Search results for ""canongate books""

This extraordinary poem has been widely popular and influential ever since it was written in the fifteenth century, and its heroic account of the swordfighter Wallace was to symbolise the cause of liberty and independence to many other countries and cultures in the centuries to come.Looking back to the days of the Bruce and the war of independence, Blind Harry's poem is not an aristocratic tale of chivalry and nobility, but a vivid account of the vagaries of war and the brutal realities of battle, wounding and betrayal, all seen from the point of view of the troops in the field.The fruit of many years of scholarship, Anne McKim has produced what is unquestionably the definitive edition of this truly epic work.

Read more less

AN iNEWS BEST BOOK TO READ THIS MONTH'Clement has lived a life like no other, and made of it a shimmering mosaic, a masterpiece, which is this book' Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of LessGrowing up in Mexico City, Jennifer Clement lived next door to Frida Kahlo's house. It was an unorthodox and bohemian childhood, living alongside artists, communists, revolutionaries and poets, and one that allowed an awakening of creative freedom and curiosity about the world. Leaving behind the revolutions in Latin America for the burgeoning counter-culture scene in '80s New York, Clement quickly became a fixture on the art scene, inhabiting the world of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Colette Lumiere and William Burroughs, and frequenting The Mudd Club, Danceteria and Studio 54. From the author of cult classic Widow Basquiat, this memoir is a tale of two cities and their artists. It recreates the fury, ecstasy and danger that made '70s Mexico City and '80s New York two of the greatest places to be young, free and alive.

Read more less

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARA TLS BOOK OF THE YEARHow do you rebuild a world that seems to be falling apart? Nealon returns to his family home in Ireland after a long time away, only to be greeted by a completely empty house. No heat or light, no sign of his wife or child anywhere. It seems the world has forgotten that he even existed. The one exception is a persistent caller on the telephone, someone who seems to know everything about Nealon's life, his recent bother with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon needs to do is talk with him. But the more he talks the closer Nealon gets to the same trouble he was in years ago, tangled in the very crimes of which he claims to be innocent. Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls is a story for these fractured times, dealing with how we might mend the world, and the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.

Read more less

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEPenang, 1939. Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such friendship comes at a terrible price.Tan Twan Eng's masterful debut novel is a haunting and unforgettable story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, steadfast courage and enduring love.

Read more less

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARA DAILY TELEGRAPH BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARA TELEGRAPH BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARA NEW STATESMAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEARFaith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave's inner life.Created from over forty hours of intimate conversations with Seán O'Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave's own words, of what really drives his life and creativity.The book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave's life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years.From a place of considered reflection, Faith, Hope and Carnage offers ladders of hope and inspiration from a true creative visionary.

Read more less

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023: TRAVELChina today is a land of opportunity for African people blocked from commerce with most of Europe and Northern America. It is also an intersection of racism and prejudice.Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China's 'Black Ghosts', African economic migrants in the People's Republic. Living in clustered communities, they are key to the trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents. This is a story of intersecting cultures told with candour and compassion, focusing on the shared humanity between the sojourner and their hosts.

Read more less

An immersive collection of poetry to open your world, curated by the host of Poetry UnboundThis inspiring collection, edited by Pádraig Ó Tuama, presents fifty poems about what it means to be alive in the world today. Each poem is paired with Pádraig's illuminating commentary that offers personal anecdotes and generous insights into the content of the poem.Engaging, accessible and inviting, Poetry Unbound is the perfect companion for everyone who loves poetry and for anyone who wants to go deeper into poetry but doesn't necessarily know how to do so.Poetry Unbound contains expanded reflections on poems as heard on the podcast, as well as exclusive new selections. Contributors include Hanif Abdurraqib, Patience Agbabi, Raymond Antrobus, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, Kei Miller, Roger Robinson, Lemn Sissay, Layli Long Soldier and more.

Read more less

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITINGSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD FOR NON-FICTIONTHE TIMES / WATERSTONES TOP 10 BESTSELLERA BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE INDEPENDENT, STYLIST, RHS, GARDENS ILLUSTRATED and moreWomen have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. Alice Vincent is on a quest to change that: to understand what encourages women to go out, work the soil, plant seeds and nurture them, even when so many other responsibilities sit upon their shoulders. To recover the histories that have been lost among the soil and to understand women''s lives, their gardens and what the ground has offered them. Wise, curious and sensitive, Why Women Grow follows Alice in her search for answers, with inquisitive fronds reaching and curling around the intimate anecdotes of others.

Read more less

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKIn this endlessly stimulating investigation into 'things coming to an end, artists' last works, time running out', Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who've mattered to him throughout his life. He examines Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan's reinventions of old songs, Beethoven's final quartets, Jean Rhys's return from the dead (while still alive) and much more.

Read more less

A BEST BOOK OF 2023 FOR THE TELEGRAPH, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW SCIENTIST AND STYLIST A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST READ 2023Discover the next frontier of scientific understanding: your body's electrome.Every cell in your body - bones, skin, nerves, muscle - has a voltage, like a tiny battery. This bioelectricity is why your brain can send signals to your body, why it develops and how it heals itself.In We Are Electric, award-winning science writer Sally Adee explores the colourful history of bioelectricity and journeys into the remarkable future of the discipline, through today's laboratories where real-world medical applications are being developed.

Read more less

The powerful memoir of one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter which explores how the movement was born, adapted for young adults and featuring brand new content including photos and journal entriesA movement that started with a hashtag - #BlackLivesMatter - and spread across the world. From one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Khan-Cullors' story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, a threat to America. But in truth, they are loving women whose life experiences have led them to seek justice for those victimised by the powerful. In this meaningful, empowering account of survival, strength and resilience, Khan-Cullors and asha bandele seek to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.

Read more less

In The Keys to Kindness Claudia Hammond takes us on an eye-opening tour of kindness: what constitutes kindness (it's not what you think), effective strategies to build more of it into our lives and the benefits of being kind. She draws on the latest research from psychology and neuroscience, and her work in collaboration with the University of Sussex and the BBC, including the largest global survey ever undertaken into attitudes to kindness. The book is structured around the seven keys of kindness, including: There is more kindness in the world that you might think Being kind makes you feel good and that's OK Kind people can be winners Remember to be kind to yourself You are kinder than you think, but we could all be kinder still - with enormous benefits for our personal mental health and wellbeing. The Keys to Kindness sets out a prescription for a kinder life that you can adapt to your own circumstances, and explains how to use this guidance for ourselves, others and the world.

Read more less

A BEST BOOK OF 2023 FOR THE TELEGRAPH, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW SCIENTIST AND STYLIST A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST READ 2023You may be familiar with the idea of our body's biome - the bacterial fauna that populates our gut and can so profoundly affect our health. In We Are Electric we cross the next frontier of scientific understanding: discover your body's electrome.Every cell in our bodies - bones, skin, nerves, muscle - has a voltage, like a tiny battery. This bioelectricity is why our brains can send signals to our bodies, why we develop the way we do in the womb and how our bodies know to heal themselves from injury. When bioelectricity goes awry, illness, deformity and cancer can result. But if we can control or correct this bioelectricity, the implications for our health are remarkable: an undo switch for cancer that could flip malignant cells back into healthy ones; the ability to regenerate cells, organs, even limbs; to slow ageing and so much more.In We Are Electric, award-winning science writer Sally Adee explores the history of bioelectricity: from Galvani's epic eighteenth-century battle with the inventor of the battery, Alessandro Volta, to the medical charlatans claiming to use electricity to cure pretty much anything, to advances in the field helped along by the unusually massive axons of squid. And finally, she journeys into the future of the discipline, through today's laboratories where we are starting to see real-world medical applications being developed.The bioelectric revolution starts here.

Read more less

'Expansive, explosive and epic' Marlon James'A courageous book' New York Times Book ReviewA BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020Neither Mason, a US Special Forces medic, nor Lisette, a foreign correspondent, has emerged from America's long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unscathed. Yet, for them, war still exerts a terrible draw - the noble calling, the camaraderie, the life-and-death stakes. Where else in the world can such a person go?All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with the local government to stamp out a vicious civil war and keep the predatory narco gangs at bay. Mason is ready for the good war, and Lisette is more than ready to cover it.

Read more less

1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles''s sextet come together to record the seminal jazz album of all time Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue is a magnificent, blended biography on the meandering paths which led Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and the aftermath. It''s a book about music, business, race, addiction and the cities that gave jazz its home; from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City. Kaplan meditates on creativity and the great forebears of this golden age who would take the music down strange new paths. Above all, this is a book about three very different men - their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan''s hands, an American Odyssey, with no direction home.

Read more less

THE IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERA GUARDIAN SUMMER READIn Barcelona, we meet a cast of characters who live turbulent inner lives. In a Spanish hotel room a marriage unravels as a young wife is haunted by a past love. A father travels to Paris to meet his scientist son and is exposed to his son''s true nature. A woman attends a reading by a famous author and comes to some painful realisations about her own marriage.The stories in Barcelona reveal the underlying disquiet of modern life and the sometimes brutal nature of humanity. Whether on city streets, long car journeys or in suburban rooms, we glimpse characters as they approach those moments of desperation - or revelation - that change or reshape fate.

Read more less

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023This is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular. A single journey, picked out in 101 objects, through the fascinating, too-often-overlooked, manifold histories of women.Open up this cabinet of curiosities and you'll find objects that have been highly esteemed - even, like the Bayeux tapestry, fought over by nations - and others that are humble and domestic. Some (like a sixteenth century glass dildo) are objects of female pleasure, some (a thumbscrew) of female subjugation. There are artefacts of women celebrated by history and of women unfairly forgotten by it; examples of female rebellion and of self-revelation; objects that are inspiring, curious or (like radium-laced chocolate) just fundamentally ill-conceived.Through the variety and nuance in all these 101 objects, Annabelle Hirsch has created a new history - teeming, unexpected, witty and always illuminating. This overdue corrective reveals what a healed femur says about civilisation, what men have to fear from hat pins, and it shows that the past has always been as complicated and fascinating as the women that peopled it.

Read more less

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. When she decides she wants a living wake - a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led - her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death? Or someone else's? Does she have other motives? But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she now must confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to attempt to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi, reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; and Ona, married for years and attempting to conceive. Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces - one family's journey through their history helping them better navigate all that is to come.

Read more less

The Sea Around Us is one of the most influential books ever written about the natural world. In it Rachel Carson tells the history of our oceans, combining scientific insight and poetic prose as only she can, to take us from the creation of the oceans, through their role in shaping life on Earth, to what the future holds. It was prophetic at the time it was written, alerting the world to a crisis in the climate, and it speaks to the fragility and centrality of the oceans and the life that abounds within them.

Read more less

Under the Sea-Wind marks the beginnings of one of the most significant careers in nature writing. In it Rachel Carson celebrates the mystery and beauty of birds and sea creatures in their natural habitat, conjuring the atmosphere of the shore and the open sea and the delicately balanced, fragile struggle for life along the shoreline.

Read more less

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022: POLITICSBi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality explores all that we know about the world's largest sexual minority. It is a personal journey that starts with Dr Julia Shaw's own openly bisexual identity, and celebrates the resilience and beautiful diversity of the bi community. 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.

Read more less

Now And Then is not merely a collection of a songwriter's lyrics; the song-poems of this undisputed 'bluesologist' triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished Gil Scott-Heron's career.This collection of poems carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and the realities of everyday life. His message is black, political, historically accurate, urgent, uncompromising and mature and as relevant now as ever.

Read more less

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' GuardianIntroduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette WintersonIn this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

Read more less

SHORTLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE FOR SCOTTISH CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR'One of the great Scottish crime writers' The Times'Brilliant' Sunday Times Crime ClubNO ONE WILL FORGETIn a grimy flat in Glasgow, a homemade bomb explodes, leaving few remains to identify its maker.Detective Harry McCoy knows in his gut that there'll be more to follow. The hunt for a missing sailor from the local US naval base leads him to the secretive group behind the bomb, and their disturbing, dominating leader. If the city is to survive the next explosion, it'll take everything McCoy's got . . .

Read more less

A handful of disparate lives converge at a remote seaside inn: a lovelorn professor, a renowned painter, an inscrutable seductress - and a beautiful young girl, fatally ill, brought to the sea by a desperate father's last hope. An intricate web of destinies and associations begins to reveal itself, but it is not until the arrival of a mysterious sailor called Adams that the truth in all its dreamlike beauty and cruelty becomes clear. Alternately playful and profoundly serious, Baricco's novel surges with the hypnotic power of the ocean sea.

Read more less

'Parry's Victorian Edinburgh comes vividly alive - and it's a world of pain' Val McDermid'Brilliantly conceived, fiendishly plotted' Mick HerronSHORTLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE 2020A Raven and Fisher Mystery: Book 2Edinburgh, 1849. Hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. And a whispering campaign seeks to paint Dr James Simpson, pioneer of medical chloroform, as a murderer.Determined to clear Simpson's name, his protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher must plunge into Edinburgh's deadliest streets and find out who or what is behind the deaths. Soon they discover that the cause of the deaths has evaded detection purely because it is so unthinkable.

Read more less

Arturo Bandini arrives in Los Angeles with big dreams. But the reality he finds is a city gripped by poverty. When he makes a small fortune from the publication of a short story, he reinvents himself, indulging in expensive clothes, fine food and downtown strip clubs. But Bandini's delusions take a worrying turn when he is drawn into a relationship with Camilla Lopez, a beautiful but troubled young woman who will be responsible for his greatest downfall. Ask the Dust is an unforgettable novel about outsiders looking in on a town built on celluloid dreams.

Read more less

In 1861 French silkworm merchant Hervé Joncour travels to Japan, where he encounters the mysterious Hara Kei. He develops a painful longing for Kei's beautiful concubine - but they cannot touch; they don't even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But the moment he does, Joncour is enslaved.Subtle, tender and surprising, Silk is an evocative tale of erotic possession.

Read more less

Spirituality, like morality, has historically been tied to religion - and yet it is possible for one to exist without the other. In this meditative and highly personal account, Richard Holloway considers the nature of the spiritual, and what it means to live with the inevitability of death.Both celebration of the possibilities that life affords and an examination of how doubts and fears too often paralyse, especially as we age, Looking in the Distance is an inspiration, told with the compassion and good humour characteristic of its author.

Read more less

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 McILVANNEY PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEARA NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARA Raven and Fisher Mystery: Book 1Edinburgh, 1847. Will Raven is a medical student, apprenticing for the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Sarah Fisher is Simpson's housemaid, and has all of Raven's intelligence but none of his privileges.As bodies begin to appear across the Old Town, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh's underworld. And if either of them are to make it out alive, they will have to work together to find out who's responsible for the gruesome deaths.

Read more less

In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story of Samson: his battle with the lion, the three hundred burning foxes, the women he bedded, the one he loved and who betrayed him and the destruction of the temple. It reveals the journey of a lonely and tortured soul, whose search for a true home echoes our own private struggles.The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

Read more less

A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN DAILY EXPRESS, I AND IRISH INDEPENDENT'Thrilling, mysterious, twisted' Graham Norton'Utterly mesmerising . . . A triumph' New York Times Book Review'Delivers chills galore' GuardianThe case of the extraordinary child . . .London, 1863. A strange puzzle has reached Bridie Devine, the finest female detective of her age. To recover a stolen child, Bridie must enter the dark world of medical curiosities. The public love a spectacle and this child may well prove the most remarkable spectacle London has ever seen.Things in Jars is a Victorian novel unlike any other, one that explores what it is to be human in inhumane times.

Read more less

FROM THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORTerence Cave, owner of Cave Antiques, has already experienced the tragedies of his mother's suicide and his wife's murder when his teenage son, Reuben, is killed in a grotesque accident. His remaining child, Bryony, has always been the family's golden girl and Terence comes to realise that his one duty in life is to protect her from the world's malign forces, whatever that may take.But as he starts to follow his grieving daughter's movements and enforce a draconian set of rules, his love for Bryony becomes a possessive force that leads to destruction.

Read more less

Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

Read more less

From the fiery intellectual provocateur - and one of our most fearless advocates of gender equality - a brilliant, urgent essay collection that both celebrates modern feminism and affirms the power of men and women and what we can accomplish together.

Read more less

'What will you do?' 'Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie.' 'What are you going to call it?' 'Hollywood.' Henry Chinaski has a penchant for booze, women and horse-racing. On his precarious journey from poet to screenwriter he encounters a host of well-known stars and lays bare the absurdity and egotism of the film industry. Poetic, sharp and dangerous, Hollywood - Bukowski's fictionalisation of his experiences making the film Barfly - explores the many dark shadows to be found in the neon-soaked glare of Hollywood's limelight.

Read more less

2018 EISNER AWARD-WINNER - BEST HUMOUR PUBLICATION In Baking with Kafka, Tom Gauld asks the questions no one else dares ask about civilisation as we know it. - How do you get published during a skeleton apocalypse?- What was the secret of Kafka's lemon drizzle cake?- And what plot possibilities does the exploding e-cigarette offer modern mystery writers?A riotous collection of laugh-out-loud cartoons in his signature style, Baking with Kafka reaffirms Gauld's position as a first-rate cartoonist, creating work infused with a deep understanding of both literary and cartoon history.

Read more less

The creative life is not easy. From the outside it can seem romantic and exciting, but in fact it is a unique journey filled with doubts and dreams and complex challenges that most people never imagine. From the obvious issues of making a living and dealing with rejection, to more rarified questions like how to know when a work is finished and the delicate balance between inspiration and craft, the creative artist - whether writer, painter, actor, or dancer - lives in a world of profound questions and subtle choices.The Artist's Journey takes you into this world with an emotional honesty that few books offer. At once practical and spiritual, it is a rare exploration of the inner landscape of the artistic experience and an essential guidebook to the artist's journey, for creative artists in all fields, whether young or old, accomplished or just beginning.

Read more less

In Miniature is a delightful, entertaining and illuminating investigation into our peculiar fascination with making things small, and what small things tell us about the world at large.Here you will find the secret histories of tiny Eiffel Towers, the truth about the flea circus, a doll's house made for a queen, eerie tableaux of crime scenes, miniature food, model villages and railways, and more. Simon Garfield brings together history, psychology, art and obsession, to explore what fuels the strong appeal of miniature objects among collectors, modellers and fans, and teaches us that there is greatness in the diminutive.

Read more less

This award-winning story collection summons all the laughter, darkness and intensity of contemporary Irish life. A pair of fast girls court trouble as they cool their heels on a slow night in a small town. Lonesome hillwalkers take to the high reaches in pursuit of a saving embrace. A bewildered man steps off a country bus in search of his identity - and a stiff drink. These stories, filled with a grand sense of life's absurdity, form a remarkably surefooted collection that reads like a modern-day Dubliners.

Read more less

Zachary Swan: world-class smuggler of the finest cocaine, wicked genius, first-class fool. In his brief and brilliant career as a founding father of the trade, Swan serves the world's most elegant clientele by the most inelegant means, always staying just one step ahead.Robert Sabbag's rip-roaring modern classic of reporting follows Zachary from the streets of Bogotá to the nightclubs of New York, charting the soaring high and the crashing comedown of a legend.

Read more less

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC?It is Christmas Eve and all is not well. Amelia Wishart is trapped in Mr Creeper's workhouse and Christmas is in jeopardy. Magic is fading. If Christmas is to happen, Father Christmas knows he must find her.With the help of some elves, eight reindeer, the Queen and a man called Charles Dickens, the search for Amelia - and the secret of Christmas - begins . . .

Read more less

Toast on Toast is the must-have book for all budding actors - and non-actors too. In this part memoir, part 'how to act' manual, Steven Toast draws on his vast and varied experiences, providing the reader with an invaluable insight into his journey from school plays to RADA, and from 'It's a Right Royal Knockout' to the Colony Club. Along the way, he reveals the secrets of his success. He discloses how to brush up on and expand your technical and vocal skills, how to nail a professional voiceover, and how to deal with difficult work experience staff in a recording studio. He also reveals the dangers of typecasting, describes the often ruthless struggle for 'top billing', and shares many awesome nuggets of advice. The end result is a book that will inspire and educate anyone who wants to tread the floorboards. It will also inform (and entertain) anybody who simply wants to discover what a jobbing actor's life is actually like.

Read more less

You are about to read the true story of Father Christmas.It's a story that proves nothing is impossible.A Boy Called Christmas is a tale of adventure, snow, kidnapping, elves, more snow and a boy called Nikolas, who isn't afraid to believe in magic. From the winner of The Smarties Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award. With enchanting illustrations by Chris Mould.

Read more less

'This is the story of how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life.' Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman on a whistle-stop tour of the inner cosmos. It's a journey that will take you into the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, genocide, brain surgery, robotics and the search for immortality. On the way, amidst the infinitely dense tangle of brain cells and their trillions of connections, something emerges that you might not have expected to see: you.

Read more less

In this volume, Peanuts celebrates its 40th birthday! Snoopy and Spike decline to compete in an ugly dog competition, entering their brother Olaf instead. Charlie Brown and Marcie spend quality time together at sleepaway camp, while Peppermint Patty simmers in summer school. Linus ramps up his Great Pumpkin proselytising with the 'Great Pumpkin Movement' - complete with literature to pass out door to door. Marcie begins to crack under the pressure of being a good student. Charlie Brown even gets the girl - but she thinks his name is Brownie Charles!

Read more less

The Complete Peanuts reaches the go-go mid-1980s with this volume: 'mallies', 'punkers' (Snoopy with a mohawk!), killer bees, and Halley's Comet. The gang go to 'rain camp' and 'survival camp', the World War I Flying Ace comes down with the flu, Charlie Brown poses for a swimsuit calendar, Peppermint Patty gets a crabby tutor . . . plus Molly Volley, the unbearable, licensable 'Tapioca Pudding', and plenty of Spike and his cactus!

Read more less

MADONNA. ANDY WARHOL. KEITH HARING. FAB 5 FREDDIE. DEBBIE HARRY. JULIAN SCHNABEL. Jean-Michel Basquiat's transition from the subways to the chic gallery spaces of Manhattan brought the artist into the company of many of New York's established and aspiring stars. In 1988, unable to deal with the demands that his new fame brought, Basquiat, the most successful black visual artist in history, died from a heroin overdose at age twenty-seven.Widow Basquiat is an exploration of the artist as seen through the eyes of his muse, Suzanne. It is a love story like no other.

Read more less