THE FIRST IN THE ORIGINAL LAIDLAW TRILOGY WINNER OF THE CWA SILVER DAGGER ''If you only read one crime novel this year, this should be it'' Guardian ''A bloody good read'' Val McDermid When a young woman is found brutally murdered in Kelvingrove Park, only one man stands a chance of finding her killer. Jack Laidlaw. He is a man of contrasts, ravaged by inner demons but driven by a deep compassion for the violent criminals in Glasgow''s underworld. But will Laidlaw''s unorthodox methods get him to the killer in time, when the victim''s father is baying for blood? Acclaimed for its corrosive wit, dark themes and original maverick detective, the Laidlaw trilogy has earned the status of classic crime fiction.
Lady Macbeth rewritten in this novel of passion and revenge set in the USA
Between life and death there is a library. When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger. Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife and their father gambles away their home. As their parents' marriage collapses in the aftermath, the twins and their two younger siblings, Andrew and Peter, are thrust into the reluctant care of their traditional Yoruba grandmother. Inseparable while they had their parents to care for them, the twins' paths diverge once the household shatters: one embracing modernity as the years pass, the other consumed by religion. Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Black Sunday delves into the chaotic heart of family life. In the process, it tells a tale of grace in the midst of daily oppression, and of how two women carve their own distinct paths of resistance.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE 2017 BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD FOR POPULAR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR HOW MANY LIFETIMES DOES IT TAKE TO LEARN HOW TO LIVE? Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he's been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen it all. As long as he keeps changing his identity he can keep one step ahead of his past - and stay alive. The only thing he must not do is fall in love . . .
Starting with his mother's 'roundhouse' right to a nun's jaw, Stone Junction is a modern odyssey of one man's quest for knowledge and understanding in a world where revenge, betrayal, revolution, mind-bending chemicals, magic and murder are the norm.
With jaw-dropping scope, a stiletto-sharp wit and an array of utterly bizarre characters, Jim Dodge has woven a mesmerising and age-defining tale. Like a river constantly changing direction, Stone Junction is both stomach-clutching hilarious and heart-rendingly sad - but always utterly compelling.
Prepare to step into a world where nothing is ever as it seems.
Stranger Than Kindness is a journey in images and words into the creative world of musician, storyteller and cultural icon Nick Cave. This highly collectable book invites the reader into the innermost core of the creative process and paves the way for an entirely new and intimate meeting with the artist, presenting Cave's life, work and inspiration and exploring his many real and imagined universes. It features full colour reproductions of original artwork, handwritten lyrics, photographs and collected personal artefacts along with commentary and meditations from Nick Cave, Janine Barrand and Darcey Steinke. Stranger Than Kindness asks what shapes our lives and makes us who we are, and celebrates the curiosity and power of the creative spirit. The book has been developed and curated by Nick Cave in collaboration with Christina Back. The images were selected from 'Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition', opening at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen in March 2020.
AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME WINNER OF THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2014 SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2014 Tess Lohan appears to be a quiet child. But within lies a heart of fire. A fire that will propel her from her native Ireland into the hurly-burly of 1960s New York. In this city she will face the twists of a life graced with great beauty, but forever floating close to hazard. Joyous and heart-breaking, Academy Street journeys through six decades and one incredible story.
After the tragic death of his father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house and sound variously pleasant, angry or sad. Then his mother develops a hoarding problem, and the voices grow more clamorous. When ignoring them doesn''t work, Benny seeks refuge in the silence of a large public library. There he meets a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret; a homeless philosopher-poet who encourages him to find his own voice amongst the many; and his very own Book, who narrates Benny''s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter. Blending unforgettable characters with everything from jazz to climate change to our attachment to material possessions, this is classic Ruth Ozeki - bold, humane and heartbreaking.
Introduction par Charles BUKOWSKI 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 with Camilla Lopez, a beautiful but troubled young woman who will be responsible for his greatest downfall. Ask the Dust is an unforgettable novel about outsiders looking in on a town built on celluloid dreams.
An international bestseller which has sold over a million copies in the UK, Dreams From My Father is a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking big questions about identity and belonging. The son of a black African father and a white American mother, President Obama recounts an emotional odyssey, retracing the migration of his mother's family from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father's life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.
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.
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 yet our compulsion to go on trying. Widely recognised as a modern classic, Alasdair Gray's magnum opus was first published in 1981 and immediately established him as one of Britain's leading writers. Comparisons have been made to Dante, Blake, Joyce, Orwell, Kafka, Huxley and Lewis Carroll. This timely new edition should cement his reputation as one of our greatest living writers.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER In this scorching crime hook-up, number one bestseller Ian Rankin and Scottish crime-writing legend William McIlvanney join forces for the first ever case of DI Laidlaw, Glasgow''s original gritty detective ''Fantastic'' Lee Child ''Absolutely brilliant'' Mick Herron If the truth''s in the shadows, get out of the light . . . Lawyer Bobby Carter did a lot of work for the wrong type of people. Now he''s dead and it was no accident. He''s left behind his share of enemies, but who dealt the fatal blow? DC Jack Laidlaw''s reputation precedes him. He''s not a team player, but he''s got a sixth sense for what''s happening on the streets. As two Glasgow gangs go to war, Laidlaw needs to find out who got Carter before the whole city explodes.
A Raven and Fisher Mystery: Book 3 Edinburgh, 1850. This city will bleed you dry. Sarah Fisher is keeping a safe distance from her old flame Dr Will Raven. Having long worked at the side of Dr James Simpson, she has set her sights on learning to practise medicine herself. A notion everyone seems intent on dissuading her from. Across town, Raven finds himself drawn into Edinburgh''s mire when a package containing human remains washes up on the shores of Leith, and an old adversary he has long detested contacts him, pleading for Raven''s help to escape the hangman. Sarah and Raven''s lives seem indelibly woven together as they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.
Richard Brautigan's wonderfully zany, hilarious episodic novel set amongst the rural waterways of America. Here's a journey that begins at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square, wanders through the wonders of America's rural waterways and ends, inevitably, with mayonnaise. With pure inventiveness and free-wheeling energy, the counterpoint to all those angry Beatniks, Brautigan tells the story of rural America, and the hunt for a bit of trout fishing. Funny, wild and sweet, Trout Fishing in America is an incomparable guidebook to the delights of exploration - of a country and a mind.
An everyday man transforms himself from a shy, awkward writer into the quick-witted, smooth-talking Style, a character irresistible to women. But just when life is better than he could have ever dreamed, he falls head over heels for a woman who can beat him at his own game.
Les Clary's final case has broken the still surface of his backwater town. Becky, a park ranger with her own mysterious past, shares Les's consolation in the natural world that lies just beyond their hopelessly broken town. As Les and Becky explore of the county's lyrically beautiful landscape, they finds themselves led deeper into the heart of the town's corruption, and into the darkness of their own ruptured histories. This haunting novel is a poetic journey into the wilderness of the heart.
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, Michel Faber's debut novel is an outstanding piece of fiction that will stay with you long after you have turned the last page.
The Man Booker prize-winning novel is reissued to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the award. A boy named Pi, an orangutan, a tiger, a hyena and a zebra float on a raft in the Pacific in the aftermath of the sinking of a cargo ship, setting the scene for an adventure in memory and imagination enjoyed by readers since publication.
'A formidable storyteller' JONATHAN FRANZEN Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations to the villagers are made-and ignored. The country's government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest only. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But their fight will come at a steep price, one which generation after generation will have to pay. Told through the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula, HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community's determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman's willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people's freedom.
''As vivid as it is splendid'' New York Times ''Beautifully written and completely absorbing'' Sarah Moss, Guardian At seven years old, Nainoa falls into the sea and a shark takes him in its jaws - only to return him, unharmed, to his parents. For the next thirty years Noa and his siblings struggle with life in the shadow of this miracle. Sharks in the Time of Saviours is a brilliantly original and inventive novel, the sweeping story of a family living in poverty among the remnants of Hawai''i''s mythic past and the wreckage of the American dream.
Halfway through her PhD and already dreaming of running her own lab, computer scientist Asha has her future all mapped out. Then a chance meeting and whirlwind romance with her old high-school crush, Cyrus, changes everything. Dreaming big, together with their friend Jules they come up with a revolutionary idea: to build a social networking app that could bring meaning to millions of lives. While Asha creates an ingenious algorithm, Cyrus'' charismatic appeal throws him into the spotlight. When the app explodes into the next big thing, Asha should be happy, shouldn''t she? But why does she feel invisible in the boardroom of her own company? Why are decisions being made without her? Gripping, witty and razor-sharp, The Startup Wife is a blistering novel about big ambitions, speaking out and standing up for what you believe in.