Showing results by publisher "Canongate Books" in All Categories

It isn't always easy growing up as a human in Elfhelm, even if your adoptive parents are the newly married Father Christmas and Mary Christmas. For one thing, Elf School can be annoying when you have to sing Christmas songs every day - even in July - and when you fail all your toy-making tests. Also it can get very, very cold. But when the jealous Easter Bunny and his rabbit army launch an attack to stop Christmas, it's up to Amelia, her new family and the elves to keep Christmas alive. Before it's too late....

The Collected Blandings Short Stories. Blandings Castle is the home of Lord Emsworth, who likes nothing better than to potter at home in his enormous castle garden. But his rural idyll is once again set to be disturbed in these nine hilarious fables. No peace is possible when his sister Constance is let loose, and she is constantly trying to reorganise the household and its inhabitants! Without great success…

Diagnosed twice with ADHD, Jordan Stephens found his teens and twenties a whirl of career success and nurturing friendships but also a brutal pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive coping mechanisms and heartbreak. When he tried to live up to his own damaged expectations and his world exploded, he stepped away from his previous existence completely and allowed himself to explore the pain he'd repressed his entire life.

The Art of Rest draws on groundbreaking research Claudia Hammond collaborated on - 'The Rest Test' - the largest global survey into rest ever undertaken, which was completed by 18,000 people across 135 different countries. Much of value has been written about sleep, but rest is different; it is how we unwind, calm our minds and recharge our bodies. And, as the survey revealed, how much rest you get is directly linked to your sense of well-being.

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.

Through the stories of seven of his patients, acclaimed Oxford University neurologist Masud Husain shows us how our brains create our identity, how that identity can be changed, and sometimes even be restored. Among the people we encounter is a man who ran out of words, a woman who stopped caring what others thought of her and another who, losing her memory, started to believe she was having an affair with the man who was really her husband.

All of us are familiar with this unsettling sensation of acceleration - the feeling that there's ever more to do, and ever less time in which to do it. This is overwhelm: that persistent feeling that you can't cope, that the demands on you are excessive, that you can't see a way out. In this liberating new book, award-winning writer and presenter of BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind Claudia Hammond helps us to take the pressure off with a psychological toolkit that is both practical and evidence-based.

This is a story of something like survival. Sal planned it for almost a year before they ran. She nicked an Ordnance Survey map from the school library. She bought a compass, a Bear Grylls knife, waterproofs and a first aid kit from Amazon using credit cards she'd robbed. She read the SAS Survival Handbook and watched loads of YouTube videos. And now Sal knows a lot of stuff. Like how to build a shelter and start a fire. How to estimate distances, snare rabbits and shoot an airgun.

When an American sailor from the Holy Loch Base goes missing, Harry McCoy is determined to find him. But as he investigates, a wave of bombings hits Glasgow - with the threat of more to come. Soon McCoy realises that the sailor may be part of a shadowy organisation committed to a very different kind of Scotland. One they are prepared to kill for.

When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr. Y in a secondhand 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 say, cursed. With Mr. Y under her arm, Ariel finds herself thrust into a thrilling adventure of love, sex, death and time travel.

From number one best-selling author Matt Haig comes a hilarious and heartwarming story. Wherever she is, whatever the day, She only has one kind of thing to say. Just as cats go miaow and cows go moo, The Truth Pixie can only say things that are true. A very funny and lovable tale of how one special pixie learned to love herself. The Truth Pixie is an enchanting, rhyming story that will delight younger children.

In Time on Rock Anna Fleming charts two parallel journeys: learning the craft of traditional rock climbing, and the new 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 Cullin, the slate of North Wales and the high plateau of the Cairngorms.

It's been four years since four-year-old Johnny Clearwater disappeared without a trace one hot summer afternoon. Now, a new TV documentary series is revisiting the case, dredging up memories perhaps best left forgotten. On the night the TV show is broadcast, detectives Anderson and Costello are called out to investigate the murder of a female police officer. On arriving at the scene, they discover that nothing about this death is as straightforward as it would appear.

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 and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.

Edinburgh, 1853. Mesmerism is seeing a revival across the city. While most scientists avoid engaging with such quackery, the respected Dr Simpson has kept an open mind, testing hypnosis on his patients. But when Cora Carlton, socialite and wife of a wealthy entrepreneur, is mysteriously found dead in her home, whispers turn to rumours and rumours turn to fact, with all fingers pointing to her Doctor, Simpson. Desperate to clear their mentor's name, Dr Will Raven and Sarah Fisher join forces to find the truth about Cora's death.

Evie is a little girl with a special talent. She can talk to animals. But when she rescues the school rabbit Gerald, and sets him free, Evie lands in big trouble. She promises her dad never to talk to animals again. For a whole year, Evie ignores them all. She doesn’t chat to the birds and dogs. She even ignores a little silver tabby cat who miaows: ‘Help me! Help me!’ But when Evie sees the same silver kitten on a missing poster, she secretly starts using her magical gift again.

Doon Mackichan is best known for her comedy characters in the hugely popular Brass Eye, Smack the Pony and Toast of London - but throughout her career there are parts she's refused to take and roles she's been forced to play. The Feisty Feminist. The Hot Lesbian. The Desperate Cougar. In My Lady Parts, Doon shares her experience on stage, screen and in real life, examining how our culture still expects women to adhere to certain stereotypes - and punishes those who don't.

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?

A major mix-up at Blandings Castle, in which Galahad introduces yet another imposter to Lord Emsworth's residence and the Empress of Blandings gets sloshed in her sty. Formidable comic characters designed to interrupt Lord Emsworth's peace include his overbearing sister Lady Hermione Wedge who comes complete her own meddling secretary, and Dame Daphne Winkworth who has her eye on becoming the next Countess. As ever the stage is set for Gally to try and restore order to the ensuing chaos!

Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser's has left five dead. Tempers are frayed, and sentiments running high. When three youths are charged, the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse, but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go. Detective Harry McCoy has 24 hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead.