Books published by Canongate Books

The first book by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Secret River

In this fascinating follow-up to the highly successful Dear Francesca, Mary Contini writes to her other daughter, Olivia, to tell the story of her great-grandparents, the humble Italian shepherds who emigrated to Edinburgh and then helped to transform Britain's food culture.

From the bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

The Courage Consort, possibly the seventh best-known a cappella vocal ensemble in Britain, are given two weeks in a Belgian chateau to rehearse their latest commission, the monstrously complicated Partitum Mutante.

Shows the high jinks of many folk in the last stages of physical, moral and social decrepitude - a sure tonic for the young.

In a novel set in Soviet-era Poland, a boy is bewitched by his teacher and vows to win her heart, but later, when he becomes a teacher himself, he sees the story from the opposite side of the instructor's desk. Reprint.

Takuya, an ex-officer in the Imperial Army, has returned to his native village only to learn that the Occupation authorities are intensifying their efforts to apprehend suspected war criminals. One Man's Justice is both a reflection on the murky reality of war and a page-turning novel of pursuit and escape.

Inspiring a documentary featuring Margaret Atwood, Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall, A Short History of Progress examines the downside of human advancement

Larry is a teenager wrestling not only with his sexuality and the implications of a physical relationship with his younger brother, but with the very point of his existence. As the book opens, Larry has been paid $500 by a senior to kill a fellow pupil and retrieve the boy's notebook.

A brilliantly executed parody of Jane Austen's 'forgotten' sex scenes

Published originally in two volumes in 1890, this extraordinary study of primitive myth and magic, collected from sources around the world, led Frazer to identify parallel patterns of ritual, symbols and belief across many centuries and many different cultures.

When Pius Fernandes, a retired schoolteacher living in modern day Dar es Salaam, discovers a diary of a British colonial administrator from 1913, he is drawn into a provocative account of the Asian community of East Africa, and the liaisons, feelings and secrets of its people, over the course of a century.

An acclaimed collection of stories from the internationally bestselling author of The Crimson Petal and the White

The best of the best in classic short fiction.

A Change is Gonna Come chronicles more than forty years of black music: from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement to the slick pop of Motown;

Hugh Laurie's reading of a comic classic - a rollicking listen

A wonderful tale of childhood and its dissipation into adulthood from the man who inspired Bukowski

A swift-paced, wonderfully narrated Wodehouse classic

Written between 1845 and 1854 the memoirs contained in this book were intended for Elizabeth's family. These records of life in the early nineteenth century and the Rothiemurchus estate form a picture of her time.