Showing results by publisher "Canongate Books" in Literary Fiction

When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On...

The remarkable new Sunday Times bestselling novel from the author of the international sensation The Midnight Library ‘A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination' BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH'What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet . . .' When...

She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined – with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Condemned to shoulder the world "for ever" by the gods he dared defy, freedom seems unattainable to Atlas. But then he receives an unexpected visit from Heracles, the one man strong enough to share the burden, and it seems they can strike a bargain that might release him ... Jeanette Winterson...

A 2026 BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN THE OBSERVER, FINANCIAL TIMES AND NEW STATESMAN 'Captivating, gripped me from the first page' ELIF SHAFAK'An unflinching, violent storm of a novel' TASH AW 'A miracle' SALMAN RUSHDIE 'A dark, brazen fairytale' LEILA ABOULELA 'Part holy legend, part undeniable...

Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's remix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love...

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police. He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they've gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.

Cricket is just a shy kid who likes drawing when he first meets Olympia. She's older, more confident; she bullies him into some light vandalism and instantly he's in love. When they're together, they talk about their futures, how they're going to travel the world, the beauty and rapture of art. Then those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.

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.

Maya and Daughter live in complete isolation in a secluded woodland, their days aligned with the light and changing seasons, a complex pattern of routine and ritual. Daughter has never questioned the life her mother has chosen for them; the life that has meant she's never met another soul, or known anywhere except their forest home. But one day, when Daughter is almost sixteen, a red-haired stranger steps into the confines of their territory.

NOW A MAJOR KOREAN THRILLER STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME Hornclaw is a sixty-five-year-old female contract killer who is considering retirement. But while on an assassination job for the ‘disease control’ company she works for, Hornclaw makes an uncharacteristic error, causing a sequence of...

Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. When her in-laws insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear. It will lead to jealousy, betrayal and despair. Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of '80s Nigeria, Stay with Me sings with the voices, colours, joys and fears of its surroundings. Ayobami Adebayo weaves a devastating story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the wretchedness of grief and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood.

Marcus Conway has come a long way to stand in the kitchen of his home and remember the rhythms and routines of his life. Considering with his engineer's mind how things are constructed - bridges, banking systems, marriages - and how they may come apart. Mike McCormack captures with tenderness and feeling, in continuous, flowing prose, a whole life suspended in a single hour.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020 ‘DEVASTATING’ Marlon James, ‘A MODERN CLASSIC’ Andrew Sean Greer, ‘INCREDIBLE’ Lemn Sissay, ‘BRILLIANT’ Salman Rushdie, ‘MAGNIFICIENT’ Aminatta Forna, ‘EPIC’ Mary Morris, ‘WONDERFUL’ Laila Lalami, ‘UNFORGETTABLE’ The Times...

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, collecting newspapers 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 beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of family friends. When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola and Eniola's lives become intertwined.

WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY THE AUTHORNow that all the others have run out of air, it’s my turn to do a little story-making . . . So I’ll spin my own thread. Penelope . . . immortalised in legend and Greek myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and...

If he's in the right mood, divine Angus might grant you sight of your true love in a dream; you might even fall in love with him, but he'll never love you back. He's too busy making mischief, stealing the palace of the gods from his father, turning his enemies into pigs etc; until he is trapped...

If you knew a book was cursed, would you read it? When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr. Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She knows enough about its author, the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, to know that copies are exceedingly rare. And, some...

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.