Canongate

  • Together

    £10.99

    In 2020 protest movements across the world revealed the inequalities sewn into the fabric of society. The wildfires that ravaged Australia and California made it clear we are in the middle of a climate catastrophe. The pandemic showed us all just how precarious our economies really are, and the conspiracy theories surrounding the US election proved the same of our democracies. Those in charge do not have the answers. In fact, those in charge, more often that not, are the problem. So, what do we do? In this book, political commentator Ece Temelkuran puts forward a compelling new narrative for our current moment, not for some idealised future but for right now, and asks us to make a choice.

  • Hark

    £18.99

    Like so many of us, Alice Vincent had become overwhelmed by the sensory overload punctuating our every moment. And then, a baby’s heartbeat arrived. A rapid, pulsing whoosh of white noise. An undeniable rhythm. Once again, Alice’s life became cacophonous – both with a new child, but also with the societal pressures that motherhood holds. What followed was a personal quest to rediscover sound as something alive and vital and restorative. Beyond music, Alice’s journey takes her into new corners of listening: from the phantom crying heard by mothers across the world to the nightingale’s song and the crackle of the Aurora Borealis. As our attention spans shrink and our sense of disconnection grows, Alice wants to find out if sound can reconnect her not only to lost parts of herself but to a life more consciously lived.

  • The heart in winter

    £9.99

    October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast.

  • To the dogs

    £9.99

    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?

  • Your wild and precious life

    £10.99

    My son’s death will never make sense to me. But it has taught me that it’s possible to find meaning, collectively and individually, in the loss of what we love. And in finding them, transform. Resilience is a seed that we all bear inside us. It germinates in emergencies. It sets down roots in astonishing and unexpected ways. And if we notice it, and tend to it, it blooms. Liz Jensen’s son, a zoologist, conservationist, and ecological activist, was twenty-five when he collapsed and died unexpectedly. She fell apart. As she grieved, forest fires raged, coral reefs deteriorated, CO2 emissions rose and fossil fuels burned. ‘Your Wild and Precious Life’ is the story of how a mother rebuilt herself, reoriented her life and rediscovered the enchantment of the living world.

  • The café with no name

    £16.99

    It is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a café on the corner of a bustling Vienna market. He recruits a barmaid, Mila, and soon the customers flock in. Factory workers, market traders, elderly ladies, a wrestler, a painter, an unemployed seamstress in search of a job, each bring their stories and their plans for the future. As Robert listens and Mila refills their glasses, romances bloom, friendships are made and fortunes change. And change is coming to the city around them, to the little café, and to Robert’s dream.

  • The wardrobe department

    £16.99

    Mairéad works all hours in a run-down West End theatre’s wardrobe department, her whole existence made up of threads and needles, running errands to mend shoes, fixing broken zips and handwashing underwear. She must also do her best to avoid groping hands backstage and the terrible bullying of the show’s producer. But, despite her skill and growing experience, half of Mairéad remains in her windy, hedge-filled home in Ireland, and the life she abandoned there. In noughties London, she has the potential to be somebody completely new – why, then, does she feel so stuck? Between the bustling side streets of Soho, and the wet grass of Leitrim and Donegal, Mairéad is caught, running from the girl she was but unable to reveal the woman she’d hoped to become.

  • 44 poems on being with each other

    £20.00

    This celebratory anthology explores human connection through forty poems carefully curated by the host of the internationally acclaimed Poetry Unbound podcast. With an observant eye, Pádraig Ó Tuama shares an enlightening meditation on each poem, revealing the ways we relate to each other, the world around us and ourselves. Blending humour with insight, tension with tenderness, complexity with care, this collection articulates the power of poetry itself; it illuminates aspects of the human condition, particularly the ways we are inextricably linked to each other, and provides inspiration for grounded self-reflection.

  • Poyums

    £10.99

    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.

  • Let the light pour in

    £9.99

    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 darkness and are fuelled with resilience and defiant joy. ‘Let the Light Pour In’ is a collection of the best of these poems, and a book celebrating his morning practice.

  • A ballet of lepers

    £10.99

    Before the celebrated late-career world tours, before the Grammy awards, before the chart-topping albums, before ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘So Long, Marianne’ and ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, the young Leonard Cohen wrote poetry and fiction and yearned for literary stardom. In this book, readers will discover that the magic that animated Cohen’s unforgettable body of work was present from the very beginning. Written between 1956 in Montreal, just as Cohen was publishing his first poetry collection, and 1961, when he’d settled on Greece’s Hydra island, the pieces in this collection offer startling insight into Cohen’s imagination and creative process, and explore themes that would permeate his later work, from shame and unworthiness to sexual desire to longing, whether for love, family, freedom or transcendence.

  • The caretaker

    £9.99

    It is 1951. The close-knit community of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, does not welcome those who are different. Jacob Hampton’s wealthy parents disinherited him when he married Naomi, an uneducated hotel maid from out of town. They had bigger plans for him. Now Jacob has been called up to fight in Korea, leaving a pregnant Naomi behind. The only person he can entrust to take care of her is his lifelong friend, Blackburn Gant. Blackburn, who tends the local cemetery alone, is an outsider too, his appearance irrevocably altered by childhood disease. Slowly the two outcasts grow closer, their friendship blooming under small acts of kindness. Then, as they await news of Jacob’s return, a terrible, shattering act of deception derails all their lives. But no secret can stay hidden for ever.