Canongate Books – serie

There are many ways civilisation could end, even with wise, benevolent leaders like Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin watching over us. Now, in this fun interactive story of global doom, YOU decide how humanity perishes.Will we be turned to grey goo by Elon Musk's nanobots?Driven collectively insane by Russia's most potent memes? Or smashed to atoms by someone sitting on the wrong button in North Korea?In this book, YOU will meet the leaders with the future of civilisation in their hands. And YOUR wits and judgement will decide how we all inevitably die. Or then again, maybe, just maybe, with a little positive thinking, YOU will find a way to keep us all safe long enough to expire of old age and global warming instead. Just don't get too hopeful. On every page of Choose Your Own Apocalypse with Kim Jong-un & Friends, the end of your choice is most definitely nigh.

The Greek scholar William Lorimer spent the last ten years of his life working on this project. Each Gospel has a different form of Scots to match the different forms of Greek used by the various apostles and scribes, and the vigour and immediacy of the language is everywhere apparent.Transcribed, edited and published by his son Robin Lorimer, this scholarly and dramatically fresh reading of an already familiar text caused a sensation when it first appeared in 1983. Beyond the poetry of the King James version, here are the voices of the disciples themselves, speaking, as they undoubtedly did, in 'plain braid Galilee'.

WHICH ONE OF YOU BITCHES IS MY MOTHER?1980. In Manhattan's most exclusive hotel, four friends come face to face with a young, mega-watt film star. She has a question for them that has brought her from the streets of Paris to the playgrounds of the rich and famous - and it has almost destroyed her. . . Kate, Maxine, Judy and Pagan have soared to the top in fashion, PR and interior design. Now they are forced to look back at their lives: their wicked behaviour at school, the building of careers and the breaking of hearts. These women have never questioned their friendship, but now they must answer to Lili.Lace is the book that every mother kept hidden from her daughter. Originally published in 1982, it is the debut novel from the million-copy bestselling author of Superwoman.

Airtight Willie and Me is a collection of six tales from the underground, all of them characterized by Iceberg Slim's distinctive and unforgettable prose. From the opening story, in which Slim meets Airtight Willie, one of New York's slickest con men, to Satin, a classic tale of revenge in which a heist goes badly wrong, the reader is hooked into a rollercoaster ride through the badlands of urban America. Compelling always, funny sometimes, and typically bleak in their endings, Slim's slices of city life are important social documents that scorch most contemporary into submission. There is no moralizing bullshit, no romanticized illusions, few redemming factors - just straight-up sawn-off shotgun blasts from the 'King of the Ghetto'.

MACCAIG * MORGAN * LOCHHEADThis book contains a selection of the finest work from three of Scotland's best-known and best-loved poets: Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead. They have fascinated and charmed thousands of readers and listeners across Europe and America with the energy, humour and compassion of their vision.MacCaig's memorable celebrations of the physical world and the tragic-comic note of many of his short lyrics contrast strikingly with Morgan's poems on the modern world and city life. Liz Lochhead writes with an alert and sensitive eye on personal relationships and women's experience of them. The book provides an invaluable introduction to modern Scottish poetry and to the poets who are arguably its greatest practitioners.

A JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2014 WINNERShe's online.'I booked a hotel,' I say. 'Near Marble Arch.''That sounds great, hon. I can't wait to see you.''Yeah. Me too.''I'm vaguely nervous.''Don't be.'Do be. I'm a child.Lolito is a love story about a fifteen year-old boy who meets a middle-aged woman on the internet. When his long-term girlfriend and first love Alice, betrays him at a house party, Etgar goes looking for cyber solace in the arms of Macy, a stunning but bored housewife he meets online. What could possibly go wrong . . . ?Hilarious, fearless and utterly outrageous, Lolito is a truly twenty-first century love story.

NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING IAN McKELLEN It is 1947, and the long-retired Sherlock Holmes lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his housekeeper and her young son. He tends to his bees, writes in his journal, and grapples with the diminishing powers of his mind.But in the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn't even know he was asking - about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind's ability to know.Previously published as A Slight Trick of The Mind.

Fantastic, fantastical and utterly incomparable, Get in Trouble rummages in the cupboards of our psyches and pulls out fierce truths about everything from the essence of ghosts to the nature of love. And hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas, The Wizard of Oz, superheroes, the pyramids . . . Strange, dark and wry, the stories in Get in Trouble reveal Kelly Link at the height of her creative powers and stretch the boundaries of the human imagination.

An elderly schoolteacher recalls the single act of youthful passion that changed her life forever. A young gardener has an unsettling encounter with a suburban housewife. A teenage girl strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely bachelor.In these twelve haunting stories award-winning writer Mary Costello examines the passions and perils of everyday life with startling insight, casting a light into the darkest corners of the human heart.

Fully revised and updated, this is the only book with detailed information and maps on every Scottish island. With the author's own paintings illustrating it, this beautiful guide will take you everywhere, whether by armchair or yacht.From the abandoned crofts of Mingulay and the standing stones of Orkney to the white beaches of Colonsay, this is the first complete gazetteer to cover all of Scotland's many hundreds of islands, including those which are uninhabited and those which are notoriously difficult to reach. Packed with information on access, anchorages, points of historical or natural interest and things to do and see, this fascinating compendium provides indispensable information for touring, for browsing, for reference, and for all of those travellers who wish to experience some of the most beautiful and remote places in the world. No other book begins to emulate the range and depth of the information contained in The Scottish Islands. Illustrated with full-colour illustrations and relief maps of all the main islands, this is both an impressive work of reference and a fascinating personal view of Scotland's distant outposts.

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST Kate Grenville often takes inspiration for her fiction from her family history and this extraordinary memoir about the life of her own mother, Nance Russell, reveals why. Born to an unhappy marriage and into a deeply sexist society, Nance worked hard for everything she had, and while the world changed around her, she went on to university, opening businesses and raising a family. One Life is just as much a universal story as it is Nance's. Beautifully captured by her daughter, it draws on the tales passed down by word of mouth, creating an evocative portrait of life in twentieth-century rural Australia and a deeply intimate and caring homage to a mother's struggle.

The day a stained brown envelope arrives from Taduno's homeland, he knows that the time has come to return from exile. Back in Nigeria, Taduno discovers that his community no longer recognises him, his girlfriend Lela has disappeared, taken away by government agents, and all traces of his old life have been erased. All that is left of him are his own memories. As Taduno begins to unravel the mystery of his lost life he must also face a difficult decision: betray his love, or betray his nation.

This is the story of Maxine and Sheila Kohler, two sisters who grew up in the suffocating gentility of 1950s South Africa. When Maxine is just shy of her fortieth birthday her husband, a brilliant and respected surgeon, drives their car off the road and kills her. Devastated, Sheila returns to the country of her birth, haunted by questions. How had she failed to protect her sister? Was Maxine's death a matter of chance, or destiny? What lies in the soil of their troubled motherland that condemns its women to such violence?

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDWINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEBGE IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016Marcus Conway has come a long way to stand in the kitchen of his home and remember the rhythms and routines of his life. Considering with his engineer's mind how things are constructed - bridges, banking systems, marriages - and how they may come apart. Mike McCormack captures with tenderness and feeling, in continuous, flowing prose, a whole life, suspended in a single hour.

This is a book about the universe which begins with swimming salmon and ends with the starry sky. From the tiniest Earth dwellers to far-flung celestial bodies - considering everything from the similarity of gods to donkeys, to exploding stars and exploding sea cucumbers - Amy Leach rekindles our communion with the world. This stunning debut will leave you with a deeper understanding of the universe and a greater sense of the magic that surrounds us.

In Letters of Note: Music, Shaun Usher brings together a riveting collection of letters by and about some of the musicians and music that enrich our lives. It is a wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating book that will delight music lovers of all stripes.Includes letters by:Ludgwig van Beethoven, Nick Cave,Helen Keller, Keith Richards,Yo-Yo Ma, Tom Waits, Erik Satie, Angélique Kidjo, Leonard CohenJohn Coltrane, Kim Gordon & many more

'Some five years ago, I sought solace from the ways of the world by stepping into the embrace of an ancient oak tree . . . From the first meeting, there grew a strange sense of attachment I did not consciously recognise until I later began to realise the significance that trees, and oak trees especially, can have in our lives.'James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying the Honywood Oak. A colossus of a tree, it would have been a sapling when Magna Carta was signed. Initially visiting the tree for escape and solitude, in time he learns to study it more closely. He examines how our long-standing dependency on oak trees has developed and morphed into myth and legend.The Oak Papers is a stunning, meditative and healing book about the lessons we can learn from the natural world, if only we slow down enough to listen.

40th anniversary edition'Probably the greatest novel of the century' ObserverLanark, a modern vision of hell set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination, its playful narrative conveys a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying.First published in 1981, Lanark established Alasdair Gray as one of Britain's leading writers and kick-started the modern renaissance of Scottish literature.

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVELFor thousands of years, our ancestors held a close connection with the landscapes they lived in. Seeking that lost connection, James Canton takes us on a journey across ancient England: from stone monuments to sacred groves, places of pilgrimage and sites of religious worship. Grounded invites us to step away from our modern world, to rekindle the wonder and awe in the places we live in, to discover the history and meaning encoded into the land - if only we take the time to look.

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

A black, motherless loner tries to come to terms with her radically unfamiliar surroundings as a Yale freshman; 14-year-old church girl Tia runs away to the big city; a bright young man makes a last-ditch attempt to understand his loser father on the Million Man March in Washington DC; at summer camp, an all-black Brownie troop decide to teach a troop of white Brownies a lesson for a racial insult they think they overheard.Teeming with life, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a collection that explores what it is to be human. Never neatly resolved, these provocative and unforgettable stories resonate with honesty and wry humour and introduce us to a major new talent.

The Man with the Golden Arm tells the story of Frankie Machine, the golden arm dealer at a back street Chicago gambling den. Frankie reckons he's a tough guy in the Chicago underworld but finds that he's not tough enough to kick his heroin addiction. With consummate skill and a finely-tuned ear for the authentic dialogue of the backstreets, Algren lays bare the tragedy and humour of Frankie's world.Features the first UK publication of a foreword by Kurt Vonnegut and an afterword by Studs Terkel.

Alasdair Gray is known throughout the world for his writing, but he is also a highly regarded artist who not only illustrates and designs his own books, but has created many beautiful and intriguing portraits, paintings, posters and murals.Alasdair started painting and writing from an early age, and in his seventies he's still vigorously doing both. In this autopictography he gathers together the work that has mattered most to him over the years, and weaves the story of his life through and around these pictures in his own unmistakable style. A beautifully and copiously illustrated book, designed by himself, this is life as seen by one of the millennium's most entertaining and wry creative geniuses.

As the 1950s close, Peanuts enters its golden age. Linus, who had just learned to speak in the previous volume, becomes downright eloquent. Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom. But the rising star is undoubtedly Snoopy. He's at the centre of the most action-packed episodes. Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections and life-long Peanuts fan, introduces the collection.