperate acts. Grøndahl masterfully deploys a dual narrative, switching with astounding insight between the stories that the two protagonists relate to each other.

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Edwin Muir - POOR TOM, J.F. Hendry - FERNIE BRAE, Gordon M. Williams - FROM SCENES LIKE THESE, Tom Gallacher - APPRENTICE. Growing Up in the West presents four very different and memorably vivid accounts of what it was to be young and growing up in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, from the 1930s to the 1960s.Poor Tom tells of a young man's struggle to come to terms with the slow death of his brother in the city slums of a culturally impoverished Scotland. Fernie Brae celebrates the growth and education of a sensitive in a novel reminiscent of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Gordon Williams's novel tells a grimmer story as its young protagonist eventually succumbs to a culture of drink and violence where the harshness of life on the land sits next to industrial sprawl: 'From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs.' Set in the Clydeside shipyards, the wryly observant and humorous style of Apprentice strikes a happier note from the 1960s.

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Jim Dodge said he would consider publishing a volume of poetry if he lived to the millennium. Happily he did, and Rain on the River is the immediate result - work selected from his Tangram chapbooks, broadsides, and Solstice pieces, accompanied by three dozen new poems. If you've enjoyed his fiction, Dodge's first collection of poems and short prose offer similar pleasures: a splendid ear for language, great emotional range and subtlety, a sharp eye for the illuminating detail, and a sensibility that encompasses outright hilarity, savage wit, and tender marvel - all made eminently accessible through writing of uncompromising clarity and grace.

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A prolific writer with many novels to her name, Margaret Oliphant could produce her few supernatural tales 'only when they came to me'. And they came with the twilight uncertainties and the philosophical depth of 'The Library Window', or with the extraordinary vision of purgatory imagined as modern city life mixed with metaphysical terror in 'The Land of Darkness' or in A Beleaguered City, her extraordinary short novel of the returning dead.Like the old Scottish ballads where the dead and the living rub shoulders, these remarkable tales are among Oliphant's finest work, mixing the subtlety of Henry James with the uncanny strangeness of George MacDonald or David Lindsay.

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A TIMES BEST NEW CRIME FICTION OF THE MONTHJim Brennan is flying high. Against all odds, he is a big man at the university, tipped for the head job and an office at the top of the ivory tower. He has a beautiful, accomplished wife and two healthy children. Jim drives an Audi, and his dog is a pedigree bichon frisé. Not bad for the son of a hardman who grew up in a room and kitchen. But for every person who's watched his progress and wanted to hitch a lift, there's someone else desperate to drag him back down. When his son Elliot is arrested on drugs charges, Jim is approached by men he thought he had left safely in his past. Their demands threaten his family, students and reputation.As the pressure mounts, Jim discovers he is more like his father than he thought. The question is, how far will Professor Jim Brennan go to save the life he built?

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Udodi's death was the beginning of the raging storm but at that moment we thought that the worst had already happened, and that life would treat us with more kindness.When Nani is only seventeen, she loses her beloved sister and father. Misunderstood by the rest of her family, she is beguiled by an itinerant preacher, a handsome self-proclaimed 'man of God' who seems to offer all the answers. But instead of building a better future with him, Nani is forced too soon into a challenging womanhood with an oppressive husband.Will she find the courage to take charge of her own life and seek true happiness, and at what cost?

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A THE TIMES BEST THRILLER OF THE YEAR 2022When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies, fifteen-year-old Nico just watches - earning him a week's suspension and a typed, yellowing manuscript from his frail Nonno Paolo. A history lesson, his grandfather says, and a secret he must keep from his father.Nico is transported back to the Venice of 1943, an occupied city seething under the Nazis, and to the defining moment of his grandfather's life: when Paolo's support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the city's underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled, Nico can't stop reading - but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.

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The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility.Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination. Featuring:Ali Smith, Phill Jupitus, A.L. Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Kerry Hudson, Greg Hemphill, Carol Ann Duffy, Chris Brookmyre, Alison Watt, Alasdair Gray, Leila Aboulela, Ian Rankin, Selina Hales, Sanjeev Kohli, Jackie Kay, Damian Barr, Elaine C. Smith, Abir Mukherjee, Anne Glover, Alan Bissett, Louise Welsh, Jo Clifford, Ricky Ross, Trishna Singh, Cameron McNeish, Alexander McCall Smith, Carla Jenkins, Don Paterson, and many more . . .

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One hot summer afternoon in South Yorkshire, Faro sits at a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has travelled from London to the Northern mining town where generations of her family have lived and worked, to explore her own past. Decades before, in the early twentieth century, Bessie Bawtry also ponders her place in the world. A child of unusual determination and precocious intelligence, she longs for the day she will eventually escape the working-class life her ancestor would never have dreamt of leaving.The Peppered Moth explores the way we are shaped by our environment and ancestry, told with elegant prose, wry humour and captivating storytelling, through the story of one family across generations through the twentieth century.'Margaret Drabble is writing, not about an individual, but about a generation, or two, or more - of women . . . This is a sad tale, tenderly told, embedded in a robust family chronicle' - Doris Lessing

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LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITINGA WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVELWhen Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland they were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year unlike any other.Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of that year - a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life - from one winter to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world - and it is about all that does not change. All that which simply keeps on - living and breathing, nesting and dying - in spite of it all.This is an ode to a year, a place, and a love, that changed a life.

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THE SECOND IN THE ORIGINAL LAIDLAW TRILOGY. WINNER OF THE CWA SILVER DAGGER. THE DARK REMAINS, Laidlaw's first case, out 2 September 2021. PRE-ORDER NOW!'In a class of his own' Guardian'Reads like a breathless scalpel through the bloody heart of a great city' Denise MinaEck Adamson, an alcoholic vagrant, summons Jack Laidlaw to his deathbed. Probably the only policeman in Glasgow who would bother to respond, Laidlaw sees in Eck's cryptic last message a clue to the murder of a gangland thug and the disappearance of a student. With stubborn integrity, Laidlaw tracks a seam of corruption that runs from the top to the bottom of society.Acclaimed for its corrosive wit, dark themes and original maverick detective, the Laidlaw trilogy has earned the status of classic crime fiction.

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DEREK OWUSU NAMED GRANTA'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE - FICTION 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS 2023'A highly enigmatic, affectionate and robustly written portrayal of a mother-son relationship . . . very relatable' Diana EvansDriven by a deep-seated desire to understand his mother's life before he was born, Derek Owusu offers a powerful imagining of her journey. As she moves from Ghana to the UK and navigates parenthood in a strange and often lonely environment, the effects of her displacement are felt across generations.Told through the eyes of both mother and son, Losing the Plot is at once emotionally raw and playful as Owusu experiments with form to piece together the immigrant experience and explore how the stories we share and tell ourselves are just as vital as the ones we don't.

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DEREK OWUSU NAMED GRANTA'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE - FICTION 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS 2023'A highly enigmatic, affectionate and robustly written portrayal of a mother-son relationship . . . very relatable' Diana EvansDriven by a deep-seated desire to understand his mother's life before he was born, Derek Owusu offers a powerful imagining of her journey. As she moves from Ghana to the UK and navigates parenthood in a strange and often lonely environment, the effects of her displacement are felt across generations.Told through the eyes of both mother and son, Losing the Plot is at once emotionally raw and playful as Owusu experiments with form to piece together the immigrant experience and explore how the stories we share and tell ourselves are just as vital as the ones we don't.

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'This is truly inimitable storytelling' Observer'[A] master of language' New York TimesA boy stands alone, unable to enter the room in which his grandfather's coffin lies. 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.Look For Me and I'll Be Gone is vital reading for anyone interested in the state of America today. Historical and contemporary, intimate and expansive, the stories here represent a pioneering writer whose innovation, form and imagination know no bounds.

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Richard Holloway is one of our most beloved public thinkers. Throughout his life he has turned to poets and writers to help answer the big questions, and for solace and guidance in the face of life's challenges. Now he shares those poems and words which have been his own guide, offered in the hope they will help us too. This is a book to turn to for inspiration, guidance and comfort. It offers lessons from those who, in Richard's words, 'know best how to listen and teach us to listen', all united by 'the sensual appeal of words, the pain and pleasure they impart'. It is a book to treasure.

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'Chris Beetles' book is a joy, an inspiration and as thorough a document into understanding the life and times of Louis Wain as one could hope to read' - Benedict Cumberbatch'Louis Wain invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world'. Broadcast in 1925 by H.G. Wells, these words characteristically foretold the future of the Wain cat which has, once more, become the century's most recognisable image in cat art. During their heyday, in the time before the First World War, Louis Wain's cats, dressed as humans, portrayed that stylish Edwardian world having fun: at restaurants and tea parties, going to the Race and the Seaside, celebrating at Christmas and Birthdays, and disporting themselves with exuberant games of tennis, bowls, cricket and football. This is a titillating world of cats at play, uninhibited and slightly dangerous, with most group activities likely to turn into mishap, mayhem and catastrophe. This is Wain's world, funny, edgy and animated: a whole cat world.The first comprehensive exhibition of Wain's work was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1972 and, since then, Louis Wain has steadily become more fashionable, and collected worldwide. This biography contains 300 plates of richness and variety, all of which are reproduced faithfully from the original artwork.

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WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR GAY FICTION Hussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America''s 2003 invasion of Iraq. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wassim promises Hussam his protection, but ten years into the future, he has failed to keep his promise. Wassim is on the streets, seeking shelter from both the city and the civil war storming his country. Meanwhile Hussam, now on the other side of the world, remains haunted by his own ghosts, doing his utmost to drown them out with every vice imaginable. Split between war-torn Damascus and unforgiving Vancouver, The Foghorn Echoes is a tragic love story about coping with shared traumatic experience and devastating separation. As Hussam and Wassim come to terms with the past, they begin to realise the secret that haunts them is not the only secret that formed them.

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A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022: POLITICSSignificant strides have been made in recent years in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, visibility and empowerment, but the conversation is far from over. After years of feeling the crushing dearth of information on bisexuality, psychological scientist and bestselling author Dr Julia Shaw dug deep and found a colourful and fascinating world that she is bringing out of the shadows. It is a personal journey that starts with her own openly bisexual identity, and celebrates the resilience and beautiful diversity of the bi community. In Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality, Shaw explores all that we know about the world's largest sexual minority. From the hunt for a bi gene, to the relationship between bisexuality and consensual non-monogamy, to asylum seekers who need to prove their bisexuality in a court of law, there is more to explore than most have ever realised. This rigorous and fun book will challenge us to think deeper about who we are and how we love.

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A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022: POPULAR SCIENCEAN iNEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF 2022A TELEGRAPH BIG IDEAS BOOK 2022'Read this book and feel furious, uplifted and galvanised to take its findings out into the world and fight for change' - LAURA BATESEmotions can be difficult things to define, yet we all recognise them when we feel them or see them in others. How we interpret those emotions and act on them has been heavily gendered, as far back as Ancient Greek and Roman times and - despite the improvements in societal equality - continues to be today.We've all heard the sayings that girls should be 'sugar and spice and all things nice', while 'boys don't cry'. In Hysterical, Pragya Agarwal dives deep into the history and science that has determined the gendering of emotions to ask whether there is any truth in the notion of innate differences between the male and female experience of emotions. She examines the impact this has on men and women - especially the role it has played in the subjugation of women throughout history - and how a future where emotions are ungendered might look.

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The hilarious collection of 'leaked' correspondence between Michael Spicer's genius comic creation - AKA The Man in the Room Next Door - and political figures, from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump and Jared KushnerJust who is the secret political adviser calling himself The Man in the Room Next Door? No one knows. We don't even know his name.But now the lid is about to be blown clean off, because the secret files of the world's most influential* political media adviser are published in this book. Packed with letters, memos, texts, tweets, emails, journal entries, leaked documents and crude doodles, these pages will reveal who The Man in the Room Next Door is and, more importantly, his thoughts on those who employ his services, including Donald 'dangerous puffin' Trump, Boris 'posh motorboat' Johnson and some of their least competent colleagues.This book is the evidence that anyone can be a world leader. Just as long as they're wearing the right earpiece.*fictional

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Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and unusual letters updated with fourteen riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher.From Virginia Woolf's heart-breaking suicide letter to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression 'OMG' in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler; and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter, Letters of Note is a celebration of the power of written correspondence which captures the humour, seriousness, sadness and brilliance that make up all of our lives.

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WINNER OF THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITINGIn this astonishing collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller explores the silence in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it: to risk words, to risk truths. And he considers the histories our bodies inherit - the crimes that haunt them, and how meaning can shift as we move throughout the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood. Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Liam Neeson, Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, white women's tears, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice. With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why - our actions, defence mechanisms, imaginations and interactions - and those of the world around us.

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'A wonderful book about the deep backstories and the tangled histories of N. S. Nuseibeh's own multiple identit[ies]' MARK HADDON'Explores vulnerability, fragility, anxiety, and ambivalence as ways of beautifully coming to terms with the wounds and worries of the world' HOMI K. BHABHAI may not be brave enough, but somewhere deep inside of me there is, perhaps, the kernel of someone who is.That brave someone was the legendary Nusayba bint Ka'ab al Khazrajia, who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad at the dawn of Islam, the author N.S Nuseibeh's ancestor. In drawing on Nusayba's stories, Nuseibeh delves into the experience of being an Arab woman today and in the distant past - taking her from superheroes and the glorification of violence to the rise of Arab feminism, to what courage looks like in the context of interminable conflict. By seeking to understand her namesake in the context of her own twenty-first century concerns, Nuseibeh links our current ideas of Muslims and Arabs with their origins, exploring myth-making and identity, religion and nationhood, feminism and race.As intimate as they are thoughtful, these linked essays offer a dazzling exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home, while also showing how connecting with our history can help us understand ourselves and others today.

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The history of Johnnie Walker, tracing its roots back to 1820, is also the history of Scotch whisky. But who was John Walker - the man who started the story? And how did his business grow from the shelves of a small grocery shop in Kilmarnock to become the world's No. 1 Scotch? A Long Stride tells the story of how John Walker and a succession of ingenious and progressive business leaders embraced their Scottish roots to walk confidently on an international stage. By doing things their own way, Johnnie Walker overturned the conventions of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, survived two world wars and the Great Depression, coming back stronger each time, to become the first truly global whisky brand, revolutionising the world of advertising along the way. Ultimately the story is a testament to how an obsession with quality and a relentless drive to always move forward created a Scotch whisky loved in every corner of the world

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In Letters of Note: Art, Shaun Usher celebrates extraordinary correspondence about art, from missives on the agony of being overlooked, the ecstasy of producing work that excites, to surprising sources of inspiration and rousing manifestos. Includes letters by:Michelangelo, Salvador Dali,Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi,Oscar Howe, Martin Scorsese,Henri Matisse, Mick Jagger,Augusta Savage, Vincent van Gogh& many more

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'Unputdownable' Sunday Times'I was hooked from page one' GuardianWhen Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.

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