Series: Canons

Bird by Bird is not just a guide to writing; it's a deeply moving, insightful journey through the mind and spirit of a writer. Anne Lamott, acclaimed novelist and memoirist, shares her wealth of experience in this witty, honest, and profoundly down-to-earth book. A compendium of advice, anecdotes, and encouragement, it has remained a timeless resource for writers and aspiring...

The Garden of Evening Mists is the international bestseller shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and the winner of both the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Teoh Yun Ling was seventeen years old when she first heard about Aritomo and the garden. But a war would come to Malaya, and a decade would pass before she...

The Gift by Lewis Hyde is a profound exploration of the role of creativity in a world increasingly dominated by money and materialism. At its core, this modern masterpiece delves into the very nature of a "gift" and examines how it can inspire and transform our lives, art, and culture. Hyde weaves together insights from literature, anthropology, and psychology to...

Why did numerous celebrated authors become entwined with the grip of alcoholism? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing weaves an evocative journey across America, probing the intricate interplay between creativity and alcohol through the intertwined lives and works of six literary giants: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Laing embarks...

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot is a deeply moving memoir that beautifully narrates the journey of a woman seeking redemption and recovery amidst the rugged, untamed landscapes of the Orkney Islands. After a harrowing decade-long struggle with alcohol addiction, thirty-year-old Amy returns to her childhood home in Orkney, seeking solace and healing. In this hauntingly honest account, she immerses herself...

Hope In The Dark by Rebecca Solnit is an inspiring exploration of the power of hope amidst the turbulence of contemporary life. In a world often overshadowed by political unrest, environmental challenges, and social inequalities, Solnit presents a compelling argument for maintaining optimism. Through vivid storytelling and profound insight, she unveils the latent potential of social and political movements, illustrating...

The First Bad Man is a Guardian literary highlight and a Huffington Post 'One to Watch'. 'Astounding', says Lena Dunham, creator of Girls and author of Not That Kind of Girl. The First Bad Man brings together all of Miranda July's talents. It's a book that must be read and purchased in duplicate—one for you, one for a friend. Don't...

Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf's tragic drowning in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing embarks on a journey that intertwines the natural world with poignant reflections on life and literature. In To the River, Laing sets out to walk along the banks of this historic river, tracing its path from its source to the sea. This journey is not just...

With an introduction by David Mitchell. Isserley spends most of her time driving. But why is she so interested in picking up hitchhikers? And why are they always male, well-built, and alone? An utterly unpredictable and macabre mystery, Under the Skin is a genre-defying masterpiece.

When he was a boy, Aga Akbar, the illegitimate, deaf-mute son of a Persian nobleman, travelled with his uncle to a cave on nearby Saffron Mountain. Once there, he was to transcribe a cuneiform inscription over three thousand years old. Decades later, his son, Ishmael - a political dissident in exile - attempts to translate a notebook filled with a...

Annie Dillard has spent a lifetime examining the world around her with eyes wide open, drinking in all things intensely and relentlessly. Whether observing a sublime lunar eclipse or a moth consumed in a candle flame, the trembling of lily pads on a pond or hundreds of red-winged blackbirds taking flight, Dillard's awe at the fragility of the natural world...

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West is an extraordinary blend of travel memoir and historical analysis, undertaken during a six-week journey through Yugoslavia in 1937. Spanning over 1,000 pages, this epic work offers a detailed exploration of the landscapes, cultures, and political tensions of a region on the precipice of war. West meticulously documents her travels while engaging...

The Sea Around Us is a seminal work that takes readers on an extraordinary journey through the vast and mysterious oceans that cover our planet. With the deft touch of a seasoned storyteller, Rachel Carson reveals the origins of the seas, their dynamic processes, and their profound impact on life throughout Earth's history. Her narrative gracefully interweaves scientific facts with...

In the centre of a 1960s hospital ward sits a curtained-off bed, guarded by a policeman. In it lies a murderer, hidden from view and likely to die before he can be hanged for his crime. In the closed, regimented society of the ward, his invisible presence fractures and rebuilds the way the other patients see the world. In the...

Taking the form of a diary, Iced charts the life of forty-four-year-old Cornelius Washington. Initially brimming with talent and ambition, his dabbles with drugs as a young man gradually turn into a destructive addiction. Moving between the harsh realities of his present and the adventures and upheavals of his past, as Cornelius encounters a host of characters both intriguing and...

January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London to Yorkshire. There, she regularly visits a mass-murderer in a high-security prison. But has her natural curiosity in his motives and character crept into obsession? Meanwhile, Alix's life continues to cross and uncross with her old friends Liz and Esther, now all in their fifties. As the years pass, they increasingly...

This inspiring collection, curated by the host of the Poetry Unbound, 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...

Ailsa and Humphrey met as children by a grey, northern sea in post-war Britain. She, freckled and furious; he, quietly studious; both fascinated by the other. Years later, their lives collide as adults and burst into an intense yet brief love affair. Now, after thirty years apart and at the close of the 20th century, their lives are converging once...

One hot summer afternoon in South Yorkshire, Faro sits at a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has travelled from London to the Northern mining town where generations of her family have lived and worked, to explore her own past. Decades before, in the early twentieth century, Bessie Bawtry also ponders her place in the world. A child of unusual determination...

In her witty, masterful debut novel, Margaret Drabble conjures a gripping story of sibling rivalry. Louise, beautiful and sophisticated, marries wealthy novelist Stephen Fairfax. Sarah, recently graduated from Oxford, is thrown back into family matters. Louise's life becomes one of parties, gossip columns, and glamour. Sarah, now in London, begins to discover a newfound freedom, only glimpsing her sister's fashionable...

Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Millstone is a radical celebration of the mother-child relationship. It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one-night stand. Although...

Ron Kovic went to Vietnam dreaming of being an American hero. What he found there changed him profoundly, even before the severe battlefield injury that left him paralysed from the waist down. He returned to an America indifferent to the realities of war and the fate of those who fought for their country. From his wheelchair, he became one of...

On an island in the shape of a teardrop live two sisters. One is admired far and wide, the other lives in her shadow. One is the Oracle, the other is destined for the Underworld. But what will happen when she returns to the island? Based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi, The Goddess Chronicle is a fantastical...

In this astonishing account, Iceberg Slim reveals the secret inner world of the pimp, and the smells, sounds, fears and petty triumphs of his world. A legendary figure of the Chicago underworld, this is his story: from defending his mother against the men in their lives to becoming a giant of the streets. A seething tale of brutality, cunning and...

Art Pepper was described as the greatest alto-saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Straight Life, originally narrated on tape to his wife Laurie, is an explosive work chronicling his work amidst a life dealing with alcoholism, heroin addiction, armed robberies, and imprisonment. The result is an autobiography like no other, a masterpiece of the spoken word, shaped into a genuine...

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...

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...

“When I was a child in Scotland, I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures.” John Muir was eleven when he and his family left Scotland in 1849 to build a new life on a homestead in the vast wilderness of Wisconsin. Written in...

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black is the only story collection from the legendary writer, actress, ex-biker, and columnist Cookie Mueller. Mueller chronicles her high-risk, high-reward life in glorious technicolour, from becoming a part of John Waters' legendary acting troupe to becoming a mother, from describing the hedonism of 1980s New York to critiquing the government's dire...

With introduction by Roddy Doyle "He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels" – Leonard Cohen Charles 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...

I am a sick person. I am a spiteful person. An unattractive person, too... In the depths of a cellar in St. Petersburg, a retired civil servant spews forth a passionate and furious note on the ills of society. The underground man's manifesto reveals his erratic, self-contradictory, and even sadistic nature. Yet Dostoyevsky's disturbing character causes an uncomfortable flicker of...

A masterpiece - Martin Amis The best book about homicide detectives by an American writer - Norman Mailer Based on a year on the killing streets of Baltimore, David Simon's true crime masterpiece reveals a city few will ever experience. Day in, day out, citizens are shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the centre of this hurricane of crime...

Climbing Days is a captivating autobiographical account by Dorothy Pilley, chronicling her pioneering journey as a female mountaineer in the early 20th century. This compelling book unveils the adventurous spirit of Dorothy, who, beginning her climbing career in the 1910s, defied societal expectations and carved a path for future generations of women in the sport. When Dorothy first embraced the...

'The subject of man's relationship to his environment is one that has been uppermost in my own thoughts for many years.' Rachel Carson's enduring fame was secured by the publication of just four books: her trilogy about the sea and Silent Spring. This collection of her previously unpublished and lesser-known writing gives a more personal picture of Carson's evolution as...

It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift, before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for New York and a...

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. Carson illustrates the delicately balanced, fragile struggle for life along the shoreline. Through her vivid descriptions,...

The Hawkline Monster introduces us to Magic Child, a fifteen-year-old Indian girl who wanders into the wrong whorehouse. She is searching for the right men to eliminate the monster that dwells in the ice caves beneath the basement of Miss Hawkline's yellow house. Richard Brautigan takes the reader on a heroic, magical adventure through Eastern Oregon. This novel confirms his...

Condemned to shoulder the world forever by the gods he dared defy, freedom seems unattainable to Atlas. But then he receives an unexpected visit from Heracles, the one man strong enough to share the burden. Jeanette Winterson's retelling of the myth of Atlas and Heracles asks difficult and eternal questions about the nature of choice and coercion. Visionary and inventive,...

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...

In The Edge of the Sea, Rachel Carson introduces us to the 'strange and beautiful place' where the sea meets the land. She explores a tide pool, an inaccessible cave, and watches a lone crab on the shore at midnight. From these, and other, encounters she offers us not just a scientifically accurate study of the ecology of the seashore,...

'He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed "Truth! Truth! Truth!" we have no choice left but confess - he was a woman.' A young man in the court of the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, the beautiful Orlando seems to belong everywhere and nowhere. One morning, Orlando awakens transformed—transported into...

'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.' 'Hollywood?' 'Yes . . .' 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.

'Probably the greatest novel of the century' Observer Lanark, a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and...

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them . . . So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen, and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can. Be prepared for a...

Driven by a yearning to experience the vast skies and frozen beauty of the North, Gavin Francis goes in search of the people living along the northern limits of Europe. From the first Greek explorers to the Vikings to modern polar adventurers, he travels through history and legend to find out why—and how—we are drawn to the North. Francis's encounters...

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. Unable to deal with the demands that his new fame brought, in 1987, at the age of twenty-seven, Basquiat, the...

The princess is taking her over, bodily and mentally. Dr Babs Halliwell is no longer herself. A young girl is plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea. In her diaries, she chronicles the intrigues of courtly life and her own extraordinary existence. Two hundred years later, the Red Queen's ghost haunts Dr Babs Halliwell, an Oxford academic...

1979. Three old Cambridge friends are brought together at a party to celebrate New Year's Eve and the end of a decade. Esther, Liz, and Alix first met in Cambridge in the early Fifties, a time when their futures held glittering promise. But with the dawn of the Thatcher era, everything changed. Now middle-aged, how will these confident women cope...

WINNER OF THE SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Prize, RSL Ondaatje Prize, Banff Adventure Travel Prize and Saltire Book of the Year AwardBook of the Year for the Financial Times, Sunday Herald, ScotsmanA travel book pick for the Sunday Times and the National GeographicGavin Francis spent fourteen months in one of the remotest places...

Charles Mingus is a musician, a mongrel musician who plays beautiful, who plays ugly, who plays lovely, who plays masculine, who plays feminine, who plays all sounds, loud, soft, unheard sounds, sounds, sounds, sounds... Beneath the Underdog is the memoir of the Angry Man of jazz, Charles Mingus – the genius whose adventures began at the feet of Louis Armstrong,...

First published in 1956 when he was twenty-two years old, Let Us Compare Mythologies is Leonard Cohen's first collection of poetry. It is an accomplished and passionate collection which demonstrates Cohen's remarkably assured voice, even as a young man. An unprecedented debut published to immediate acclaim, new generations of readers will now rediscover not only the early work of one...

I am the product of a blank generation. I live for kicks. I live for me. Birkenhead, 1979. The Pack, a violent mob of Stanley-knife-wielding football hooligans, follow their team across the Northern wastelands to their away games—earning a reputation as the nastiest crew in the Third Division. For the young working-class men with no way out, their lives revolve...

Guantánamo Diary is the first and only diary written by a Guantanamo detainee during his imprisonment, now with previously censored material restored. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay in 2002. There he suffered the worst of what the prison had to offer, including months of sensory deprivation, torture, and sexual assault. In October 2016, he was released without...

In Dubliners, James Joyce takes us on an extraordinary journey with the ordinary men and women from the city of his birth. In 'Araby', a young boy struggles with everyday tasks in the face of a growing infatuation with his neighbour's sister; in 'The Boarding House', a single mother orchestrates a marriage proposal for her daughter; in 'The Dead', the...

A powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life— a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son's pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road—Maggie Smith reveals the magic of the present moment. The poems in Goldenrod celebrate the contours of daily life, explore and delight in...

When Daniel's mother dies, he is brought under the protection of the AMO: the Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws. It is an introduction to a world of revenge, revolution, and mind-bending chemicals, where anarchists, alchemists, and high-stake gamblers co-exist. It is a place in which magic and murder are the norm. So begins an extraordinary quest for knowledge and understanding...

From the author's violent childhood in suburbia to eventual homelessness on the streets and piers of New York City, to recognition as one of the most provocative artists of his generation - Close to the Knives is his powerful and iconoclastic memoir. Street life, drugs, art and nature, family, AIDS, politics, friendship and acceptance: Wojnarowicz challenges us to examine our...

Sounding like one instrument, a wild whirling bagpipe, the Stones chugged to a halt. But the crowd didn't stop, we could see Hells Angels spinning like madmen, swinging at people. By stage right a tall white boy with a black cloud of electric hair was dancing, shaking, infuriating the Angels by having too good a time. The True Adventures of...

This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn while doing so. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. Free Play is directed toward people in...

SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR In Island Dreams, Gavin Francis combines stories of his own travels with psychology, philosophy and myth, shedding new light on the importance of islands and isolation in our collective consciousness. Francis draws on thirty years of island adventures from the Faroe Islands to the Aegean, from the Galapagos to the Andaman Islands. He...

The poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt, and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions. Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is revered as one of the greatest writers,...

'A troubling, hammering and glorious novel' - David Mitchell On the edge of the Antarctic Circle, in the years after World War One, a steamship approaches a desolate island. On board is a young man on his way to assume the post of weather observer, to live in solitude for a year at the end of the earth. But on...

'Undoubtedly a masterpiece, a sublime book' - Sunday Times Idealistic young officer Giovanni Drogo is full of determination to serve his country well. But when he arrives at a bleak border station in the Tartar desert, where he is to take a short assignment at Fort Bastiani, he finds the castle manned by veteran soldiers who have grown old without...

With a new afterword by the author In her map to loss, losing and being lost, Rebecca Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. Meandering eclectically through memory and mortality, Hitchcock movies and heartbreak, Solnit's beloved account of staying off the beaten path sheds glittering new light on the way we live now. A Field Guide To Getting Lost...

Simon Camish, a resentful and insecure barrister in a stifling marriage, would not have particularly noticed Rose Vassiliou had he not been asked to drive her home one night after a dinner party. Now, separated from her Greek husband, Rose lives alone with her three children. Despite all the efforts and sneers of her friends, she refuses to move from...

1856. Eighteen-year-old chemistry student William Perkin's experiment has gone horribly wrong. But the deep brown sludge his botched project has produced has an unexpected power: the power to dye everything it touches a brilliant purple. Perkin has discovered mauve, the world's first synthetic dye, bridging a gap between pure chemistry and industry which will change the world forever. From the...

In this masterful retelling of one of the greatest works of world literature, Alasdair Gray—in his last work—offers an original translation in prosaic English rhyme. Lyrical and modern, this complete edition brings all three parts of Dante's epic journey through Hell and Purgatory and on to Paradise together in a single volume for the first time. When referencing the book’s...

Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood—his home. Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all,...

Brought up in a suffocating, emotionless home in the north of England, Clara finds freedom when she wins a scholarship and moves to London. There, she meets Clelia and the rest of the brilliant and charming Denham family; they dazzle Clara with their gift for life, and Clara longs to be part of their bohemian world. But while she will...

'Unputdownable' - Sunday Times 'I was hooked from page one' - Guardian When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.

Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music world. In his newly discovered poems and song lyrics, we see the world through his eyes. The poetry reveals his depth of understanding, both of the world around him and within—his frailties and his strengths alike. He pens verses in his hallmark voice, reflecting upon...

Choked by domesticity and overshadowed by her husband's acting career, Emma is finding that life has reduced her to a supporting role. And when her husband lands his big break at a new theatre company, her want for something more boils over. Quietly radical and fiercely intelligent, The Garrick Year is a sharp and merciless dark comedy about marriage, motherhood,...

What do we owe to the past? What do we owe ourselves? Frances Wingate has it all, not least a flourishing career as an archaeologist and a razor-sharp mind. But when an old affair resurfaces—after years of on-again, off-again romance—she finds herself questioning everything she ever wanted out of life. In The Realms of Gold, Drabble crafts a luminous story...

Frieda Palmer – an eccentric, brilliant, and infuriating woman with a maddening disregard for convention – has withdrawn to a decaying house by the sea on the wild edges of Exmoor. Now, the question of which of her children will inherit her fortune looms large. But do any of them really deserve it? Set against the turbulent backdrop of post-Thatcherite...

Nadolny's masterpiece, The Discovery of Slowness, tells the incredible story of Sir John Franklin, a sailor and explorer who battled the frozen Arctic wastes and paved the way for the discovery of the Northwest Passage. Ridiculed for his slowness in his youth, Franklin's quiet calm later helps him to become an icon of adventure. A classic of contemporary German literature,...

Trickster disrupted the world around him, and in doing so he reshaped it. Playful, mischievous, subversive, amoral, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but they are also indispensable heroes of culture. Trickster Makes This World revisits the stories of Coyote, Eshu, and Hermes and holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Pablo Picasso,...

One boy, one boat, one tiger . . . After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set...

Jesse is a twenty-nine-year-old adrift in San Francisco's demi-monde of sexually ambiguous, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison—Pig's daughter or lover or both—who uses others' desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond...

The notorious corner of West Fayette and Monroe Streets in Baltimore is a 24-hour open-air drug market that provides the economic fuel for a dying neighbourhood. Through the eyes of one broken family—two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable fifteen-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough—Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the USA. The Corner unflinchingly assesses why...

Blistering ~ Macabre ~ Irreverent Legendary chef Anthony Bourdain's crude culinary noir classic. When up-and-coming chef Tommy Pagana settles for a less than glamorous stint at his uncle's failing restaurant in Little Italy, he unwittingly finds himself a partner in big-time crime. Between the chef's smack habit and a murder in the kitchen, Tommy finds that nothing he learned at...