Showing results by publisher "Canongate Books" in Literature & Fiction

Hunting Shadows is drawn from Gallagher's journalistic pieces and offers an evocative and personal view of the area. Born and bred in Dumbarton, reader Robert Trotter is very much at home with these affectionate memories of the town on the Clyde.

A collection of humorous stories featuring Munro's best-loved creation: master mariner Para Handy. Read by Robert Trotter, all stories are unabridged, self-contained, and describe the numerous adventures aboard Para Handy's ship, The Vital Spark.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English author and poet born in Bombay, India. Educated in Britain, he later returned to Lahore, India, to work as a journalist. Kipling travelled widely and also lived in Vermont, having married Carrie Balestier, an American.Throughout his life, Kipling never stopped writing. He was greatly revered during his lifetime and received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. Kidnapped examines Kipling's attitudes towards race, and inter-racial marriage in particular, with the amused observations of societal quirks characteristic of his writing.

Window in Thrums - the story of the "untrue son" - is about the fictional village of Thrums. The story and setting are widely acknowledged to be modelled on Barrie's home town of Kirriemuir. It was one of his earlier works which, along with Auld Licht Idylls, also published in 1889. The novel contains many memorable sketches and illuminations of Scottish life at the time, and it paved the way for the rest of Barrie's great career.

Here is the beguiling and charming memoir of Toby, an exceptionally gifted pig. After escaping the butcher's knife with the help of his steadfast companion, Sam, Toby soon finds himself under the order of the volatile impresario Silas Bisset and his travelling menagerie of performing monkeys, horses, turkeys, and canaries. Before too long, he is packing out theatres and concert halls. But celebrity comes at a cost, as Toby soon finds out.

The Glenmutchkin Railway was published in 1845. First published anonymously, it relates the political and technological issues surrounding the buildings of railways in Scotland at a time of dramatic industrial development. The first wave of truly manic railway promotion took place in 1844. By the summer of 1845, when Aytoun was writing his piece, the British Parliament was finishing its consideration of the projects hatched in 1844, approving some lines and rejecting others.

In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared. When a young Alice Kyteler sees her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities, she vows that she will not suffer the same fate. When she discovers she has a flair for making money, she soon builds a flourishing trade. But as her wealth and stature grow, so too do the rumours about her private life. By the time she has moved on to her fourth husband, a blaze of local gossip and resentment culminates in an accusation that could prove fatal.

Rookie lawyer Grace Zulu does not give up easily. She escaped an arranged marriage to put herself through university. Now she's got her first case. Her client is young Willbess 'Bessy' Mulenga, who has been arrested for offences 'against nature'. Bessy works in a men-only bar, loves to dance, to wear dresses and live freely. But in 1990s Zambia, following your own identity can get you beaten, jailed or even worse. Grace is determined to get Bessy out of custody. Then her terrified, bruised client goes missing without a trace.

Jaq's worked hard on the road since she was fourteen, bringing in money to keep her broken family afloat. Now she's built a good life near the top of the Summerhouse crew, with a beautiful home she shares with her girlfriend Becks and her heavily pregnant older sister Lauryn. But messages are coming in - good and bad - and Jaq has to make a choice: step back from the road and start a life she's never even considered. Or seize her opportunities and risk everything for life-changing money. Either way, Jaq will make enemies. And those enemies aren't going to let her go easily.

In Lion's Honey, award-winning writer David Grossman takes on one of the most vivid and controversial characters in the Bible. He revisits Samson's famous battle with the lion, his many women, and his betrayal by them all - including the only one he ever loved. Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story and its climax - Samson's final act of death - when he brings down a temple on himself and 3,000 Philistines

When Ariadne helped Theseus escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth with the aid of a ball of thread, she led the way for the bewildered victims of a twenty-first century Minotaur. Trapped in an endless maze of Internet chat rooms, a group of mystified strangers find themselves assigned obscure aliases and commanded by the Helmet of Horror, the Minotaur himself.