Saraband / Contraband – förlag

Shortlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction 'A gentle and compassionate novel that explores the nuances of queer love and friendship.' Derek Owusu, The GuardianWhen a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague – the poet – it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn’t; she has everything he wants. While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows. While he tends to his budding career, she writes from her big, white house in the woods. As he slips between his old life and this new one, his fixation grows into something more powerful. The poet, his Kingfisher, is his sole focus. He is hypnotised.But when simultaneous illnesses threaten to destroy the precarious reality he clings to, he’s forced to question what he can and cannot take from someone. This is a novel about grief, power and desire – and the tangles in between that make up a life.

A collection of concise and enlightening essays and reflections on the art of bouldering, from the author of bestseller The Zen of Climbing.More than a sport, bouldering is a craft that demands equal fine-tuning of the mind and body. It calls for total commitment and attentiveness. Here, climber, writer, and philosopher Francis Sanzaro brings the discipline into conversation with other sports and arts including architecture, dance, skateboarding, painting, parkour, martial arts, and gymnastics.Sanzaro shows how the pursuit of bouldering is akin to developing a philosophy – something that can be nurtured and strengthened like a muscle, benefitting both body and soul.The Craft of Bouldering will enrich and enhance your climbing and encourage you to appreciate the natural physicality and artful play of bouldering.

From the author of The Zen of Climbing and The Craft of Bouldering, a manifesto for a new approach to connecting meaningfully with the wildness around and within us.As we live increasingly urbanised lives, we seek out wilderness and green space in times of hardship and turmoil, or simply during our leisure time. In the process of exploring and understanding more about the benefits of being in nature, many of us have taken up swimming, forest bathing, cycling, hiking and running in the open air. But when we spend this time in the wild, are we really connected to it?Francis Sanzaro argues that we often obscure opportunities for real connection through our attachment to screens, our anxieties about our "everyday" lives, or simply through our egos. When we observe nature, we rarely do so without subconsciously filtering out the parts that don't fit into the perfect snapshot we crave.To foster a genuine connection with the natural world, and to better protect it, we must embrace its contradictions as well as the surface beauty. Through deeper engagement with our environment, we can discover the wild within ourselves, too.

A silver sea of gossamer rippling over an upland field, the work of tiny money spiders A woodpecker’s maestro drumming performance in a wet winter woodlandThe diving antics of laser-eyed buzzardsThe hug of a small forest...Determined to overcome her winter anxiety, Helen Moat sets out into the darkness. Her discoveries begin at home, and then on across the world from the Arctic Circle to Asia. Along the way, she finds beauty in the small things that only winter can offer.Helen’s quest to dispel her seasonal blues has its ups and downs; slowly, though, she learns not only to accept the darkness of winter, but to embrace it. When she travels to Lapland and Japan, their cultural and philosophical attitude to the season is a revelation.While the Earth Holds Its Breath nurtures resilience and determination, finding a joyous positivity that does not ignore the darkness, but finds something to love there.

Harness the potential of tarot to support and inspire creative practice, reflection, perspective, and everyday making. This inspirational book invites artists, writers, and open-minded creatives to work with tarot as a framework for reflection and imaginative inquiry. Drawing on more than thirty years of lived creative practice, Bennett shows how tarot’s images, archetypes, and narratives can support creative momentum, deepen self-trust, and help navigate periods of creative block.Blending personal insight with accessible exercises, The Fool’s Leap introduces a practice that integrates tailored spreads, creative prompts, and intuitive interpretation. Tarot opens better questions—about process, direction, and intention—rather than supplying fixed answers. The emphasis is on staying present with the work and building a sustainable creative rhythm.For anyone standing at the threshold of a new idea, a stalled project, or a return to creative practice, The Fool’s Leap offers an invitation to stay present, trust the process, and take the next step.Includes 35 beautiful, original black and white illustrations, both of the Major and Minor Arcana symbols and card spreads.

Discover the transformative power – for you and for wildlife – of building an outdoor sanctuary for all species to thrive in and enjoy. In a hidden valley tucked into an unspoiled corner of Northumberland lies a naturalist's garden, developed from scratch by award-winning gardener and author Susie White, her husband and friends. This is the story of how they created a remarkable oasis, a place as alive as it is beautiful.Susie's vision and passion unfold as she transforms a patch of untended ground into a wildlife-friendly haven, planted with flowering perennials, trees, herbs, vegetables, and a wildflower meadow. The spaces teem with life: owls and blackbirds, bats and mice, butterflies and bees, all drawn by pollen-rich flowers, ponds, and nesting sites. Second Nature takes us through the planning and construction, and describes how she designed the garden to blend harmoniously with her natural environment. From the plants and wildlife to the structures that provide shelter and habitat, every element reflects Susie's commitment to sustainability. Her account is filled with inspiration and practical advice for gardeners to learn from, and her deep appreciation for the natural world shines through.

Learn how to create a garden that works both day and night for moths and butterflies, attracting stunning species and helping both flora and fauna to thrive.Moths are a crucial but forgotten pollinator, often overlooked in favour of their brighter cousin – the butterfly. But, by ignoring moths, we are missing out on gardens that could be filled with more joy, movement and biodiversity. If we could build gardens that pay both pollinators the attention they deserve, we might just be rewarded with healthier, more beautiful ecosystems…Lifelong gardener and author of Second Nature: The Story of a Naturalist’s Garden, Susie White has spent over a decade constructing a lively, abundant wildlife haven at her Northumberland home. Her garden is a sanctuary for all creatures and values life, variety and growth, of which both moths and butterflies are a crucial part. In this compact volume, she teaches us how to find plants that attract moths and butterflies, how to support these insects through their larval stages, and how to identify and study them.As with so many insects, numbers of moths and butterflies have declined dramatically in recent years. Actively creating a beautiful garden that welcomes all forms of life is a simple but joyful step to take towards protecting them.

A refreshingly down-to-earth story about one woman's pregnancy, childbirth – and the harsh realities of today's NHS maternity care.Sarah Close's journey begins with excitement, anticipation and all the plans that a first pregnancy brings. But it doesn’t take long for those plans to start going awry. Soon she is struggling to navigate missed warning signs, bewildering bureaucracy and unexpected turns – including a potential disaster that is only narrowly averted. Her story is often dark, but it is also relatable and packed with warmth, wit and unsentimental honesty.This is a book for every woman whose pregnancy and birth did not go to plan, or who has felt overlooked in a healthcare system under pressure. It’s for anyone who wants to know what’s really going on behind the doctor's curtain – and for the hard-pressed staff trying to hold everything together.Highly readable, candid and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, This Did Hurt takes us behind the headlines to explore what happens when maternity care is pushed too far.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s propulsive, Booker-shortlisted contemporary classic – reissued to mark its tenth anniversary.The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence.Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows. Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear.His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.

A New York Times Editor’s Pick. Shortlisted for the Bookmark Festival Book of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize"I wasn’t sure there could be a great pandemic novel. Here it is." Ian RankinMy name is Haley Cooper Crowe and I am in lockdown in a remote location I can’t tell you about.It’s five years after the pandemic, and for most people life has returned to normal—but not for Haley Cooper Crowe and her brother Ben. Children of divorce, they live with their mother, but their dad believes there’s a new, much deadlier virus spreading out of control, and that he can only save his kids by kidnapping them and hiding them in his remote prepper hideaway.Once confined to their off-grid “safe house”, Haley and Ben are completely cut off from civilisation. Will they make it out alive? How can they save their mother? How can they discover what’s happening on the outside?Propulsive, electrifying, tense, and often visceral and funny, How to Survive Everything is one teenage girl’s guide to navigating the imminent collapse of her world, family and sanity.

April 21, 1923. The SS Metagama is inching out of Stornoway harbour on the Isle of Lewis, bound for Canada. On board are Finlay and Mairead; they are young and hopeful, leaving behind a community that has been touched by tragedy to change their lives forever…On the other side of the Atlantic, though, they face the realities of an uncaring industrial society. The effects of the Great Depression are inescapable, prejudice and division are rife, and though they remain bound by a shared past, their own lives soon diverge.In an adopted country that is tense with both opportunity and loss, social progress and violent backlash, can Mairead and Finlay keep their promises to one another, to look only forward, and resist the constant pull of home?From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a poignant and deeply evocative novel of the 20th-century emigrant experience in the New World. With lyrical prose and masterful storytelling, Murray paints a vivid portrait of the resilient Hebrideans-in-exile who struggled between holding on and letting go.

Past and present converge as Linda Cracknell doubles back to follow in the footsteps of others.Across Norway, Kenya, the Isle of Skye and Lindisfarne, Doubling Back traces the contours of history. Following paths long mythologised by writers and relatives gone before, Linda Cracknell charts how places immortalised in writing and memory create portals; wrinkles in time and geography that allow us to walk in the footsteps of others. Join Linda as she traverses the dangerous crevasses of the Swiss alps to retrace the mountaineering past of the father she barely knew, follows the escape route of a Norwegian scientist on the run in the second world war, or simply celebrates the joy found in the ‘friendly paths’ of her local, regular terrain, and the ritual of returning home.Originally published in 2014 to rave reviews and serialised on BBC radio, this revised edition includes an account of a new journey through northern Scotland’s Flow Country, the peatland that is our chief Carbon store. As the century is almost one quarter through, Linda doubles back once more to reflect on our future on this fragile Earth.

‘A wronged woman’s voice is reclaimed in this gripping tale of revenge and romance; a ‘medieval Gone Girl’.Highland Scotland was no place for a woman in the early 1500s. Life was turbulent, brutal, short. Chiefs waged war, while their sisters and daughters were traded as pawns in marriage. Catherine Campbell was one such young bride, betrothed to Lachlan Maclean and despatched from her fine home to join him on the Isle of Mull, to bear his sons and heirs.But Lachlan proved to be nothing like the man of Catherine’s dreams, and she was forced to resign herself to enduring life with him for the sake of duty… Until the day when he threatened to take away the one thing she couldn’t sacrifice: her daughter.Casting a fascinating light on the ruthless clan system, this compelling drama by one of Scotland’s best-loved novelists explores love, ambition, betrayal and revenge and highlights the precarious position of 16th-century women.

Poet and essayist Kenneth Steven takes us on a series of meditative quests in search of his “atoms of delight”—treasures, both natural and spiritual—through some of Scotland’s most beautiful landscapes.The short pieces in this captivating collection, whose title pays homage to Scottish Renaissance writer Neil Gunn, invite readers to accompany Steven as he seeks out crystal-clear waters, a glimpse of an elusive bird, delicate orchids, plump berries, or pebbles polished by time and tide. Appreciative of the grace of silence and the value of solitude and simplicity, he takes journeys that prompt introspection and provoke memories as we pause, breathe, and discover alongside him the transformative power of nature's small gifts and wild places.This is an evocative book that will inspire you to pay close attention as you explore your environment and reflect on the fleeting moments of pure joy that nature has brought into your life. As you set out on your own pilgrimages, you will discover the extraordinary that can be found in the everyday when you take the time to look for it.

“A cartoon fried egg. An eye. The tiniest of black holes. It needed a professional eye to be seen, but once pointed out it was undeniable. My own little Big Bang. The beginning of it all.”When Chitra Ramaswamy discovered she was pregnant, she longed to read something that went above and beyond a biology book or prescriptive manual; something that, instead, got to the heart of this thrilling, bewildering, overlooked, and often misrepresented experience.Expecting is a creative memoir. Through nine chapters exploring the nine months of pregnancy and birth, Ramaswamy takes the reader on a physical, intellectual, emotional, literary, and philosophical journey through the landscape of pregnancy. Childbearing and childbirth are experiences defined both by the measurable monthly changes to one’s life and body, and by those immeasurable, often obscured and neglected changes in perspective which are accessed through metaphor, art, and emotion.Ramaswamy bears witness to the individual and collective experience of pregnancy in this intimate yet expansive book of wild and lyrical essays, paying tribute to this most extraordinary and ordinary of experiences.

‘Hearing you say my name was a way of seeing myself as I had never seen myself … you gave my name new meaning, new weight.’Nerdy and shy, scholarship student Daniel de La Luna arrives at college nervous to meet his golden-haired, athletic roommate, whose Facebook photos depict a boy just like those who made Daniel’s school years hell.Sam Morris is not what he had imagined, though. As the two settle into college life they drink tequila under the stars, go on long runs through snow-covered hills, explore freshman nightlife, and inch closer until they find themselves in love.But their blissful first year is over all too soon. Daniel’s summer in his ancestral homeland of México becomes a rollercoaster of revelations, before his life is brutally upended by the unimaginable.How We Named the Stars is a tale of love, heartache and learning to honour the dead. Daniel and Sam will leave you forever changed.

There she goes brings together seventeen women writers – of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry – in an anthology of travel tales to inspire, encourage and empower women adventuring through the world in different ways and stages of life.There she goes celebrates the stories of women getting on with getting from one place to another – the grit, courage and determination of moving through the world with babies, with periods, with grief and loss, with the menopause, with magic and humour, with bodies that are ill or disabled or seen as foreign and Other. These are stories so often shared between women verbally but - despite the drama, excitement and humour they contain– are rarely printed.This is a book offering a new perspective on what it means to be adventurous. In times where fear and worry seem so prevalent, it is a gift of courage and celebration.

Community. It’s a word we are used to hearing everywhere from political speeches to fast-food advertisements. But can we really define it?Using her own experiences, joyful or painful, in communities, as well as a strong analysis of political and cultural shifts, Casey Plett shows how overuse of the word has caused it to become disconnected from the reality it signifies.Here, Plett suggests an alternative, moving towards a definition that acknowledges community as necessary for our existence – a source of comfort, knowledge and love – even while it has the potential to become dogmatic, cliquey or outright harmful.On Community does crucial work in pushing harder on words and ideas we take for granted. It invites us to be more careful and intentional with our language, to consider how we relate to those we know – and to those we don’t know at all.

Learn from Britain’s leading dragonfly expert how to invite dragonflies and damselflies into your garden and create the conditions for them to thrive.In this compact and accessible wildlife primer, ‘Dragonfly Ambassador’ Ruary Mackenzie Dodds shows how to set up a tranquil garden haven for dragonflies, with straightforward, easy-to-follow guidance on preparing your pond, what plants to include in it, and how to manage and enjoy it.With stunning colours and phenomenal flying abilities, dragonflies are beautiful creatures that are also vital to our ecosystem. This book outlines, too, how caring for something as specific and delicate as a dragonfly can provide a welcome respite from the everyday demands of life. We can, as always, learn so much from the natural world, even – and sometimes especially – from its smallest creatures.Learn how to transform your garden into a haven for dragonflies and damselflies, nurturing your own mental health and protecting the planet as you do so. Every pond counts!

'A Case of Matricide demonstrates literary talent of the highest order … few writers can rival Burnet.’ The SpectatorChief Inspector Gorski returns … In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons. Graeme Macrae Burnet once again pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this, the concluding part of his trilogy of Gorski novels. He injects a wry humour into the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds, but above all provides an entertaining, profound and moving read.

The President is dead. Cal Drummond is hiding out deep in the woods of the American South when he hears the news. Once a famous talk show host, he is now a disgraced man living a solitary existence in a cabin, drinking Jack Daniels, enjoying the cover of the trees, and getting on with life as Hank MacPhearson. But this news – and the journalist who delivers it – will have consequences that reach far back into Cal’s past. They threaten his new life and identity, but they also throw him one final chance: it was an interview that brought about his downfall, but could it be another one, this time with him in the hotseat, that could bring him back to life? Taking the reader from Scotland to Mexico and from California to Georgia, The Interview is a novel not only about speaking truth to power, but also about speaking truth to oneself.

The darkness of the night represents something unknowable – even frightening – to many. But when we really look up and into it, we can find celestial light shows, whole ecosystems, and, perhaps, a new perspective. The night sky offers something essential – a connection to something bigger than ourselves that can, in turn, help us understand ourselves and each other better. Humans have recognised and tried to make sense of this feeling since ancient times. For so many – from physicists and astronauts to astrologists and artists - the night sky has been a source of inspiration, wonder and exploration.But now our relationship to dark skies is changing as our access to them is depleted. Light pollution all over Earth can be seen from space, altering the landscape and outlining the coasts. And if we look from Earth into space, we can see artificial light there, too. In this short volume, Anna Levin looks at how we can learn from and nurture our relationship with the night sky even and especially in the context of our changing world.As you learn how to see and treasure the night sky, a sense of wonder about the universe will help you to understand more about our own pale blue dot.

Taking time for nature poetry is an act of reverence for the natural world, and a path to understanding our part in it.Nature poetry has been redefined through the centuries, shapeshifting through the major upheavals of our relationship with the landscapes, plants and non-human species with whom we share the earth. As our environment is destabilised and threatened by the climate crisis, we can once again find new meanings, causes for hope and catalysts for action in these poems.Arranged by season – and full of surprises – this anthology shows the vast breadth of writing on the natural world, and challenges homogenous ideas of what a nature poet can look like. The choices in this anthology see beloved poets celebrated alongside new and emerging writers, whose voices echo the urgency of the crisis we now face. Together, they show what we have in common across countries and centuries: an undeniable kinship with nature, and a fierce will to protect it.These poems will transport you, sending you into the garden, forests and rockpools with searching hands and open eyes.

Introducing Detective Georges Gorski…From twice Booker-listed author of His Bloody Project and Case Study. Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and ill at ease, he spends his evenings surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at his local bistro. But one day, she vanishes into thin air. When Detective Georges Gorski begins investigating her disappearance, Manfred’s repressed world is shaken to its core and he is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past. The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau effortlessly conjures up an otherworldly atmosphere that simultaneously intrigues and unsettles. A compelling psychological portrayal of a peculiar outsiderpushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination, it is byturns haunting, strange and mesmeric – Graeme Macrae Burnet’s acclaimed debut, a literary mystery novel that is well on its way to achieving cult status.

From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of trauma, police abuse and the power of hope. Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her. This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and viscerally rendered portrayal of abuse of power by the state, by the police and by the villains much closer to home.

Understanding, loving and protecting butterflies—in all their enchantments.Butterflies have enchanted and intrigued us for centuries. From the eighteenth-century “aurelians”, through the Victorian “golden age” of collecting, to the twentieth-century focus on conservation, humans have chased glimpses of these beautiful but elusive creatures. Winding through literature, art, music, and dreams, The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment uncovers why butterflies continue to inhabit such a profound place in our imagination.A first of its kind in combining the history of human interest in butterflies with a guide to practical observation, this pocket guide encourages us to nurture our curiosity and head out into our local environment, focusing on edgeland habitats that are home to many species.It is perhaps because butterflies are so fragile and fleeting that we are so beguiled by them. But now, as numbers dwindle, they have never been more difficult to spot. The Butterfly paves the way towards observing, identifying and ultimately protecting them.

'A Case of Matricide demonstrates literary talent of the highest order … few writers can rival Burnet.’ The SpectatorChief Inspector Gorski returns … In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons. Graeme Macrae Burnet once again pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this, the concluding part of his trilogy of Gorski novels. He injects a wry humour into the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds, but above all provides an entertaining, profound and moving read.

To swim is an act of attention: to the self, and to everything beyond it.Follow poet and nature writer Polly Atkin as she swims through the turning year in the rivers, lakes and tarns of the English Lake District, in this lyrical ode to the uplifting power of water. This is a love story between a person and a place. It is a story of acceptance, persistence and finding joy in the everyday, as eight years of outdoor swimming through every season deepen Atkin’s knowledge and understanding of both the landscape she calls home and her disabled body.Each month in the water reveals how a life lived with pain can be as rich, rewarding and full of delight as any other. Atkin swims for the sheer pleasure of it, showing how that pleasure may be found in every season, even by those who find the cold neither thrilling nor soothing. She reminds us of the quiet power of noticing the lives alongside ours — birds, plants and people. And through paying attention to herself and to the living world around her, she finds swimming becomes a transformative force, a kind of natural magic through which the extraordinary is revealed day after day, year after year.

Never underestimate a librarian.Fifty-something librarian Shona McMonagle is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls with a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name.After a visit from Miss Blaine herself, involving a bad-tempered exchange about Robinson Crusoe and improper book shelving, Shona is sent spinning through time and space for another mission. She finds herself on an island, with little in the way of clues to help her decipher the purpose of her trip. Despite initially wondering if this might be a rare treat from Miss Blaine, she soon realises this is no holiday. Her island is not tropical; it’s in the Baltic Sea – and it’s the fifteenth century.Luckily she’s kitted out for all eventualities and finds her local languages are not too rusty, which is useful when she encounters pirates, Krakens and other monsters. As always, she’s nothing if not resourceful – after all, she is a librarian.