Canongate Books – serie

'A book of profundity, humanity and ravishing beauty - the only kind of book I want to read' - ANDREW SEAN GREER 'Glorious and captivating, with Eggers' signature humour and precision, Contrapposto tells a big and big-hearted story that counter-positions exquisitely the pain and exhilarations of love and the creative impulse. I loved this novel' - LILY KING'This book speaks to my heart. With wit, wisdom, and deep empathy, Contrapposto asks all the hard questions that haunt and enliven a creative life - about art and beauty, about commerce and class, about the cost of passion and the price of success' - RUTH OZEKICricket is just a shy kid who likes drawing when he first meets Olympia. She's older, more confident; she bullies him into some light vandalism and instantly he's in love. When they're together, they talk about their futures, how they're going to travel the world, the beauty and rapture of art.Then those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.This is a wild and beautiful novel about two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.

In the bestselling Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom showed us how Shakespeare shaped human consciousness, and addressed the question of authorship in Hamlet. In Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, America's most celebrated critic turns his attention to a reading of the play itself and to Shakespeare's most enigmatic and memorable character.This is Bloom's attempt to uncover the mystery of both Prince Hamlet and the play, how both prince and drama are able to break through the conventions of theatrical mimesis and the representation of character, making us question the very nature of theatrical illusion. Hamlet: Poem Unlimited is a hugely insightful and yet highly accessible exploration of Shakespeare's crowning achievement by a critic who is seen by many as his greatest living champion.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'Touching, thoughtful, a deeply affecting love story about time and regret' DAVID NICHOLLS'Steeped in yearning, melancholy and the reckoning with mortality that must come to us all . . . King's writing still pierces you' The Times'Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, here is a novel of piercing clarity' Independent'Beautifully written . . . I was hooked from the first page' Daily Mail'You knew I'd write a book about you someday'Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules.She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love.Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTA BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS PICKA BEST SUMMER READING PICK FOR THE TIMES, DAILY MAIL, FINANCIAL TIMES AND GUARDIANA 2024 BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FOR BBC R4 OPEN BOOK, THE OBSERVER, THE GUARDIAN, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, GQ, GRAZIA, HERO, i-D, NYLON, VULTURE, READINGS AND KIRKUS REVIEWSA semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2025SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD FOR FICTION 2026SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINSTON GRAHAM PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2026LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2026A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK A BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2025 FOR THE GUARDIAN, THE OBSERVER, THE HERALD AND THE BBC'Crackles with creative rebellion' DOUGLAS STUART'immersive, intelligent, immensely sensual' ELIF SHAFAK'A novel that brims over with generosity and warmth' OBSERVERHe will stay like this forever, Robert's arm draped round him. They will be forever twenty. Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he's off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls - and never leave his side.Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow - its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city - all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest. Stunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees - and paid a devastating price.

THE READS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2026 - TimesBOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026 - Guardian2026 FICTION HIGHLIGHTS - ObserverWHAT TO READ IN 2026 - Financial TimesBOOKS YOU NEED TO READ IN 2026 - BBC CultureTHE MOST HYPED BOOKS WE CAN'T WAIT TO READ IN 2026 - Elle MagazineThe past is never done with: always the song continues Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as 'son of nobody'. As sole translator and interpreter of the Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its modern footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the three-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition and grief. In this masterpiece of myth and history, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live - then, now and always.

For the last decade, Rob Sears has been painstakingly combing the words of Donald J. Trump for signs of poetry. To the surprise of many, he has found riches. By simply cutting up and reordering lines from Trump's tweets, Truths and transcripts, Sears has unearthed a trove of exquisite verse that was just waiting to be found.In this expanded edition of a poetry classic, fans can rediscover a writer of rare conviction (thirty-four felony charges and counting), and for the first time ponder the full span of Trump's artistic flowering and the paradoxes it poses. Like: How can one and the same person unite critics with beautiful poems, yet prove so divisive in his 'other life' as a political leader? And how can a man many consider desperately flawed produce works of such grace as 'All I ask is fairness', 'My hands are normal hands' and 'Shithole countries'?The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump is a carefully curated collection for our times that will make a thought-provoking addition to any poetry-lover's library.

'One of the most accomplished and important science writers of our time' ED YONG'Chanda Prescod-Weinstein brings light to our universe' ROBIN INCEIn The Edge of Space-Time, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein takes readers to the boundaries of the universe, inviting us to spend time at the edge of what we know about space-time - and about ourselves. Guided by her conviction that science is for everybody, Prescod-Weinstein renders accessible some of the most abstract concepts of theoretical physics and draws on poetry and popular culture - from Queen Latifah to Lewis Carroll to Big K.R.I.T. to Sun Ra and Star Trek - to tell fascinating stories about the fundamental quantum nature of space-time and everything inside of it. Here we meet the quantum cat that is both dead and alive, learn the difference between dark matter and dark energy, explore the inner workings of black holes and investigate the possibility of a unified theory of quantum gravity.Through Prescod-Weinstein's clear-eyed and unique perspective, and informed by her deep knowledge of post-colonial history and Black feminist thought, The Edge of Space-Time argues that physics is an essential way for everyone to look at the universe and presents a compelling case that 'the edge' is a powerful vantage point from which to see the big picture. Prescod-Weinstein also shows us how spending time with the cosmos is a vital human activity that enriches all our lives.

THE EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENS EVERYDAYOne night, George Duncan is woken by a noise in his garden. Impossibly, a great white crane has tumbled to earth, shot through its wing by an arrow. Unexpectedly moved, George helps the bird, and from the Chaimoment he watches it fly away, his life is transformed. The next day, a beautiful woman called Kumiko walks into his shop and begins to tell him the most extraordinary story. Wise, romantic, magical and funny, The Crane Wife is a celebration of the disruptive and redemptive power of love.

Vividly capturing the heat, sounds and smells of southern Italy, Conversations in Sicily astounds with its modernity, lyricism and originality. Driven by a sense of total disconnection, the narrator embarks on a journey from northern Italy to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. Through the conversations of the islanders and a reunion with his mother, he gradually begins to feel reconnected. But to what kind of world? Written during Mussolini's time in power, Conversations in Sicily is one of the great novels of anti-fascism.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERPeople have lost hope that peace is possible. Talking about peace seems too vulnerable, too naïve, too dangerous. We have resigned ourselves to this unending war as the only way forward. But we have tried this. We have tried war. The only war that is won is one that leads to peace.On paper Aziz and Maoz should not be friends. Aziz's brother was killed by Israeli forces, and Maoz lost both his parents in the 7 October 2023 attacks. In The Future is Peace, these two lifelong peace activists take readers on a searing journey to understand this holy, bloodstained land and explore each other's personal and national histories. Pairing unapologetic candour and inspirational prose, Abu Sarah and Inon are sending a message to humanity that the people have the power to make change. Peace is achievable, not just between Palestinians and Israelis, but throughout the world.

WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE MONTHShortlisted for the British Psychological Society Book Award for Popular ScienceMuch of value has been written about sleep, but rest is different; it is how we unwind, calm our minds and recharge our bodies. The Art of Rest draws on ground-breaking research Claudia Hammond collaborated on: 'The Rest Test', the largest global survey into rest ever undertaken, completed by 18,000 people across 135 different countries. The survey revealed how people get rest and how it is directly linked to your sense of wellbeing.Counting down through the top ten activities which people find most restful, Hammond explains why rest matters, examines the science behind the results to establish what really works and offers a roadmap for a new, more restful and balanced life.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERPeople have lost hope that peace is possible. Talking about peace seems too vulnerable, too naïve, too dangerous. We have resigned ourselves to this unending war as the only way forward. But we have tried this. We have tried war. The only war that is won is one that leads to peace.On paper Aziz and Maoz should not be friends. Aziz's brother was killed by Israeli forces, and Maoz lost both his parents in the 7 October 2023 attacks. In The Future is Peace, these two lifelong peace activists take readers on a searing journey to understand this holy, bloodstained land and explore each other's personal and national histories. Pairing unapologetic candour and inspirational prose, Abu Sarah and Inon are sending a message to humanity that the people have the power to make change. Peace is achievable, not just between Palestinians and Israelis, but throughout the world.

'Ingeniously plotted and compulsively well-paced' Sunday Times'A cracking detective story that seems to be investigating its own existence' Jeff Noon'Are you there, Tom?'I stood in the doorway, staring at the phone.My father had been dead for almost seven years.When Thomas Quinn receives a seemingly impossible voice message, he can't help but wonder if Andrew Black - a legendary, reclusive mystery writer and his father's protégé - is somehow involved.Thomas knows that Black can't be trusted, that he should be avoided at all costs. But as the search for answers spirals into an examination of the nature of time, entropy, the true forms of angels, fictional stalkers and the secrets of the nativity set . . . Thomas realises that he might not have a choice.

A classic detective story that explores the last years of Hemingway's life, evoking both Cuba and this giant of American letters with enormous skill and wit. When the bones of a man murdered forty years earlier surface on the Havana estate of Ernest Hemingway, writer and ex-cop Mario Conde is called in to investigate. As he unearths the truth of the night of 3 October 1958, he is forced to come to terms with a very different side to his former literary hero.Padura Fuentes switches between Conde's world and that of Hemingway's Cuba four decades earlier; in the heat and rum haze, the two seem slowly to merge. In an extraordinary journey into the past and into the personality of one of the twentieth century´s most enigmatic and powerful writers, a masterful and totally convincing portrait emerges, as well as a riveting mystery that will keep you in suspense until the very final pages.

'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.

'Rigorous, rationally optimistic and ultimately empowering' OLIVER BURKEMAN'A deeply-considered - and funny - treatise on complacency' ALEX McDOWELL'Essential' DAVID EAGLEMAN'A rare and wondrous thing' STEPHEN FRYAs the tempo of change accelerates beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined, the ability to think clearly about what lies ahead has never been more important - yet we remain remarkably bad at it.So how might we think about the future with greater rigour?Nick Foster is one of very few people to have built a career considering this question, and in this book he's written an invaluable guide for the rest of us. From the Could of excitable, science fiction utopianism and the Should of data-driven, dogmatic certainty, to the Might of scenario planning and the Don't of fear-driven risk avoidance, Foster explores how humanity has grappled with the concept of the future throughout history, tracing the emergence of distinct schools of thought and exploring the virtues, blind spots and inevitable shortcomings of each.Could Should Might Don't resists making cocksure prophecies and bombastic predictions, instead encouraging us to create more balanced, detailed and truthful versions of the future, so that we might improve what we leave behind for those who might follow.

Traffickers. Hit men. Outlaws. Thieves . . . Our planet is a crime scene - but can we catch the killers?Enter a world where people are murdered, ecosystems are destroyed, organised criminals terrorise communities and corporate gangsters operate outside the law. And, closely following their every move, are teams of secret agents, vigilantes and scientists who are fighting for our planet's future.Using insider sources and her expertise as a criminal psychologist, Julia Shaw takes us deep into some of the worst environmental crimes of our time. She reconstructs the minds of the perpetrators in cases like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Dieselgate emissions scandal and the Shuidong wildlife crime syndicate. From the Amazon forest to South African gold mines, she follows the impact of green crimes right to our doorsteps and meticulously profiles the work of the heroes bringing these criminals to justice.Shaw asks: how do the Earth's killers think? What makes their crimes so deadly? And how can we stop them from stealing our future?Green Crime is the most far-reaching murder mystery ever told.

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.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION'Ece Temelkuran is a brilliant thinker' Omar El Akkad'Her most ambitious and dazzling book yet' Brian Eno'Perhaps the most urgent and necessary book of our times' Michael MorpurgoDear stranger. Are you home? Do you feel at home? For how much longer? Across the world the number of refugees and exiles, the dispossessed and displaced, the politically homeless and the economically excluded is growing. In the decade since she left her own home, Ece Temelkuran has been a political Cassandra, warning those convinced it couldn't happen in their country that fascism is coming.Now, as oppression spreads and temperatures rise - as we face competing crises and learn, again and again, that no institution is so concrete it can't turn to dust, and no home is too strong to be destroyed - she has written Nation of Strangers: a series of letters from one stranger to another. Politically attuned and deeply personal, this extraordinary, heartening correspondence is a gift to treasure in uncertain times. As poetic as it is precise, it is a book for anyone who feels alienated by an ever-more monstrous world. It shows how, as we all become strangers, our home will depend on the strength we find with one another.

'A terrific nuts and bolts account of the real business of cooking as told from the trenches. No nonsense. This is what it takes' ANTHONY BOURDAIN'One of the most informative, funny and transparent books about the restaurant biz ever written' BRET EASTON ELLISSous Chef takes you behind the swinging doors of a busy restaurant kitchen, putting you in chef's shoes for an intense, high-octane twenty-four hours. Follow him from the moment he opens the kitchen in the morning, as he guides you through the meticulous preparation, the camaraderie in the hours leading up to service and the adrenalin-rush as the orders start coming in. Thrilling, addictive and bursting with mouth-watering detail, Sous Chef will leave you breathless and awestruck - walking into a restaurant will never be the same again.

Ten slices from the life of Bobby Gold: by night, the security chief of a mobbed-up New York City nightclub, by day, a reluctant bonebreaker and enforcer for Eddie Fish - his old college roommate, and best friend. Emerging from the 'gladiator school' environment of an upstate prison with an imposing physique and a reputation for skilled brutality, Bobby's a lonely, guilt-ridden child inside a hulking body. He views the grim work of coercion, assault and even murder as jobs to be done with a craftsman's work ethic and with a minimum of force. However, the technician's pride in a job done well is failing him, his friend and protector Eddie is getting flakier and flakier and worst of all, he's falling in love with Nicole, a reckless and self-destructive female line-cook who"s been around the block a few times.Following on from his two superb novels, Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo, Anthony Bourdain has produced another stunning book of crime fiction.

Welcome to the retirement home of Henry and Frances, ex-New Yorkers and professional assassins: a luxury hotel suite in an idyllic, tequila-drenched Caribbean hideaway.It's supposed to be all cocktails and sex on the beach. But when a job icing a Mafioso godfather goes awry, trouble hits paradise . . . in the form of a cross-dressing capo, a debauched Irish hard man and a slew of incompetent but vicious US marshals.

When Pius Fernandes, a retired schoolteacher living in modern day Dar es Salaam, discovers a diary of a British colonial administrator from 1913, he is drawn into a provocative account of the Asian community of East Africa, and the liaisons, feelings and secrets of its people, over the course of a century.Part generational history, part detective story, part social chronicle, M.G. Vassanji's award-winning novel magnificently conjures setting and period as it explores notions of identity and exile.

The Crimson Petal and the White is one of the best-loved novels of recent years. Now a major BBC TV drama, it captured hearts and left readers desperate for more. In The Apple, Faber returns to Silver Street to find it still teeming with life, and conjures further tantalising glimpses of Sugar, Clara, Mr Bodley and many other favourites.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2026 SO FAR My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life - my adult life, that is - which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling . . .In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is introverted and naïve, and Peter's experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal.As Anna's life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, claiming the life she yearns for.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Brutally honest as well as poetic' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Necessary, urgent and totally original' AFUA HIRSCH'Intimately life-affirming . . . tackles enormously complex questions' CALEB FEMISomeone once asked me how I'd want to be remembered.I said, 'As the boy who grew.'Diagnosed with ADHD as a child, Jordan Stephens found his teens and twenties to be a whirl of career success and nurturing friendships but also a brutal pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive coping mechanisms and heartbreak. When he tried to live up to his own damaged expectations and his world exploded, he allowed himself to explore the pain he'd repressed his entire life.Unsparingly digging into the fear, tenderness and trauma, Jordan Stephens discovers what it means to be a modern man and how the price we pay for love, in all its forms, is worth it.

Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life is the classic biography of Charles Bukowski, the hard-drinking barfly whose semi-autobiographical books about low-life America made him a cult figure across the globe. Extensive original research and unique contributions from friends, family and associates - including Mickey Rourke, Robert Crumb, Sean Penn, Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg - as well as personal photographs and drawings by Buk himself make this a must for Bukowski devotees and new readers alike.

A Change is Gonna Come chronicles more than forty years of black music: from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement to the slick pop of Motown; from Woodstock and the 'Summer of Love' to Vietnam and the race riots; from disco inferno to the Million Man March. This is an insightful and riveting study which looks at the place black music occupies in social history, its battle for the desegregation of popular music and its contribution to social change outside the recording studio