CANONGATE

(P/B) HAM ON RYE
Legendary barfly Charles Bukowski's fourth novel, first published in 1982, is probably the most autobiographical and moving of all his books, dealing in particular with his difficult relationship with his father and his early childhood in LA. Ham on Rye follows the path of Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski through the high school years of acne and rejection and into the beginning of a long and successful career in alcoholism. The novel begins against the backdrop of an America devastated by the Depression and takes the Chinaski legend up...
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(P/B) 1933 WAS A BAD YEAR
John Fante is a lost gem of American literature and the man who was credited by Charles Bukowski as the inspiration for him to start writing. In a life that spanned 74 years, Fante wrote several great novels, such as Ask the Dust, and numerous screenplays. He died in 1983 from diabetes-related complications. Trapped in a small, poverty-ridden town in 1933, seventeen-year-old Dominic Molise yearns to fulfil his own dreams of becoming an American sports hero. This teenage southpaw aspires to the big leagues, big recognition and big love. He ...
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(P/B) A Spell of Good Things
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024 LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption. Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor and begging, dreaming of a big future. Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is belov...
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(P/B) 1982, JANINE
An unforgettably challenging book about power and powerlessness, men and women, masters and servants, small countries and big countries, Alasdair Gray's exploration of the politics of pornography has lost none of its power to shock.1982 Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy, as explored via the lonely sexual fantasies of Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and businessman. Yet there is hope here, and the humour (if black) and the imaginative and textual energy of the narrative achieves its own kind of redemption in the e...
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(P/B) THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE GRAPE
Henry Molise, a fifty-year-old successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his elderly parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, bricklaying father, Nick, despite being weakened by age and alcoholism, can still strike fear into the hearts of his sons. His mother, ill and devoutly Catholic, still has the power both to comfort and confuse her children. Nick has been offered some well-paid work to build a smokehouse in the hills, and Henry, realising this might be the last chance they have to reconcile thin...
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(P/B) BENEATH THE UNDERDOG
Bass player extraordinaire Charles Mingus, who died in 1979, is one of the essential composers in the history of jazz, and Beneath the Underdog, his celebrated, wild, funny, demonic, anguished, shocking and profoundly moving memoir, is the greatest autobiography ever written by a jazz musician. It tells of his God-haunted childhood in Watts during the 1920s and 1930s; his outcast adolescent years; his apprenticeship, not only with jazzmen but also with pimps, hookers, junkies, and hoodlums; and his golden years in New York City with such ...
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(P/B) ASK THE DUST
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...
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(P/B) Faith, Hope and Carnage
Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave's inner life. Created from over forty hours of intimate conversations with Sean O'Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave's own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave's life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years. From a place of considered reflection, Faith, Hope and Carnage off...
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(P/B) Bird by Bird
Bird by Bird is the bible of writing guides - a wry, honest, down-to-earth book that has never stopped selling since it was first published in the United States in the 1990s. Bestselling novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott distils what she's learned over years of trial and error. Beautifully written, wise and immensely helpful, this is the book for all serious writers and writers-to-be. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON: A JOURNEY THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA
Rebecca West's epic masterpiece not only provides deep insight into the former country of Yugoslavia; it is a portrait of Europe on the brink of war. A heady cocktail of personal travelogue and historical insight, this product of an implacably inquisitive intelligence remains essential for anyone attempting to understand the history of the Balkan states, and the wider ongoing implications for a fractured Europe....
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(P/B) THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY
THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON A RICHARD & JUDY, BETWEEN THE COVERS AND GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD FOR FICTION Nora's life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth she finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. Which raises the ultimate question: with infinite choices, what is the best way to live? (From the publ...
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(P/B) ROOM TO DREAM
David Lynch - co-creator of Twin Peaks and writer and director of groundbreaking films such as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he has made along the way and the struggles he has faced to bring his projects to fruition. Room to Dream is both an astonishing memoir told in Lynch's own words and a landmark biography based on hundreds of interviews, that offers unique insights into the life and mind of one of the world's most enigmatic and or...
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(P/B) THE HOUSE OF DOORS
It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert's, comes to stay. Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley's friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is - a man who has...
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(P/B) LANARK
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. First published in 1981, Lanark immediately established Gray as one of Britain's leading writers. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) BI
Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality explores all that we know about the world's largest sexual minority. It is a personal journey that starts with Dr Julia Shaw's own openly bisexual identity, and celebrates the resilience and beautiful diversity of the bi community. From the hunt for a bi gene, to the relationship between bisexuality and consensual non-monogamy, to asylum seekers who need to prove their bisexuality in a court of law, there is more to explore than most have ever realised. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE PENELOPIAD
For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, maintaining a kingdom while her husband was off fighting the Trojan war was not a simple business. Already aggrieved that he had been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours and keep over a hundred lustful, greedy and bloodthirsty suitors at bay... And then, when Odysseus finally returns and slaughters the murderous suitors, he brutally hangs Penelope’s twelve beloved maids. What were his motives? And what wa...
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(P/B) HUMANS
Do you: Know a human?; Love a human?; Have trouble dealing with humans? If you've answered yes to any of the above, this book is for you. Whether you are planning a high level of human interaction or just a casual visit to the planet, this user-guide to the human race will help you translate their sayings, understand exotic concepts such as 'democracy' and 'sofas', and make sense of their habits and bizarre customs. A phrase book, a dictionary and a survival guide, this book unravels all the oddness, idiosyncrasies and wonder of the specie...
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(P/B) ON LOVE
In On Love, we see Charles Bukowski reckoning with the complications of love and desire. Alternating between the tough and the tender, the romantic and the gritty, Bukowski exposes the myriad faces of love in the poems collected here - its selfishness and its narcissism, its randomness, its mystery and its misery, and, ultimately, its true joyfulness, endurance and redemptive power. Whether writing about his daughter, his lover, or his work, Bukowski is fiercely honest and reflective, using love as a prism to look at the world and to view ...
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(P/B) CHRONICLE IN STONE
During the Second World War, a young boy witnesses his hometown in Albania fall to a series of invaders: first Italian fascists, then the Greeks, the Italians once again and finally Nazi hordes. Amid floods and bombings, he undergoes another kind of turbulence - growing up. Chronicle in Stone is an early masterpiece from the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize and one of the most significant European writers of the last fifty years. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) Winchelsea
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 fas...
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