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Learwife
Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, this breathtaking debut novel tells the story of the most famous woman ever written out of literary history. "I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear's wife. I am here." Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear's queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story. Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice - one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests. Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalising mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss, renewal and how history bleeds into the present.
Lanark
This novel is 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.
Imagine A Country
The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility. Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination. Featuring: Ali Smith, Phill Jupitus, A.L. Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Kerry Hudson, Greg Hemphill, Carol Ann Duffy, Chris Brookmyre, Alison Watt, Alasdair Gray, Leila Aboulela, Ian Rankin, Selina Hales, Sanjeev Kohli, Jackie Kay, Damian Barr, Elaine C. Smith, Abir Mukherjee, Anne Glover, Alan Bissett, Louise Welsh, Jo Clifford, Ricky Ross, Trishna Singh, Cameron McNeish, Alexander McCall Smith, Carla Jenkins, Don Paterson, and many more . . .
Mrs Death Misses Death
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE Mrs Death tells her intoxicating story in this life-affirming fire-starter of a novel Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted by her job and now seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. She meets Wolf, a troubled young writer, who – enthralled by her stories – begins to write Mrs Death’s memoirs. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced (or facilitated), their friendship flourishes. All the while, despite her world-weariness, Death must continue to hold humans’ fates in her hands, appearing in our lives when we least expect her . . .
Time on Rock
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.
The Seed Collectors
A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers. Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander's role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can't stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love. As Henry James said of George Eliot's Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a "treasurehouse of detail" revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.
Radical Acts of Love
"With Radical Acts of Love, Janie Brown demonstrates the power of a book to transform, in fact to turn things upside down. She turns death into life, despair into hope, sorrow into joy, and pain into love with these twenty astonishing encounters with the dying. We all know somewhere in the back of our minds that a deeper understanding and acceptance of death is supposed to release us into an even fiercer embrace of life—this wonderful book made me, for the first time, truly feel and believe it." —Stephen Fry In this profound and moving book, oncology nurse Janie Brown recounts twenty conversations she has had with the dying, including people close to her. Each conversation uncovers a dif...
See/Saw
'Wide-ranging and eclectic’ TLS 'Seductively curious' Observer ‘A visual and intellectual journey' Herald See/Saw is an illuminating history of how photographs frame and change our perspectives. Starting from single images by the world’s most important photographers – from Eugène Atget to Alex Webb – Geoff Dyer shows us how to read a photograph, as he takes us through a series of close readings that are by turns moving, funny, prescient and surprising.
Before Burns
This superb anthology offers a lively and indispensable collection of poems and songs from the eighteenth century. Here are the poets who created the literary tradition of vernacular directness which Burns drew upon and shared. Before Burns includes a substantial selection from the work of Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson (Burns's 'elder brother in the muse'), as well as a wider selection from the men and women writers whose good-humoured accessibility so characterised the poetry of their time. MacLachlan's excellent introduction also puts these works in perspective and makes a case for a linguistic confidence, rather than insecurity, in their vigorous use of English and Scots.
The Second Cut
THE TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE 'Superb' The Times Crime Book of the Month 'A hardboiled gem' Guardian 'I doubt I'll read a better book this year' Val McDermid Auctioneer Rilke has been trying to stay out of trouble, keeping his life more or less respectable. Business has been slow at Bowery Auctions, so when an old friend, Jojo, gives Rilke a tip-off for a house clearance, life seems to be looking up. The next day Jojo washes up dead. Jojo liked Grindr hook-ups and recreational drugs – is that the reason the police won’t investigate? And if Rilke doesn’t find out what happened to Jojo, who will?
