Canongate Books

The stark, vast beauty of the remote Arctic Europe landscape has been the focus of human exploration for thousands of years. In this striking blend of travel writing, history and mythology, Gavin Francis offers a unique portrait of the northern fringes of Europe. His journey begins in the Shetland Isles, takes him to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and on to Lapland. Following in the footsteps of the region's early pioneers, Francis observes how the region has adapted to the 21st century, giving an observed insight into the lives of people he encounters along the way. As with all the best travel writing, True North is an engaging, compassionate tale of self-discovery, whilst blending historical and contemporary narratives in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Robert Macfarlane.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE BOARDMAN TASKER AWARD FOR MOUNTAIN LITERATURE

With great lyricism, Anna Fleming charts two parallel journeys: learning the craft of traditional rock climbing and the developing appreciation of the natural world it brings her. Through the story of her progress from terrified beginner to confident lead climber, she shows us how placing hand and foot on rock becomes a profound new way into the landscape.

Anna takes us from the gritstone rocks of the Peak District and Yorkshire to the gabbro pinnacles of the Cuillin, the slate of North Wales and the high plateau of the Cairngorms. Each landscape, and each type of rock, brings its own challenges and invites us into the history of a place.

A luminous portrayal of a brilliant mind who is at once at battle with herself and with the constraints that society has placed on her.

A woman's life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and yearning for so much more.

The woman in question is Sylvia Plath in the final year of her life. As Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes unravels, Sylvia turns increasingly to writing to express her pain and loss, yet also her resilience and power. She has decided to die, but the art she creates in her final weeks will set her name, and the world, ablaze.

As Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes unravels through the heady days of their first summer in Devon together, Sylvia turns increasingly to writing to express her pain and loss, yet also her resilience and power. She has decided to die, but the art she creates in her final weeks will set her name, and the world, ablaze

'Extraordinary' Naoise Dolan
'Seriously good' Louise Nealon

PICKED AS 'ONE TO WATCH' FOR 2022 BY IRISH TIMES, STYLIST AND IRISH INDEPENDENT

Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They've got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She's overshadowed by her best friend Grace. She's been in love with Finn for as long as she's known him. And she's about to meet Rory, who's suddenly available to her online.

At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.

None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It's about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything.

People everywhere feel ever more alienated from - and mistrustful of - news and those who make it. We no longer seem to know who or what to believe. We are living through a crisis of 'information chaos'.

News and How to Use It is a glossary for this bewildering age. From AI to Bots, from Climate Crisis to Fake News, from Clickbait to Trolls (and more), here is the definitive user's guide for how to stay informed, tell truth from fiction and hold those in power accountable in the modern age.

Published originally in two volumes in 1890, this extraordinary study of primitive myth and magic, collected from sources around the world, led Frazer to identify parallel patterns of ritual, symbols and belief across many centuries and many different cultures.
Frazer's learning inspired a whole generation of ethnographers and comparative anthropologists, and had a particularly powerful effect on many other thinkers and writers such as Sigmund Freud, D H Lawrence, Joyce, Yeats and T S Eliot.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE INDEPENDENT, STYLIST, RHS, GARDENS ILLUSTRATED and more

Women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. Alice Vincent is on a quest to change that: to understand what encourages women to go out, work the soil, plant seeds and nurture them, even when so many other responsibilities sit upon their shoulders. To recover the histories that have been lost among the soil and to understand women's lives, their gardens and what the ground has offered them.

Wise, curious and sensitive, Why Women Grow follows Alice in her search for answers, with inquisitive fronds reaching and curling around the intimate anecdotes of others.

Before Klopp's arrival in 2015, the city of Liverpool had not seen such great success since The Beatles.

Neil Atkinson explores how Klopp, heralded as one of the most charismatic and successful managers in the history of football, has taken Liverpool FC to great heights over the past nine years. As Klopp's departure nears, Atkinson looks back on the trailblazing manager's time in Liverpool, the legacy he leaves behind and what it means for Liverpool: the club and the city.

Weaving this story around 11 key games, taken from Klopp's first season to his last, Atkinson considers how Liverpool has evolved into one of the greatest teams in football, with millions of supporters across the globe, and how Klopp and his philosophy have restored to the city, devastated by Hillsborough and its aftermath as well as other economic travails, a genuine sense of hope, pride and

Now is the time for the new, the beautiful and the humane.

In Together, award-winning political thinker, author and poet Ece Temelkuran provides an inspiring manifesto for change by revealing fresh possibilities for the better world we might want to live in and gives us a new vocabulary for the political action that the twenty-first century demands.

Above all, this book will challenge you to have faith in the other human beings we share this planet with, to turn away from an uncaring world and instead build a new one with compassion.

You're nine when you get your first computer. It's not long before you discover porn. You don't know what you're watching, but you do know that you shouldn't tell anybody.

Later, older, your first kiss is captured on camera and shared with everyone in your year. Part of the incessant cycle of posting, sharing and liking.

Now, you can't remember a time when you didn't feel hollow inside. Now, you know that something has to change.

Chilling, potent and intensely intimate, This Is How You Remember It is about a life lived online, and about finding another way, when it's all you've ever known.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Brutally honest as well as poetic' DOLLY ALDERTON
'Necessary, urgent and totally original' AFUA HIRSCH
'Essential reading for men of all ages' CALEB FEMI

Someone once asked me how I'd want to be remembered. I said, 'As the boy who grew.'

Love is a gift, isn't it? From our early childhood years to growing up and pairing off, it's a feeling we chase knowing we're better off with it. But what if love is claustrophobic and conflicting? And what if at the same time we're chasing addictions to drugs, drink, sex and chaos?

Diagnosed twice with ADHD, Jordan Stephens found his teens and twenties 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 stepped away from his previous existence completely and allowed himself to explore the pain he'd repressed his entire life.

Unsparingly digging into the fear, tenderness and trauma he carried in his body and mind, and the confusing assumptions of what a young man should be, Jordan Stephens discovers what it means to be a modern man, why we should all open ourselves up to life, and how the price we pay for love in all its forms is worth it.

A young woman is missing, but has she run away - or been captured?

A dying cop asks DCI Christine Caplan to investigate a cold case that's still preying on her mind. The naked body of a man found in a remote wood, dismissed as a down and out by her superiors. Caplan connects the case to other victims left to die in Scotland's Dark Skies forests, injured and unable to escape. When the trail leads from the down and outs to the hunt for the missing woman, the cold cases seem suddenly dangerously hot.

In this terrifying game of cat and mouse, Caplan must trace where love and control twist together, and question where power lies in any relationship. But the darkest skies hide the darkest secrets . . .

Recognised by five literary awards, Book of the Year for five broadsheets and receiving instant acclaim, this is bestselling author Gavin Francis's account of a year as base camp doctor in Antarctica

WINNER OF THE SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

Gavin Francis spent fourteen months in one of the remotest places in the world: Halley, a research station in Antarctica. Storm-locked and frozen, it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.

In the icy emptiness of Antarctica, where one misstep outdoors can mean death but the confined corridors of Halley can drive you mad, Gavin challenges himself to thrive at the ends of the earth. In the penguin colonies, a species utterly adapted to the harsh environment, he finds community, inspiration and joy.

Jim Brennan is flying high. Against all odds, he is tipped for the head job at Glasgow's prestigious university; an office at the top of the ivory tower. Not bad for the son of a hardman who grew up in a room and kitchen.

When Jim's son Elliot is arrested on drugs charges, he is approached by men he thought he had left safely in his past. Their demands threaten his family, students and reputation. The question is, how far will Professor Jim Brennan go to save the life he built?

From Len Pennie, the performance poet sensation, comes an electric debut collection about loving, learning, surviving, growing and giving - an instant Sunday Times bestseller

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, SUNDAY POST AND iPAPER BESTSELLER

And I have done more than just simply get by
So much more than escape or survive
Through the galvanisation of love, time and patience
I'll take hold of my story and thrive.
After life that was seldom what life ought to be
Through laughter and love I'll be whole
This story is mine from the cover to spine
And the narrative I will control


Whether she's writing letters to her younger self, advocating for women's rights or adapting fairy tales to process an abusive relationship, Len's voice is bold, unashamedly frank and unmistakably hers.

The poems in this collection, both funny and fiercely feminist, announce a formidable new talent. Moving deftly between English and Scots, poyums is as approachable as it is affecting.

A UK debut by a critically acclaimed author - a novel that combines lyrical storytelling with urgent contemporary themes of gender violence, tradition and patriarchy


In the Black Mountains of Pakistan, the discovery of an unconscious, unknown man is the first snowball in an avalanche of chaos. The head of the village is beset with problems - including the injured stranger - and failing to find his way out. His daughter receives a love letter and incurs her father's wrath. A lame boy foretells disaster, but nobody is listening. Trapped in terrible danger, a wolf-dog is battling ice and death to save a soldier's life. Beaten by her addict husband for bearing him only daughters, a woman is pregnant again - but can this child save her?

As the elements turn on the village, can humanity find a way to co-exist with nature that doesn't destroy either of them?

An uplifting poetry collection from the number one bestselling author of My Name Is Why, Lemn Sissay OBE

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

For the past decade, Lemn Sissay has composed a short poem as dawn breaks each morning. Life-affirming, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the dark and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. Let the Light Pour In is a collection of the best of these poems, and a book celebrating this morning practice.

'How do you do it?' said night
'How do you wake up and shine?'
'I keep it simple,' said light
'One day at a time'

A walking tour of the border region where England and Scotland meet by the award-winning writer, meditating on a complicated, storied relationship through history


The border between England and Scotland is rich in history. It has been the site of battles, treaties, castles and crossroads. But it can also be a lens through which to look at the changing history and identities of these two countries.

Between Britain is a one-hundred-mile journey through eight centuries. It is a history book, a travelogue, a personal reminiscence and a gently prodding examination of national identity. But above all it is a celebration of a place and the people who live there.

A vital and honest book exploring the pain of the immigrant experience and the turmoil it can carry across generations, from the winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize

DEREK OWUSU NAMED GRANTA'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE - FICTION 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS 2023


'A highly enigmatic, affectionate and robustly written portrayal of a mother-son relationship . . . very relatable' Diana Evans

Driven by a deep-seated desire to understand his mother's life before he was born, Derek Owusu offers a powerful imagining of her journey. As she moves from Ghana to the UK and navigates parenthood in a strange and often lonely environment, the effects of her displacement are felt across generations.

Told through the eyes of both mother and son, Losing the Plot is at once emotionally raw and playful as Owusu experiments with form to piece together the immigrant experience and explore how the stories we share and tell ourselves are just as vital as the ones we don't.

An illuminating collection of interviews between the prestigious Shakespeare and Company bookshop and the best writers of our time

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, is one of the world's most iconic and beautiful bookshops. Located on the banks of the Seine, opposite Notre-Dame, it's long been a meeting place for anglophone writers and readers.

In that tradition, determined for the bookshop to remain a place of meaningful and transformative conversation, owner Sylvia Whitman and novelist and literary director Adam Biles have hosted several hundred interviews with writers, ranging from prize-winning novelists to visionary non-fiction writers.

The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews is a selection of the best of these interviews from the last decade. Packed with warmth, sensitivity and humour, it's a celebration of the greatest writers of our age and an insight into the lives and thoughts behind some of today's most talked-about books.

An ultra-vivid, carnivalesque memoir of Jennifer Clement's early life from 60s Mexico to 80s New York City - the prequel to Widow Basquiat

'Clement has lived a life like no other, and made of it a shimmering mosaic, a masterpiece, which is this book' Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

Growing up in 1970s Mexico City, Jennifer Clement lived next door to Frida Kahlo's house. It was a bohemian childhood, living alongside artists, communists, revolutionaries and poets, which allowed an awakening of creative freedom and curiosity about the world.

Leaving behind Latin America for the burgeoning counter-culture scene in '80s New York, Clement inhabited the world of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Colette Lumiere and William Burroughs. Spanning two great cities, The Promised Party explores what it means to be young, free and alive.

An urgent call to action from one of Europe’s most well-regarded political thinkers and a field guide to spotting the insidious patterns and mechanisms of the populist wave sweeping the globe – with a new foreword to the 2024 edition

How to Lose a Country is a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don’t march fully-formed into government; they creep.

Award-winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran identifies the early warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world from Eastern Europe to South America, in order to arm the reader with the tools to recognise it and take action.

Weaving memoir, history and clear-sighted argument, Temelkuran proposes alternative answers to the pressing – and too often paralysing – political questions of our time. How to Lose A Country is an exploration of the insidious ideas at the core of these movements and an urgent, eloquent defence of democracy.

This 2024 edition includes a new foreword by the author.

The frank and offbeat debut collection from award-winning comedian and broadcaster Josie Long

From a comic mastermind comes this brilliant collection of stories

Three teenagers believe they are witches.
A woman defaces a local billboard.
A bored landlord tries to influence his son's best friend.
A cul-de-sac WhatsApp group discusses eggs at length.
A heavily pregnant woman finds a way to time travel and a girl discovers joy on a stolen bicycle . . .

Each tale paints a life in miniature and offers an escape chute from the mayhem of modern life.

For Paul Carty, 19, and his mystical, Joy Division-loving mate Elvis, life revolves around The Pack, a mob of violent Tranmere Rovers supporters. Carty and Elvis travel the Northern wastelands, always by train, causing mayhem in the 'woollyback' strongholds of Halifax, Crewe and Chesterfield. For most of the mob, The Pack is their reason for living. But Elvis, who loves Ezra Pound, and Carty, still getting over the death of his mother, are starting to get bored of it all.

The question is: will the Pack let them go? And can they get by without each other?

When a body is discovered in the water at the Falls of Lora, it looks like a straightforward suicide to DCI Christine Caplan. But when her superior officer alerts her to similarities with a locked case – and a legal minefield – she discovers that darker truths lurk beneath the surface. 

‘Girl A’ was convicted of murdering three people when she was a child. Now she’s missing and a man is dead. The top brass are screaming for a quick resolution, and ‘Girl A’ is a media sensation and a risk to herself as well as others. The clock is ticking for Caplan to bring her to justice – but the truth may be darker than even she fears . . .

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 contrasts these quests for freedom with the demands for commitment required as a doctor, community member and parent. Island Dreams riffs on the twin poles of rest and motion, independence and attachment, never more relevant than in today’s ever-connected world.

An instant Sunday Times bestseller, O Brother is by turns heart-breaking and hilarious - evoking a working-class childhood of the 1970-80s and trying to answer the questions that often haunt the survivors of suicide

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
A GUARDIAN BEST MEMOIR OF 2023
A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023

John Niven's little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. After years of chaotic struggle against the world took his own life at the age of 42.

Tracking the lives of two brothers in changing times - from illicit cans of lager in 70s sitting rooms to ecstasy in 90s raves - O Brother is a tender, affecting and often uproariously funny story. It is about the bonds of family and how we try to keep the best of those we lose alive. It is about black sheep and what it takes to break the ties that bind. Fundamentally it is about how families survive suicide, 'that last cry, from the saddest outpost.'

Winner of the Nan Shepherd Prize, this lyrical book moves between Trinidad and an idyllic English country garden as it grapples with big questions about what we call home

What is home? It's a question that has troubled Marchelle Farrell for her entire life. Years ago she left Trinidad and now, uprooted once again, she heads to the peaceful English countryside - the only Black woman in her village.

Drawn to her new garden, Marchelle begins to examine the complex and emotional question of home in the context of colonialism. As her relationship with the garden deepens, she discovers that her two conflicting identities are far more intertwined than she had realised. Full of hope and healing, Uprooting is a book about finding home where we least expect it, and which invites us to reconnect to the land - and ourselves.

The travel memoir of a Nigerian woman in China exploring the intersections and divides between the two cultures and the lives of African economic migrants in the bustling People's Republic

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR: TRAVEL

China today is a land of opportunity for African people blocked from commerce with most of Europe and Northern America. It is also an intersection of racism and prejudice.

Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China's 'Black Ghosts', African economic migrants in the People's Republic. Living in clustered communities, they are key to the trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents. This is a story of intersecting cultures told with candour and compassion, focusing on the shared humanity between the sojourner and their hosts.

A young man's medical education in 1990s Nigeria: a deeply personal memoir that provides a window onto ordinary Nigerian lives at a time of political turmoil.

As he works his way through his medical training, Ike Anya's grandmother reassures him, saying:

Everything worthwhile is achieved small by small.

It's the 1990s, a turbulent time in Nigeria's political history, and a young Ike Anya embarks on the journey to qualifying as a medical doctor. In a story that charts the triumphs and failures of his student days through to his first demanding year as a house officer, Anya's sharp wit, gentle humour and abounding curiosity presents a medical memoir unlike any from the West. Recalling the vibrancy of tempestuous 1990s Nigeria - the political unrest, social change and worsening economy - Anya also celebrates the friendships, minor rebellions and hard graft of student days.

Small by Small is a deeply intimate memoir imbued with determination, compassion and a love of storytelling.

The memoirs of cello prodigy Beatrice Harrison, the woman who brought the music of the nightingale to millions worldwide - and created the first interspecies collaboration

In 1924, Beatrice Harrison broadcast a miracle to the world: a wild nightingale singing with her cello. Over a million people tuned in to hear the nightingale that night, and the BBC went on to broadcast their duet worldwide every spring until 1942. This transformed the public interest in nightingales - a species already in decline.

If Beatrice's duets with the nightingales touched a chord with the world, her own life proved to be as musical, free-spirited and inspiring. From her early years as a musical prodigy to recording with the most important composers of the day or playing for the wounded in the Second World War, Beatrice's warmth and love for sharing music are as endearing now as they were to her original audiences.

A moving and poetic memoir about growing up without a father and a vivid portrait of the seventies from award-winning author and poet Salena Godden

This is the story of a home. A story rooted in love. The story of a poet born of an Irish jazz musician and a Jamaican go-go dancer, an absent father and a resilient mother.

In Springfield Road, Salena Godden evokes an era when oranges seemed bigger and summers were longer, a world of half-penny sweets, free school milk, hand-me-downs and Thatcher's Britain, for those too young to remember and for those old enough to know. For Salena, it was a time for learning that life can be brutal with first betrayals and first losses, but also that there are endless riches to be found in the world.

In equal parts powerful, tender and fearless, Springfield Road shows us where, in a world full of shadows, the light is to be found.

A forgotten classic of 1920s mountaineering literature; Dorothy Pilley broke new ground for women in a sport dominated by men with her true account of adventure, endurance and daring

Dorothy Pilley was a pioneer of women's climbing a hundred years ago. She founded a club celebrating women's climbing and - starting in Wales, the Lake District and Skye - she went on to climb the major mountain ranges of Europe throughout the 1920s. She was instrumental in helping to take women on a mountain from being seen as a dangerous liability on the rock to serious mountaineers with impressive records on bravery, skill and endurance.

First published in 1935 and reissued in 1965, the book is a daredevil tale of adventure, near-death slips and rapturous achievement in high places, interleaved with moments highlighting the particular challenges of being a woman in a sport seen as the province of men.

The elusive lives of otters, badgers, weasels and more are rendered in John Lister-Kaye's enchanting lyrical style

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVEL

Footprints in the Woods is John Lister-Kaye's charming account of a year spent with otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family - Mustelidae - all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre in the Highlands that he calls home.

With fifty years of experience living side-by-side with these creatures and the patience of a true naturalist, John reveals the lives of these elusive animals; sometimes red in tooth and claw, but often playful, familial, curious and surprising.

A smart and fiercely feminist memoir from beloved comedian and actor Doon Mackichan

The Feisty Feminist. The Hot Lesbian. The Desperate Cougar.
The Deranged Mother. The Stupid Tart. The Hag.

Doon Mackichan is best known for her comedy characters, but throughout her career there are parts she's refused to take and stereotypes she's challenged.

In My Lady Parts, Doon shares her experience on stage, screen and in real life, examining how our culture still expects women to adhere to certain stereotypes - and punishes those who don't. This is a courageous, vulnerable and empowering account of being a woman in an industry that has been exposed for its deep-rooted sexism.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024

The Women's Prize-winning and Booker-shortlisted international bestselling author returns with a fictionalised account of her grandmother's life

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able - despite the cost - to make a life she could call her own.

WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR GAY FICTION

A devastating novel about queer love, broken relationships, the promises we're unable to keep and living with the ghosts of your past

Hussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wassim promises Hussam his protection, but ten years into the future, he has failed to keep his promise. Wassim is on the streets, seeking shelter from both the city and the civil war storming his country. Meanwhile Hussam, now on the other side of the world, remains haunted by his own ghosts, doing his utmost to drown them out with every vice imaginable.

Split between war-torn Damascus and unforgiving Vancouver, The Foghorn Echoes is a tragic love story about coping with shared traumatic experience and devastating separation. As Hussam and Wassim come to terms with the past, they begin to realise the secret that haunts them is not the only secret that formed them.

The latest installment of the gripping Raven and Fisher mystery series

'Brilliantly conceived, fiendishly plotted' Mick Herron
'The immersive world of Ambrose Parry just gets better and better' Jess Kidd

EDINBURGH, 1853.
In a city of science, discovery can be deadly . . .

In a time of unprecedented scientific innovation, the public's appetite for wonder has seen a resurgence of interest in mesmerism, spiritualism and other unexplained phenomena.

Dr Will Raven is wary of the shadowlands that lie between progress and quackery, but Sarah Fisher can't afford to be so picky. Frustrated in her medical ambitions, she sees opportunity in a new therapeutic field not already closed off to women.

Raven has enough on his hands as it is. Body parts have been found at Surgeons Hall, and they're not anatomy specimens. In a city still haunted by the crimes of Burke and Hare, he is tasked with heading off a scandal.

When further human remains are found, Raven is able to identify a prime suspect, and the hunt is on before he kills again. Unfortunately, the individual he seeks happens to be an accomplished actor, a man of a thousand faces and a renowned master of disguise.

With the lines between science and spectacle dangerously blurred, the stage is set for a grand and deadly illusion . . .

The scintillating second Venetian thriller from David Hewson, author of the acclaimed adaptation of the Danish The Killing series

A noble family, a legendary painting, a cursed palazzo.

When Arnold Clover is recruited by Lizzie Hawker to help her look into her family inheritance, he cannot begin to guess the journey he is about to embark on.

Lizzie's mother, an Italian countess, disappeared thirty years ago, presumed dead. Her father has just died and now the family home, a leaning palazzo in Dorsoduro that is full of secrets, has fallen to her. When her mother vanished so too did a priceless painting - but it quickly becomes apparent that Lizzie and Arnold are not the only ones interested in finding it.

The search for the lost Lucrezia quickly becomes a race through the secret history of Venice, one with potentially deadly consequences.

A deep-dive into kindness, the science behind it and how we can better build it into our lives, from the author of The Art of Rest

Kindness can be your super-power. It feels good to be kind to others. And it feels good to receive kindness. Making the world better, in however small a way, feels good and does good. Did you know kinder bosses are more successful bosses? That paying it forward can help build a purpose-driven life? Being kind strengthens relationships. Acts of kindness, whether given or received, improve our mental and physical health.

Drawing on the latest research from psychology and neuroscience, and her work in collaboration with the University of Sussex and the BBC, Claudia Hammond sets out a prescription for a kinder life that you can adapt to your own circumstances, and explains how to use this guidance for ourselves, others and the world.

It's time for a kindness revolution.

Elle and The Infinites are back for a final thrilling adventure! They must leap to the end of time to stop Millennia's quest for world domination and save the planet

It's New Year's Eve and there's trouble on the timeline. Elle is sent on an urgent trip to the 31st of December 1999, the eve of the new millennium, where Millennia's on the rampage. She aims to reinvent herself as a malevolent millennial by taking on Time itself.

Can Millennia change the past to destroy the future? It can't be left to chance. It's up to Elle and The Infinites to save the world. And with the very nature of time at stake, they'll have unexpected help from friends in high places.

It's the final countdown. And it starts now . . .

Blending memoir, self-help and science, and offering practical help, Tim Clare asks us to rethink anxiety

After a decade of living with panic attacks and anxiety, Tim Clare made a promise to himself - he would try everything he could to get better, every method and medicine.

His year of treatments took him from anti-depressants to hypnosis, running to extreme diets, ice baths to faecal transplants. At the end of it he discovers what helps him (and what doesn't), and what might help others. Most of all, he comes to rethink anxiety and encourages all of us to do the same.

'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 recognition, and we see in him our own human condition.

A memoir of childhood and a celebration of the natural world, from one of the founding fathers of modern conservation

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 simple yet beautiful prose, we see Muir's delight as he discovers and observes the landscape and wildlife around him as he recalls his childhood and reveals himself as a master of natural description.

'If I vanished he wouldn't notice, if I died he wouldn't care. I think of him all the time, and he thinks of me not at all. I love him, and my love torments me. There are times when I feel like a ghost beside him; as if he alone is real, and I'm just a daydream.'

This is the story of two brothers. One is impassioned and one reserved. One is destined to go down in history and the other to be forgotten.

In Pullman's hands, this sacred tale is reborn as one of the most enchanting, thrilling and visionary stories of recent years.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted-up and toasted. He is famous as the author of 'Auld Lang Syne', and he has long been the patron saint of the heartsore and the hungover. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age.

This is a Burns collection like no other, introduced, arranged and contextualised by the award-winning novelist and essayist Andrew O'Hagan. Above all, it is an accessible edition made for the pleasure of reading that brings Burns' timeless work to full, riotous, colourful life.

As long as we have been human, we have been mythmakers. In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong holds up the mirror of mythology to show us the history of ourselves, and embarks on a journey that begins at a Neanderthal graveside and ends buried in the heart of the modern novel.

Surprising, powerful and profound, A Short History of Myth examines the world's most ancient art form - the making and telling of stories - and why we still need it.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances?

Ali Smith's remix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

Dream Angus comes to you at night and bestows dreams. Just the sight of him may be enough to make you lose your heart, for he is also the god of love, youth and beauty.

In this mesmerising retelling of the Celtic myth, Alexander McCall Smith unites dream and reality, leaving us to wonder: what is life but the pursuit of dreams?

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

In 1788 Daniel Rooke sets out on a journey that will change the course of his life. As a lieutenant in the First Fleet, he lands on the wild and unknown shores of New South Wales. There he sets up an observatory to chart the stars. But this country will prove far more revelatory than the skies above.

Based on real events, The Lieutenant tells the unforgettable story of Rooke's connection to an Aboriginal child - a remarkable friendship that resonates across the oceans and the centuries.

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, Weight turns the familiar on its head to show us ourselves in a new light.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

First things first, stay calm.

Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn't recognise, unable to remember who he is. All he has left are journal entries recalling Clio, a perfect love now gone. As he begins to piece his memories back together, Eric finds that he is being hunted by a creature that moves in language, that swims through the currents of human interaction.

With the help of his cynical cat Ian, Eric must search for the Ludovician, the force that is threatening his life, and Dr Trey Fidorus, the only man who knows the truth.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2006 COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN PRIZE

London, 1806. William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly.

His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. Soon Thornhill, a man no better or worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.

It is the Swinging Sixties and Kelvin Walker has moved from Scotland to London to make his fortune. Through his wanton ambition, a megalomania surfaces that is unrelieved by his insensitive attempts at friendship and romance. Yet is he all bad, or are the true villains the establishment figures who he tricks and deceives? And, ultimately, does it matter?

Gray's twist on the follies of religion, the media and the imperial British centre is as relevant now as ever.

Mungo McGrotty's career in Whitehall is going nowhere. But when he finds the mysterious (and deadly) Harbinger Report, he realises he can blackmail his way to the very top.

This twisted Grayian retelling of the Aladdin story under the Thatcher regime sees our hero rise from pawn to power. But at what cost?

1919, Siberia.

Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under military rule, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian railway. One night a stranger, Samarin, appears from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison, insisting a cannibal is on his trail. Only Anna, a beautiful young widow, trusts his story. When a local shaman is found dead, suspicion and terror engulf the isolated community, which harbours a secret of its own . . .

In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story of Samson: his battle with the lion, the three hundred burning foxes, the women he bedded, the one he loved and who betrayed him and the destruction of the temple. It reveals the journey of a lonely and tortured soul, whose search for a true home echoes our own private struggles.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

A fresh take on what follows Homer’s The Odyssey by the international best-selling author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.

Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.

Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.

Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, Byatt's mesmerising tale - inspired by the myth of Ragnarok -is a landmark piece of storytelling from one of the world's truly great writers.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

A man finds a bald patch on the back of his head that looks curiously like a face, then discovers he's splitting in two. A bored student suggests digging a tunnel into the foundations of the art school. An elderly man is healed by hundreds of tiny people working on repairs inside his own head.

Unlikely Stories, Mostly is Alasdair Gray's first collection of short stories. Gloriously illustrated, darkly funny, and steeped in myth and fable, they capture Gray's singular imagination.

When Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore its run-down mill, its inhabitants are wary. Gunnar is big. He's a bit odd. And, strangest of all, he howls wildly at night.

If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of nature and the greater savagery of civilization.

The Howling Miller is a dark fairytale of community, conformity and our place in the world.

'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.

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 tour de force about ferocious love and bitter revenge.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

Twice Voted Scotland's Favourite Book

Faced with a choice between a harsh farming life and the world of books and learning, Chris Guthrie chooses to remain in her rural community, bound by her intense love of the land. But everything changes with the arrival of the First World War and Chris finds her land altered beyond recognition.

In lyrical prose, Sunset Song evokes village life in the early twentieth century and offers a powerful portrait of a land and people in turmoil.

A sensitive innocent, Hendrickje Stoffels escapes the harsh realities of her garrison home-town to become a servant in Rembrandt's household. She soon becomes his lover and closest confidante, filling the void in his life resulting from the death of his wife and two of their children. But Hendrickje is fated to discover the hypocrisy and fickleness of Amsterdam society.

In sensuous prose, Matton paints a powerful fictional portrait of this impassioned relationship against the backdrop of a turbulent era of Dutch history.

Now And Then is not merely a collection of a songwriter’s lyrics; the song-poems of this undisputed ‘bluesologist’ triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished Gil Scott-Heron’s career.

This collection of poems carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and the realities of everyday life. His message is black, political, historically accurate, urgent, uncompromising and mature and as relevant now as ever.

Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries.

He has performed to thousands of football fans at the FA Cup Final, to hundreds of thousands as the poet of the London Olympics, and to millions across our TV screens and the airwaves of BBC Radio. He has become one of the nation's best-loved voices.

Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore.

Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.

The long-awaited fourth novel from the author of The Cutting Room and The Bullet Trick

Some secrets are best left buried . . .

Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here?

Elle and her friends are back! This time, they’ll be leaping to the past, the present and the future to safeguard the secret of The Gift and destroy The Vicious Circle

Fourteen-year-old Elle and her friends are going to a not-to-be-missed funfair. But a ride on the Ghost Train takes them further than they ever imagined. They end up in 1880, face-to-face with criminal mastermind, The Grandfather!

To Elle’s surprise, he needs her help. Someone has threatened to reveal The Gift to the media. If that happens, everyone will know that Leaplings can leap through time; no Leapling will be safe. Meanwhile, Millennia’s power at the head of The Vicious Circle grows.

Will Elle work for a villain to save her secret community? Can she and The Infinites crush The Vicious Circle for good?

10 mammoth cheeses, 9 people who died laughing, 8 remarkable pistol duels, 7 great sausage events and much, much more

The first and best compendium of facts weirder than fiction, of intriguing information and must-talk-about trivia has spawned many imitators - but none as addictive or successful.

For nearly three decades the editors researched curious facts, unusual statistics and the incredible stories behind them. The most entertaining and informative of these have been brought together in this edition.

In the early 1800s, Rachel Greenhow, a young Quaker, goes missing in the Canadian wilderness. Unable to accept the disappearance, her brother Mark leaves his farm in England, determined to bring his sister home.

What follows is a gripping account of Mark's odyssey and his travels with the voyageurs - the men who canoe Canada's fur-trade route.

As adventure and discovery propel the plot forward, Elphinstone takes the reader back in time and intertwines the story with enduring themes of love, war and family ties.

All actions have consequences. This is how life goes.

Patrick is a loner, an intelligent but disturbed young man struggling to find his place in the world. He ventures out on his own, and, as he begins to find happiness, he commits an act of violence that sends his life horribly and irreversibly out of control. But should a person's life be judged by a single bad act?
This is How is a compelling and macabre journey into the dark side of human existence and a powerful meditation on the nature of guilt and redemption.

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4
A SPECTATOR BEST OF THE YEAR - AS CHOSEN BY REVIEWERS

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. But when she turns sixteen, her father is murdered by men he thought were friends.

In a town where lawlessness prevails, Goody and her brother Francis must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers in order to find justice. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she discovers what life can be like without constraints or expectations, developing a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?

It is 1914. In the heart of the Belgian Congo, Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges from the jungle. He is the lone survivor of a mining expedition in which both his masters have died, and all of the party's African porters have fled. With him, he carries two huge diamonds.

From his prison cell in London, Garvey recounts his horrific and thrilling ordeal. Young Tommy Thomson is assigned to transcribe Garvey's story and only he can untangle the extraordinary mysteries of the Garvey case.

Elle is back! This time she's leaping almost three whole centuries back in time, to catch a thief, help her friend and save our future

It’s midsummer’s day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle’s friend and fellow Infinite, MC², is arrested for the crime!

To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it’s too late?

Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna?

Who exactly were Besfort Y and Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the back seat?

How was Besfort connected to the war in the Balkans? And why was his affair with Rovena clouded in jealousy and mistrust?

Who wanted them dead?

This is the story of the last forty weeks of their lives - a fever dream where love and obsession collide.

A macabre massacre of a wealthy family brings DCI Christine Caplan to the Highlands in her first thriller in a new series

In the village of Cronchie, a wealthy family are found brutally murdered. The Devil Stone, an heirloom rumoured to bring death if removed from their home, is the only thing stolen. The key suspects are known satanists. But when the investigating officer disappears, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to investigate.

Caplan knows she is being punished for a minor misdemeanour when she is seconded to the Highlands, but she's confident she can quickly solve the murders and return home to her fractious family. But as she closes in on the truth, it is suddenly her life, not her career, that is in danger.

The travel memoir of a Nigerian woman in China exploring the intersections and divides between the two cultures and the lives of African economic migrants in the bustling People’s Republic

China today is both a land of opportunity for Africans, South Americans and other non-Westerners blocked from commerce with most of Europe and Northern America, and an intersection of racism and prejudice.

Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China’s ‘Black Ghosts’, African economic migrants in the People’s Republic, who live in separate communities and are vigorously involved in the trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a Ghanaian cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer, a Nigerian popstar who sings in Chinese and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents.

Ireland, 1971, John Egan is a misfit, 'a twelve year old in the body of a grown man with the voice of a giant who insists on the ridiculous truth'. With an obsession for the Guinness Book of Records and faith in his ability to detect when adults are lying, John remains hopeful despite the unfortunate cards life deals him.

During one year in John's life, from his voice breaking, through the breaking-up of his home life, to the near collapse of his sanity, we witness the gradual unsticking of John's mind, and the trouble that creates for him and his family.

Sarah and Jack have never doubted that they are made for each other.

But there is someone in Sarah's family who will not tolerate the relationship.

The reason lies in both the past and the present, and it will take Sarah across an ocean to a place she never imagined she would be.

Kate Grenville takes us back to the Australia of The Secret River in this novel about love, tangled histories and how it matters to keep stories alive.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century Adam Kellas finds himself hurled on a journey between continents and cultures. In his quest from the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan to the elegant dinner tables of north London and then the marshlands of the American South, only the memory of the beautiful, elusive Astrid offers the possibility of hope.

With all the explosive drama of The People's Act of Love, this is a spellbinding tale of folly and the pursuit of love from one of today's most talented and visionary writers.

The Sunday Times-bestselling book from the multi-award-winning author of The Outrun - on the ecology of love and heartbreak, the urban environment and the digital age

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING

Wishing to leave behind the isolation of her Orkney island life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. She rents a loftbed in a shared flat and starts to look for work - and for love - through the screen of her phone.

The Instant tells of the momentous year that follows, encountering the city's wildlife in the most unexpected places, tracing the cycles of the moon, the flight paths of migratory birds and surrendering to the addictive power of love and lust.

In Peach Village, crying is forbidden. But as a child, Binu never learnt to hide her tears. Shunned by the villagers, she faced a bleak future, until she met Qiliang, an orphan who offered her his hand in marriage.

Then one day Qiliang disappears. Binu learns that he has been transported hundreds of miles and forced to labour on a project of terrifying ambition and scale - the building of the Great Wall.

Binu is determined to find and save her husband. Inspired by her love, she sets out on an extraordinary journey towards Great Swallow Mountain, with only a blind frog for company. What follows is an unforgettable story of passion, hardship and magical adventure.

The Times 2022 Thriller of the Year and Best New Thriller

When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies, fifteen-year-old Nico just watches - earning him a week's suspension and a typed, yellowing manuscript from his frail Nonno Paolo. A history lesson, his grandfather says, and a secret he must keep from his father.

Reading the manuscript, Nico is transported back to the Venice of 1943, an occupied city seething under the Nazis, and to the defining moment of his grandfather's life: when Paolo's support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the city's underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled, Nico can't stop reading - but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.

London, 1593.

A city on edge.

Under threat from plague and war, strangers are unwelcome, suspicion is wholesale, severed heads grin from the spikes on Tower Bridge.

Playwright, poet and spy, Christopher Marlowe walks the city's mean streets with just three days to find the murderous Tamburlaine, a killer escaped from the pages of his most violent play.

Tamburlaine Must Die is the searing adventure of a man who dares to defy both God and the state and whose murder remains a taunting mystery to the present day.

When down-at-heel Glasgow conjurer William Wilson gets booked for a string of cabaret gigs in Berlin, he's hoping his luck's on the turn. There were certain spectators from his last show who he'd rather forget. Like the one who's now a corpse.

Amongst the showgirls and tricksters of Berlin's scandalous underground Wilson can abandon his heart, his head and, more importantly, his past. But secrets have a habit of catching up with him and, as he gets sucked into certain lucrative after-hours work, the line between what's an act and what's real starts to blur.

Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013.

In September 1943, Nazi troops advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. The very next day, the Germans vanish without a trace. As the townsfolk wonder if they might have dreamt the events of the previous night, rumours circulate of a childhood friendship between a local dignitary and the invading Nazi Colonel, a reunion in the town square and a fateful dinner party that would transform twentieth-century Europe.

A captivating novel of resistance in a dictatorship, and steeped in Albanian folklore, The Fall of the Stone City shows Kadare at the height of his powers.