Canons Series

In the summer of 1869, John Muir set out from California's Central Valley with a flock of sheep and trekked into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. His journals describe the summer he spent in what would become Yosemite National Park. Celebrating the Sierra's lizards and mountain lions, tall trees and waterfalls, fierce thunderstorms and bears, Muir raises an awareness of nature to a spiritual dimension.John Muir is internationally acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of modern conservation and his vision, passion and integrity continue to inspire readers today - particularly in this, his best-loved book.

The cult classic novel of dreamlike fantasy and psychological realism by the author of Poor Things: A work of “vivid imagination, yielding copious riches.”—The Times Literary Supplement   From its first publication in 1981, Alasdair Gray’s Lanark was hailed as a masterpiece, inspiring Anthony Burgess to proclaim Gray the most important Scottish novelist since Walter Scott. With its echoes of Dante, Blake, Joyce, Kafka, and Lewis Carroll, Lanark has been published around the world to unanimous acclaim.   A man wakes up on a train with no memory and seashells in his pockets. He finds himself arriving in a peculiar place called Unthank—where the sun only comes up part-way and the inhabitants are prone to disappearing. He names himself Lanark and soon encounters a gallery of characters who suffer from joblessness, alienation, and strange maladies. The novel’s time-shifting narrative then draws readers into Lanark’s former life in Glasgow as it explores its twin themes of humankind’s inability to love and our compulsion to go on trying.   This edition of Lanark features an introduction by the award-winning novelist Janice Galloway, as well as “Gray’s Tailpiece,” a fascinating addendum to the novel.   “It was time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it.” —Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange   “A quite extraordinary achievement, the most remarkable thing in Scottish fiction for a very long time.” —Scotsman

The international bestselling novel “of childhood innocence lost in rural Italy [is] a gripping read … a deft masterpiece with never a false note” (The Guardian, UK). A BBC Two Between The Covers Book Club Pick Southern Italy, 1978. In the midst of a relentlessly hot summer, as the adults stay inside tending to their own business, six children explore the scorched wheat fields that enclose their tiny Italian village. When the gang find a dilapidated farmhouse, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano makes a discovery so momentous that he doesn’t dare tell a soul. It is a secret that Michele doesn’t fully understand, yet it will force him to question everything and everyone around him, and will bring his innocent world toppling down. Both “an exquisite parable” and a tense thriller, I’m Not Scared has become a contemporary classic in Italian literature, read and celebrated the world over (Daily Telegraph, UK).

Whitbread Award Winner: A Scottish miner fights for a better life for his son in this “intense, witty and beautifully wrought novel” (Daily Telegraph). At the dawn of the twentieth century, newborn Conn Docherty, raw as a fresh wound, lies between his parents in their tenement room, with no birthright but a life's labor in the pits of his small town on the coast of Scotland. But the world is changing, and, lying next to him, Conn's father, Tam, has decided that his son’s life will be different from his own… Gritty, dark and tender, Docherty is a modern classic, “a serious, considered and achingly sympathetic engagement with the people whose only trace in historical record is birth and dead notices” (Scotsman). “McIlvanney depicts the west of Scotland with a canny and ruthless insight.”—Scotsman “As a stylist Mr. McIlvanney leaves most of the competition far behind.”—The New York Times Book Review

An author’s walk “from source to sea along the Ouse in Sussex is a meandering, meditative delight” drawing on history, literature, and the river itself (The Guardian, UK). In To The River, author Olivia Laing embarks on a weeklong, midsummer odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex, England, from its source near Haywards Heath to the sea, where it empties into the Channel at Newhaven. More than sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse, Laing still finds inspiration and guidance in the author’s abiding presence. Through cow pastures, woods, and neighborhood streets, Laing’s meandering walk occasions a profound and haunting reflection on histories both personal and cultural, and on landscapes both physical and emotional. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. “Magical…By turns lyrical, melancholic and exultant, To the River just makes you want to follow Olivia Laing all the way to the sea.”—Daily Telegraph, UK

“A sensitive, brave and inspiring book” exploring the state of modern Christianity from the international bestselling author of Leaving Alexandria (Karen Armstrong). A prize-winning author and former Bishop for the Scottish Episcopal Church, Richard Holloway has written extensively on the role of religion in modern society. Now, in this passionate and heartfelt book, Holloway interrogates the traditional ways of understanding the Bible. In doing so he demonstrates the power of the great Christian stories as they apply today, so far removed from their antiquated settings. Holloway’s sophisticated and sensitive approach provides a blueprint for living with faith that takes the core teachings of the Christian past and invigorates them with renewed power for today’s world. The result is “an exhilarating book. It is not every day that you encounter a person of Richard Holloway’s experience wrestling with the very foundations of his chosen way of life. This in itself gives the book a tone of urgency” (The Scotsman, UK). This edition of Doubts and Loves includes a new afterword by the author. “I don’t know when I have been more impressed, indeed, excited, by a work…It answers the seemingly tormenting questions in a completely satisfying way.”—Ruth Rendell

A postmodern novel of melancholy memory and erotic fantasy—“a filthy tour de force”—by the acclaimed Scottish author of Poor Things (The Washington Post).   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. Alone in a hotel room, Jock attempts again and again to escape the realities of his life through an elaborate sadomasochistic fantasy featuring a woman named Janine. As various memories—from childhood to marriage to his present predicament—invade his imagination, Jock reels through this endlessly inventive black comedy of a man’s mind.   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 has a verbal energy, an intensity of vision that has mostly been missing from the English novel since D.H. Lawrence.” —New York Times   “1982, Janine revived my flagging impetus to continue writing myself.” —Jonathan Coe, winner of the 2019 Costa Novel Award

“Readers will be carried away on successive waves of pleasure [and] irresistible holistic beauty” in this journey to uncover myths of Selchies (Seamus Heaney, from the introduction). When author David Thomson travelled across the coasts of Scotland and Ireland to seek out the legend of the selchies—mythological creatures who transform from seals into humans—a magical world emerged before him. Thomson was enchanted by tales of men rescued by seals in stormy seas, and others who took seal-women for their wives and had their children suckled by seal-mothers. The People of the Sea is Thomson’s poetic record of his journey into this world, and his encounters with people whose connection to the sea and its fertile lore runs deep. Winner of the McVitie Prize for his memoir Nairn in Darkness and Light, David Thomson offers “a splendid resurrection of a life that has almost vanished.” Timeless and haunting, The People of the Sea retains its spellbinding charm and brings to life the enchanting stories of these mysterious creatures of Celtic folklore (Daily Telegraph, UK). “I know of few books which so ably open a window on the Gaelic scene today or which so faithfully reflect the mind, vigour and courtesy of its people…Pounds on the imagination like surf on a reef”—Observer, UK

A wide-ranging collection of poetry by the iconic “poet and polemicist whose lyrics have inspired and galvanized generations” (GQ). Musician, poet, and spoken-word artist Gil Scott-Heron influenced generations of artists with his highly original, disarmingly witty, politically provocative song-poems. Coming into prominence in the early 1970s, the self-proclaimed “bluesologist” has earned, among many other accolades, the title of Godfather of Rap. Now and Then presents a collection of poems from across Scott-Heron long career—including some of his most iconic recorded pieces, as well as lesser-known works that have never been recorded. With an introduction by Kate Tempest, this collection carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and the realities of everyday life. Through it all, Scott-Heron’s message is both steeped in history and as urgent as ever. “Scott-Heron is such a fine writer…the least likely pop star ever, one with a truly brilliant mind”—Sunday Times, UK “Some of the funniest and most literate lyrics in all music . . . From deadpan attacks on racism to withering sarcasm about the Great Society; from Chomskian rants to parodies of media shallowness—every line comes coated in a sardonically witty turn of phrase.”—Time Out