Canongate Books

War doesn't end. It sleeps.

Delphine Venner is an old woman now. She is old, but she remembers everything. She remembers what it is to be a child of war, she remembers fighting for her life and she remembers what the terrifying creatures from another world took from her all those years ago. She remembers the gateway, and those she lost.

And in that other world, beast-filled and brutal, someone waits for her. Hagar, a centuries-old assassin, daily paying a terrible price for her unending youth, is planning one final death: that of her abhorrent master, the Grand-Duc. The death that will cost her everything. The death which requires Delphine.

Voyaging into this violence and chaos, Delphine must remember who she really is and be ready to fight once more, as war reawakens. In the battle to destroy an ageless evil, will both worlds be saved — or will every mortal creature lose everything?

For over thirty years, besides making music, David Byrne has focused his unique genius upon forms as diverse as the archaeology of music as we know it, architectural photography and the uses of PowerPoint. Now he presents his most personal work to date, a collection of drawings exploring the form of the tree diagram.

Arboretum is an eclectic blend of science, automatic writing, self-analysis and satire. A journey through irrational logic – the application of scientific rigour and form to irrational premises, proceeding from careful nonsense to unexpected sense.

The tree diagram is a form that might reveal more about yourself than you dreamed possible.

Let the battle for Christmas begin . . .

Amelia lives in the magical town of Elfhelm, newly adopted by Father Christmas and his wife, Mary . When the very jealous Easter Bunny launches an attack to ruin Christmas, it’s up to Amelia, her family and the elves to fight off the forces of evil.

But can they keep Christmas alive?

A personal message from the author:

Lots of individuals in society today are feeble-minded. They don't know what the HELL is going on. Unfortunately many of these people are responsible for running THE COUNTRY. They don't know the difference between a PRECIOUS JEWEL and a piece of animal turd. Their ideas are MEANINGLESS, illustrated using RUBBISH imagery (often made by a computer). The stupid words they write are always in BAD FONTS.

Yet still people HEED this nonsense. Maybe YOU are one of these people?

It's alright. I am here to HELP you. I have a FULLY-COMPOSED WORLD VIEW. I have STRONG opinions about EVERYTHING. And my ideas are HAND-ILLUSTRATED and use REAL HANDWRITING that you can trust. I know exactly what's going on and am WILLING to share my thoughts with you. If you LISTEN to what I say then things will quickly improve.

No more weak messages. No more bad situations. Shall we proceed?

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.

Looking can be an act of empathy or aggression. It can provoke desire or express it. And from the blurry, edgeless world we inhabit as infants to the landscape of screens we grow into, looking can define us.

In The Story of Looking, filmmaker and writer Mark Cousins takes us on a lightning-bright tour - in words and images - through how our looking selves develop over the course of a lifetime, and the ways that looking has changed through the centuries. From great works of art to tourist photographs, from cityscapes to cinema, through science and protest, propaganda and refusals to look, the false mirrors and great visionaries of looking, this book illuminates how we construct as well as receive the things we see.

Brilliant and eclectic, The Story of Looking is a photo album and an art gallery, a road movie and a visual grammar: once you've read it, you'll never see things the same way again.

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'.

Join Howard Moon, Vince Noir, Naboo, Bollo, Bob Fossil, Old Gregg, the Moon, and all your other favourite characters on a unique journey in to the world of The Mighty Boosh.

Content includes:
*An extract from Howard's jazz detective novel Trumpet Full of Memories
*Vince's Christmas Toy story
*Bollo's letters to Peter Jackson
*Bob Fossil's postcards from 'Nam
*A new Charlie story
*Ol' Gregg's watercolours
*Naboo's guide to black magic
*Dixon Bainbridge's Turkish Challenge
*Crimp lyrics

Incredibly funny, visually dynamic, surreal, musical, wildly creative... The Mighty Boosh is unlike anything else on British television, and this beautifully illustrated humour book is utterly unique.

The surgery is now open . . .

For over a decade, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode have been sharing their film expertise with each other (and occasionally the odd listener) on the airwaves. Now they are donning their surgical scrubs and bringing their unique blend of deep movie knowledge and medical ignorance to their new guise as the Movie Doctors. Mayo and Kermode are armed and ready to offer improbable cinematic cures for the dilemmas of modern life.

Suffering with insomnia and need a cinematic alternative to counting sheep? The Movie Doctors prescribe The Piano. Tinnitus driving you up the wall? A dose of Interstellar can help. Stressed and anxious? The Big Lebowski is what you need. If you're feeling your age, look no further than The Godfather. And what about movies themselves? Doctors Mayo and Kermode are also taking their scalpel to 'sick' movies, dissecting the perils of excessive length, the ill effects of glowing praise and warning how cosmetic surgery can change the face of a film.

Celluloid or humanoid, the Movie Doctors are here to help.

The nation's favourite idiot is back.

Safely home from his latest travels, Karl has decided it's time to share his hard-earned wisdom of the world.

Taking the Bucket List of '100 Things to Do Before You Die' as his starting point, Karl combines brilliant stories from his recent adventures to Alaska, Siberia and beyond with entertaining, highly opinionated views on what other people aspire to do with their lives.

� Why on earth would anybody want to run with the bulls in Pamplona?
� Go 'storm chasing' through Tornado Alley?
� Have lunch with the Queen?
� Or touch hands with the Pope?

The Further Adventures of An Idiot Abroad is a fitting finale to two years of eventful globe-trotting. Frank, funny and strangely inspiring, this is Karl's final word on travel.

SHORTLISTED FOR 2017 SALTIRE FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR

A trucker passes through a town he used to know and a local tries to sell him his sister; a couple put their children to bed and hear a loud scratching at the wall; a Principal and his associate examine the dead body before them; a man looks into a mirror and reflects on becoming more like his father.

Sparky, touching and brilliantly daring, these stories uncover human feeling in the ordinary and the everyday, and are a reminder of Kelman's exceptional talent.

Since she started out selling her cakes at a market in East London, Lily Jones (aka Vanilli) has gone on to become one of Britain's best-loved artisan bakers. With a star-studded client list and a thriving bakery on Columbia Road, Lily's bakes are famous for their unique flavour combinations, spectacular design and exquisite taste.

In Sweet Tooth, Lily takes you behind the scenes of her bakery and shows you how to master some of the core skills of baking, arming you with the expertise you need to develop your own recipes, and move beyond the cupcake once and for all. Packed with over 100 inspirational and easy to follow recipes for layer cakes, tarts, biscuits, meringues, confectionary and ice creams, Lily shares her invaluable tips and decorating techniques.

Sweet Tooth is essential reading for anyone who is passionate about making sweets - from the complete beginner to the expert baker.

'Extraordinary. Timeless, funny and utterly absorbing' HILARY MANTEL

In April 1925, Jean Lucey Pratt started a journal that she would keep for the rest of her life, producing over a million words in 45 exercise books. For sixty years, no one had an inkling of her diaries' existence, and they have remained unpublished until now.

Jean wrote about anything that amused, inspired or troubled her, laying bare her life with aching honesty, infectious humour, indelicate gossip and heartrending hopefulness. She recorded her yearnings and disappointments in love. She documented the loss of a tennis match, her unpredictable driving, catty friends, devoted cats and difficult guests. With Jean we live through the tumult of the Second World War and the fears of a nation. We see Britain hurtling through a period of unbridled transformation and the shifting landscape for women in society. A unique slice of living, breathing British history, Jean's diaries are a revealing chronicle of life in the twentieth century.

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.

Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and unusual letters updated with fourteen riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher.

From Virginia Woolf's heart-breaking suicide letter to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression 'OMG' in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler; and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter, Letters of Note is a celebration of the power of written correspondence which captures the humour, seriousness, sadness and brilliance that make up all of our lives.

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.

How can you say goodbye to the love of your life?

In Undying Michel Faber honours the memory of his wife, who died after a six-year battle with cancer. Bright, tragic and candid, these poems are an exceptional chronicle of what it means to find the love of your life. And what it is like to have to say goodbye.

All I can do, in what remains of my brief time,
is mention, to whoever cares to listen,
that a woman once existed, who was kind
and beautiful and brave, and I will not forget
how the world was altered, beyond recognition,
when we met.

40th anniversary edition
'Probably the greatest novel of the century' Observer

Lanark, 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 kickstarted the modern renaissance of Scottish literature.

SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016

OBSERVER SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016

Not so long ago we timed our lives by the movement of the sun. These days our time arrives atomically and insistently, and our lives are propelled by the notion that we will never have enough of the one thing we crave the most. How have we come to be dominated by something so arbitrary?

The compelling stories in this book explore our obsessions with time. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A moment of war is frozen forever. The timetable arrives by steam train. A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister becomes stuck in the same four minutes forever. A British watchmaker competes with mighty Switzerland. And a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks.

Timekeepers is a vivid exploration of the ways we have perceived, contained and saved time over the last 250 years, narrated in the highly inventive and entertaining style that bestselling author Simon Garfield is fast making his own. As managing time becomes the greatest challenge we face in our lives, this multi-layered history helps us tackle it in a sparkling new light.

Mumsnet 'Best Books for Christmas 2016'

From tantrums to tummy aches to teenage mood swings, there are times when a book is the best medicine of all. The Story Cure is a manual for grown-ups who believe that the stories which shape children's lives should not be left to chance.

In these pages bibliotherapists Ella and Susan recommend the perfect children's book - from picture books to YA novels via the golden world of chapter books - for every hiccup and heartache. Whether the young child you know is being bullied, the toddler can't sleep, or the teenager has fallen in love for the first time - or just doesn't know what to read next - the right story will help them feel themselves again. Packed full of helpful lists of the best books to read when turning ten or going through a spy/horse/superhero phase, you'll find old favourites such as The Borrowers and The Secret Garden alongside modern classics by MT Anderson, Malorie Blackman and Frank Cottrell Boyce. The Story Cure is the perfect companion for initiating young readers into one of life's greatest pleasures.

The stories that shape our children's lives are too important to be left to chance. With The Story Cure, bibliotherapists Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin have put together the perfect manual for grown-ups who want to initiate young readers into one of life's greatest pleasures.

There's a remedy for every hiccup and heartache, whether it's between the covers of a picture book, a pop-up book, or a YA novel. You'll find old favourites like The Borrowers and The Secret Garden alongside modern soon-to-be classics by Michael Morpurgo, Malorie Blackman and Frank Cottrell-Boyce, as well as helpful lists of the right reads to fuel any obsession - from dogs or dinosaurs, space or spies. Wise and witty, The Story Cure will help any small person you know through the trials and tribulations of growing up, and help you fill their bookshelves with adventure, insight and a lifetime of fun.