Search results for ""canongate books""

In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard fixes her entrancing gaze and powerful sense of wonder on the natural world. Whether watching a sublime lunar eclipse or locking eyes with a wild weasel, Dillard captures the grand and miniature miracles of our universe. Annie Dillard is one of the most respected and influential figures in contemporary non-fiction and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. With Teaching a Stone to Talk, she illuminates the world around us with a new and glowing light.

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NOW WITH EVEN MORE REMARKABLE PEOPLEIn If I Could Tell You Just One Thing... some of the world's most remarkable people share their most valuable pieces of wisdom. Including: President Bill Clinton, Clare Balding, Bill Gates, Stephen Fry, Dame Judi Dench, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Caitlyn Jenner, James Corden, Margaret Atwood, Sir David Attenborough, Annie Lennox, Andy Murray, Joanna Lumley, Sir Richard Branson, Sandi Toksvig, Jude Law, Nicola Sturgeon, Harry Belafonte, Olivia Colman, Simon Cowell, Bear Grylls, Diana Athill, Jo Malone, Heston Blumenthal, Nitin Sawhney, Katie Piper, Richard Curtis, Shami Chakrabarti, and Michael McIntyre.If I Could Tell You Just One Thing... is not only packed with great advice but is also enormously entertaining, brilliantly written and stunningly designed. From advice on work and relationships, to creativity, spirituality and survival, there are words in these pages that will comfort, motivate and inspire.

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Bass player extraordinaire Charles Mingus, who died in 1979, is one of the essential composers in the history of jazz, and Beneath the Underdog, his celebrated, wild, funny, demonic, anguished, shocking and profoundly moving memoir, is the greatest autobiography ever written by a jazz musician. It tells of his God-haunted childhood in Watts during the 1920s and 1930s; his outcast adolescent years; his apprenticeship, not only with jazzmen but also with pimps, hookers, junkies, and hoodlums; and his golden years in New York City with such legendary figures as Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Here is Mingus in his own words, from shabby roadhouses to fabulous estates, from the psychiatric wards of Bellevue to worlds of mysticism and solitude, but for all his travels never straying too far, always returning to music.

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'From her raging, handwritten letters to late-night phone calls with David Bowie, this biography gets up close and personal with the tempestuous Nina Simone' Observer Drawing on glimpses into previously unseen diaries, rare interviews and childhood journals, and with the aid of her daughter, What Happened, Miss Simone? tells the story of the classically trained pianist who became a soul legend, a committed civil rights activist and one of the most influential, provocative and least understood artists of our time. This is the story of the real Miss Simone.

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INTRODUCTION BY RODDY DOYLE'He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels' LEONARD COHENCharles Bukowski is one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. The autobiographical Ham on Rye is widely considered his finest novel. A classic of American literature, it offers powerful insight into his youth through the prism of his alter-ego Henry Chinaski, who grew up to be the legendary Hank Chinaski of Post Office and Factotum.

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Meet Tannie Maria - recipe writer turned crime fighter - and before she has time to take her Venus Chocolate Cake out of the oven, our glorious heroine finds herself embroiled in another mystery. In this wonderful sequel to Recipes for Love and Murder, Slimkat the bushman finds his life under threat and Tannie Maria is determined to find out who wants to kill him. But her boyfriend is keen to keep Tannie out of danger, and she's pretty sure he's hiding something so Tannie has mysteries of her own solve . . . Blending a perfect whodunnit with lovable characters, Sally Andrew really does have the perfect recipe for a crime series.

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Volume 25 of The Complete Peanuts presents the very final year of the defining comic strip of the 20th century, which ran for nearly 18,000 strips and for 50 years after its debut in 1950. This masterpiece includes all of 1999 through to the final strip on 13 February 2000. In this volume, Rerun takes centre stage and cements himself as the last great Peanuts character - when he embarks on a career as an underground comic book artist! This volume also features a huge surprise: the complete Li'l Folks, the weekly one-panel comic that Charles Schulz produced for his hometown paper. Li'l Folks was a clear precursor to Peanuts, and its inclusion here will bring The Complete Peanuts full circle.

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'Vivid, amusing and immensely enjoyable . . . A triumph' Alexander McCall SmithMeet Tannie Maria: the loveable writer of recipes in her local paper, the Klein Karoo Gazette.One Sunday morning, as Maria stirs apricot jam, she hears her editor Harriet on the stoep. What Maria doesn't realise is that Harriet is about to deliver a whole basketful of challenges and the first ingredient in two new recipes - recipes for love and murder.A delicious blend of intrigue, milk tart and friendship, join Tannie Maria in her first investigation. Consider your appetite whetted for a whole new series of mysteries . . .

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The world is a hard place to be good in... Struggling to keep a grip on reality after his wife's death, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of: with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one man's judgement, The Death of Bunny Munro is also an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son.

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Sitting down to write a book about his hero D.H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico he cannot get beyond a drug-induced erotic fantasy on a nudist beach . . . And yet, incredibly, this attempt to write a 'sober academic study' reveals the hold Lawrence and his work still exert on us today. Out of Sheer Rage is a complete one-off, a richly comic study of the combination of bad temper, procrastination and the uncanny power of obliquity.

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The Peanuts gang offer their wisdom on love in this beautifully produced gift book for all generations. From Woodstock falling in love with a worm to Charlie Brown's obsession with the Little Red-Headed Girl, from Snoopy's yearning for that girl beagle to Lucy's unwavering (and unrequited) affection for Schroeder, the beguiling Peanuts gang know a thing or two about love. The millions of faithful Charles Schulz fans and those who fondly remember our best-loved beagle and his friends will cherish this latest title in our Peanuts Guide to Life series.

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A Million Ways to Die in the West pays homage to the traditional Western with a modern comic spin, following a cowardly farmer who seeks the help of a gunslinger's wife to win back the woman who left him. Author Seth MacFarlane produced, directed, and starred in the film, released in May 2014.

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Tom Docherty was seventeen in the summer of 1955. With school behind him and a summer job at a brick works, Tom had his whole life before him. Years later, alone in a rented flat in Edinburgh and lost in memories, Tom recalls the intellectual and sexual awakening of his youth. In looking back, Tom discovers that only by understanding where he comes from can he make sense of his life as it is now.

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We are far less free than we like to think. In Creating Freedom, Raoul Martinez exposes the mechanisms of control that pervade our lives and the myths on which they depend. Exploring the lottery of our birth, the coercive influence of concentrated wealth, and the consent-manufacturing realities of undemocratic power, he shows that our faith in free media, free markets, free elections and free will is dangerously misplaced. Written with empathy and imagination, this scholarly, fierce and profoundly hopeful manifesto makes a dazzling case for creating freedom on our own terms.

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Octogenarian former sheriff Bill Gastner and Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman investigate a puzzling double murder in this twisty, page-turning instalment in the critically acclaimed Posadas County mystery seriesIf you haven''t yet discovered these wonderful mysteries, you are in for a treat! Anne Hillerman, New York Times bestselling authorThe morning after his eighty-seventh birthday bash, former Posadas County sheriff Bill Gastner drives past a couple of vehicles stopped on the highway shoulder. It''s not an unusual sight: a sheriff''s patrol unit, emergency lights ablaze, pulled in behind a pickup truck. The female deputy hasn''t radioed for backup. But there''s something about the scene that makes him feel uneasy.The next day, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is called to a rather more dramatic and disturbing roadside scene, with the same truck the star of the show. But this time, its occupant is in no fit state to talk - hi

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Lt. Colonel Jock Sinclair is a rough talking, whisky drinking soldier's soldier, a hero of the desert campaign who rose to his position through the ranks. Colonel Barrow, an officer graduate of Oxford and Sandhurst, had a wretched war in Japanese prison camps. But he has come to take command of the Battalion he has long admired, the one that Jock Sinclair has served in since he was a boy. In the claustrophobic world of Campbell barracks, a conflict is inevitable between the two men and a tragedy unfolds with concentrated and ferocious power.James Kennaway served in a Highland regiment himself, and his feeling for 'tunes of glory, for the glamour and brutality of army life gives added authenticity and humour to this, his first and most famous novel. He died in a car crash at the tragically early age of forty.

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1958. In a dorm room in Moscow, a young writer is woken by the sound of angry voices on the radio. Through the fog of a hangover he hears the news that a novel called Doctor Zhivago has earned its author the Nobel Prize. There is uproar. The author, Boris Pasternak, faces exile, the press hound him and demand that he refuse the award. A few days earlier the young writer found a copy of this book - could those simple pages really be so dangerous?Based on Ismail Kadare's own experience, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a portrait of a city, a story of youthful disenchantment and a reminder of the incredible importance of the written word.

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*Longlisted for the 2016 International DUBLIN Literary Award*Once upon a time there was a Persian prince. The prince had many brothers, for his father had married over a thousand wives, but Prince Naser alone stood to inherit the kingdom. As the prince ascends to the throne we lurk in his shadow to overhear the whispered intrigues and plotting of bloody battles. The weight of the nation bears heavily on Shah Naser's shoulders. Will this young king triumph or will he succumb to the forces that threaten to engulf him? Enter the court of the King of Persia . . .

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'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.

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When a valuable scarab belonging to an American millionaire is absent-mindedly stolen by Lord Emsworth, young writers Ashe Marson and Joan Valentine are tasked with infiltrating Blandings Castle to retrieve it. Meanwhile, vacuous Freddie Threepwood worries that some compromising letters may scupper his engagement to the millionaire's daughter. Wodehouse's comic masterpiece combines above and below stairs pretensions with all the fun of a romantic thriller.Martin Jarvis is an award-winning British actor and the 'Olivier of audiobooks'.

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Pride and Prejudice - An elegant tableau revolving around the five Bennett daughters, including clever, strong-spirited Elizabeth. Austen's masterpiece is a study of love, loss and snobbery.Sense and Sensibility - The engaging story of sisters Elinor and Marianne, whose lives are turned upside down when they are left almost penniless following the death of their father. Two men with whom the sisters form attachments present more unforeseen challenges along the way.Emma - Emma is an exquisitely crafted social portrait of late Eighteenth-century society, widely considered to be Austen's most literarily accomplished work. Emma Woodhouse, self-appointed meddling matchmaker, stands to lose out on love herself if she isn't careful.Persuasion - In part autobiographical, Persuasion has a quieter sense of humour, and takes a more serious tone, than some of Austen's other novels. Anne Elliot is revisited by her ex-fiancée, coinciding with a downturn in her family's fortunes, and has some choices to make.Northanger Abbey - Young and susceptible, Catherine Morland expects dark secrets and many dangers to be lurking in the hidden recesses of Northanger Abbey. In fact, the real obstacles lying in her path are more mundane but just as serious as her imagined horrors.The collection also includes 2 Bonus CDs including The Watsons, an early Austen short story, and a collection of letters. Titles read by highly-acclaimed British actresses including Anna Massey, Harriet Walter and Joanna Lumley.

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The setting is Blandings Castle in rural Shropshire England, idyllic country seat of eccentric Clarence, 9th Earl of Emsworth. It is summer time and Blandings is bursting with bizarre visitors including his Lordship's sister Lady Constance and Alaric, Duke of Dunstable. The Duke brings with him a recently purchased painting of a rather fetching nude which, it seems, everyone wants to get their hands on. American visitor, Wilbur Trout believes the nude resembles his latest ex-wife, whilst Lord Emsworth is convinced the portrait bears more than a passing resemblance to his peerless prize pig, the Empress! Soon Blandings becomes a hornet's nest of theft, forgery, imposters - and romance. Luckily Emsworth's brother, Sir Galahad, illustrious member of the old Pelican Club, is on hand to sort things out...

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Cristiano is thirteen. Home life is far from perfect. When his father and two friends come up with a plan to rob a bank, Cristiano sees the chance of a better life. As a tremendous storm brews that night, Cristiano will have to put childhood behind him once and for all, and the perfect crime will have shocking consequences.

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From his allegiance to punk rock in his adolescence to becoming an essential voice on music and culture, Kelefa Sanneh makes a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us. Distilling a career's worth of knowledge, he explores the tribes music forms, and how its genres, shape-shifting across the years, give us a way to track larger forces and concerns.This is a book to shock and awe the deepest music nerd, and at the same time to work as a heady gateway drug for the uninitiated.

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In Radical Acts of Love, Janie Brown, oncology nurse of thirty years and counsellor of cancer patients with terminal diagnoses, recounts twenty conversations she has had with the dying; including those personally close to her. Each conversation uncovers a different perspective and experience of death, while at the same time exploring its universalities.As well as offering an extremely sensitive and wise insight into our final moments, Brown offers practical ways to facilitate the shift from feeling helpless about death to feeling hopeful; from fear to acceptance; from feeling disconnected and alone, to becoming part of the wider, collective story of our mortality.

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In a small Pacific Northwest town we meet a young man who has shot dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy: the anguish, regret, despair and bittersweet romance.Typical of Brautigan's singular style, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away is a beautifully written, brooding novel. Its autobiographical prose is a fitting epitaph to this complex, contradictory and often misunderstood writer.

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