It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin – a time for hope, for love, for raving.

Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption.

Sick Boy starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his ‘princess’ – rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy sees a chance for his generation to take control at last.

But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group’s dreams or just another doomed quest?

OLD TRUTHS HAVE NEW CONSEQUENCES

Ray Lennox is determined to move on from his darkest days. The maverick former detective has left Edinburgh for a fresh start in Brighton. Soon, his fixations and addictions have been replaced with quiet evenings and a rigorous fitness regime.

Then Lennox meets Mathew Cardingworth. Rich, smooth-talking and immaculately dressed, he presents himself as a successful, and respectable, property developer. Yet their encounter reawakens memories that have haunted Lennox for decades, sending him into a spiral of confusion and rage.

Lennox has no choice – he must confront the events of his childhood. But the more he identifies the links between Cardingworth, the disappearance of a group of foster care boys and the violence of his past, the more he finds himself asking:

What will he sacrifice to achieve resolution at last?

'Five engrossing, resonant stories here, with no weak links' The Herald The world's first UNESCO city of literature, Edinburgh is steeped in literary history. It is the birthplace of a beloved cast of fictional characters from Sherlock Holmes to Harry Potter. It is the home of the Writer's Museum, where quotes from writers of the past pave the steps leading up to it. A city whose beauty is matched only by the intrigue of its past, and where Robert Louis Stevenson said, 'there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh's street-lamps'. And to celebrate the city, its literature, and more importantly, its people, Polygon and the One City Trust have brought together writers - established and emerging - to write about the place they call home. Based around landmarks or significant links to Edinburgh each story transports the reader to a different decade in the city's recent past. Through these stories each author reflects on the changes, both generational and physical, in the city in which we live.

In this astonishing account, Iceberg Slim reveals the secret inner world of the pimp, and the smells, sounds, fears and petty triumphs of his world. A legendary figure of the Chicago underworld, this is his story: from defending his mother against the men in their lives to becoming a giant of the streets. A seething tale of brutality, cunning and greed, Pimp is a harrowing portrait of life on the wrong side of the tracks, and a rich warning from a true survivor.

Reheated Cabbage gathers stories showcasing Irvine Welsh's trademark skills: vaulting imagination, brilliant vernacular ear, scabrous humor, and the ability to create some of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction. You can enjoy Christmas dinner with Begbie at his Ma's and see how he greets his sister's boyfriend and news of their engagement. You'll discover in "The Rosewell Incident" why aliens speak hardcore Scots English and plan to put Midlothian roughs in charge of the planet. And you'll be delighted to welcome back "Juice" Terry Lawson and now internationally famous DJ Carl Ewart, and watch them as they meet an old nemesis, retired schoolmaster Albert Black, under the strobe lights of a Miami Beach nightclub. These stories, most first published in small magazines and out-of-print anthologies, are all wildly offbeat and will delight both fans of and newcomers to Welsh's world.

At last, a novel that lives up to its name—from the author of the international sensation Trainspotting.

With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . . .

In Bruce Robertson Welsh has created one of the most compellingly misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction, in a dark and disturbing and often scabrously funny novel about the abuse of everything and everybody.

"Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing in decades."—Sunday Times [London]

"[O]ne of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit, and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear."—Times Literary Supplement

"Welsh writes with such vile, relentless intensity that he makes Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the French master of defilement, look like Little Miss Muffet. "—Courtney Weaver, The New York Times Book Review

"The corrupt Edinburgh cop-antihero of Irvine Welsh's best novel since Trainspotting is an addictive personality in another sense: so appallingly powerful is his character that it's hard to put the book down....[T]he rapid-fire rhythm and pungent dialect of the dialogue carry the reader relentlessly toward the literally filthy denouement. "—Village Voice Literary Supplement, "Our 25 Favorite Books of 1998"

"Welsh excels at making his trash-spewing bluecoat peculiarly funny and vulnerable—and you will never think of the words 'Dame Judi Dench' in the same way ever again. [Grade:] A-. "—Charles Winecoff, Entertainment Weekly

'An unremitting powerhouse of a novel that marks the arrival of a major new talent. Trainspotting is a loosely knotted string of jagged, dislocated tales that lay bare the hearts of darkness of the junkies, wide-boys and psychos who ride in the down escalator of opportunity in the nation's capital. Loud with laughter in the dark, this novel is the real McCoy. If you haven't heard of Irvine Welsh before-don't worry, you will' The Herald

The highly-anticipated second instalment in the CRIME trilogy, now a hit TV Series In Edinburgh, Detective Inspector Ray Lennox is investigating a brutal crime... Ritchie Gulliver MP is dead. Castrated and left to bleed in an empty Leith warehouse. Vicious, racist and corrupt, many thought he had it coming. But nobody could have predicted this. After the life Gulliver has led, the suspects are many - corporate rivals, political opponents, the countless groups he's offended. And the vulnerable and marginalised, who bore the brunt of his cruelty. As Lennox unravels the truth, and the list of shocking attacks grows, he must put his personal feelings aside. But one question refuses to go away: who are the real victims here? 'Sharp, fearless, passionate and brilliant' Independent 'An ingeniously plotted and propulsive thriller' Literary Review

Read the seminal bestselling novel that changed the face of British fiction and inspired Danny Boyle's film. 'The best book ever written by man or woman... Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible' Rebel Inc Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life. 'Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius.' Sunday Times

Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting. Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode. Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky. If you enjoyed Last Exit to Brooklyn, you might like Larry McMurty's The Last Picture Show, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years' Allen Ginsberg 'An urgent tickertape from hell' Spectator

Now a major film directed by Danny Boyle reuniting the cast of Trainspotting Years on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realise his ambitions within the Adult industries, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton. Still scheming, still scamming, Sick Boy and Renton soon find out that they have unresolved issues to address concerning the unhinged Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other. T2 Trainspotting was previously published as Porno.

"The best book ever written by man or woman...deserves to sell more copies than the Bible."—Rebel, Inc.

Brace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain.

Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career—an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives. It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn did for his. Rents, Sick Boy, Mother Superior, Swanney, Spuds, and Seeker are as unforgettable a clutch of junkies, rude boys, and psychos as readers will ever encounter. Trainspotting was made into the 1996 cult film starring Ewan MacGregor and directed by Danny Boyle (A Shallow Grave).

"Blisteringly funny...relatively few writers have rummaged through this particular enclave of British youth culture...even fewer have dug there so deeply."— Mark Jolly, The New York Times Book Review

"[O]ne of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit, and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear."—Times Literary Supplement

"It is funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic, and inventive, unerringly on—and of—the pulse. It is a true cult, the kind of novel you press on perfect strangers. It validates a world fiction hasn't recognized before."—Time Out London

"Irvine Welsh writes with skill, wit, and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades."—Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About a Boy

"Irvine Welsh is the real thing—a marvelous admixture of nihilism and heartbreak, pinpoint realism (especially in dialect and tone), and almost archetypal universality."—David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest

**A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** Mark Renton from Trainspotting is back - and he's finally a success An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and - much to Mark's astonishment - doesn't seem interested in revenge. Sick Boy and Spud, who have agendas of their own, are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town, but when they enter the bleak world of organ-harvesting, things start to go so badly wrong. Lurching from crisis to crisis, the four men circle each other, driven by their personal histories and addictions, confused, angry - so desperate that even Hibs winning the Scottish Cup doesn't really help. One of these four will not survive to the end of this book. Which one of them is wearing Dead Men's Trousers? 'Welsh is on compulsively readable, searingly funny form' The Times 'No one captures the competing affections and resentments that underpin lifelong friendships like Welsh' Esquire

Both a prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, and an alternative version of it, Skagboys""is Irvine Welsh's greatest work.
Mark Renton seems to have it all: he's the first in his family to go to university, he's young, has a pretty girlfriend and a great social life. But Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his badly handicapped younger brother dies the family bonds start to weaken, his life flips out of control, and he succumbs to the defeatism and the heroin which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas.
His friends face similar challenges. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job and faces long-term unemployment, while Tommy Lawrence feels that only love can save him from being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence -- exemplified respectively by the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. And then there is Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, scamming and hustling his way through life.
Skagboys""charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: not the sanitized version, of upbeat pop music, mullets, shoulder-pads and MTV, but a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred -- and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.

Justice can be a blunt instrument "Men like him usually tell the story. In business. Politics. Media. But not this time: I repeat, he is not writing this story." Ritchie Gulliver MP is dead. Castrated and left to bleed in an empty Leith warehouse. Vicious, racist and corrupt, many thought he had it coming. But nobody could have predicted this. After the life Gulliver has led, the suspects are many: corporate rivals, political opponents, the countless groups he's offended. And the vulnerable and marginalised, who bore the brunt of his cruelty - those without a voice, without a choice, without a chance. As Detective Ray Lennox unravels the truth, and the list of brutal attacks grows, he must put his personal feelings aside. But one question refuses to go away... Who are the real victims here?

A beautiful hardback edition of the seminal novel that changed the face of British fiction. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life. 'The best book ever written by man or woman... Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible' Rebel Inc 'Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius' Sunday Times VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Beautiful editions of great books to last a lifetime

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life - and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he's a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies - and, most alarmingly, his former self - Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband's violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly. The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel - ultra violent but curiously redemptive - and it marks the return of one of modern fiction's most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

If you put four dwarfs in a room with enough opium and alcohol, it's bound to end in tears...
In 1935, MGM studios embarked on a movie adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The production called for the casting of many dwarfs to play the Munchkins of the mythical Land of Oz, and the studio began recruiting 'small persons' from all over the world.
During production, rumors spread around Hollywood of wild Munchkin sex orgies, drunken behavior and general dwarf debauchery. More sinisterly, a Munchkin is said to have committed suicide by hanging himself on the set during filming--what appears to be a small human body is clearly visible hanging from a tree in the Tin Man scene. It is a claim that has passed into Hollywood legend.
Set in a hotel room in Culver City, California, Babylon Heights is Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh's scabrous and hilarious imaging of what could, very possibly, have led to the dwarf suicide.

Scottish Stories is a treasury of great writing from a richly literary land, where the short story has flourished for over two centuries. Here are chilling supernatural stories from Robert Louis Stevenson, Eric Linklater and Dorothy K. Haynes; side-splittingly funny stories from Alasdair Gray and Irvine Welsh; a stylish offering from urban realist William McIlvanney. Iain Crichton Smith evokes the Gaelic-speaking highlands, George Mackay-Brown the Orkney islands, Andrew O'Hagan working-class Glasgow; while Leila Aboulela, originally from Sudan, ponders the relations between colonizers and colonized from her home in Aberdeen. Though there is no one 'Scottishness' that binds the authors together, writes editor Gerard Carruthers, each has a Scottish footprint or accent. And perhaps more importantly, all are masters of their form.

Irvine Welsh, 'poet laureate of the chemical generation', exposes the seamy underbelly of rave's utopian dream. Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a spot of disc jockeying and closes in, gradually, on some kind of redemption... Selected from Irvine Welsh's novel Ecstasy. VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Home by Salman Rushdie Dreams by Sigmund Freud Eating by Nigella Lawson Work by Joseph Heller

Ten years on from Trainspotting, Simon 'Sick Boy' Williamson is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity, which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realize his dream of directing and producing a pornographic movie, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton and a motley crew that includes the city's favourite ex-aerated-water-salesman, 'Juice' Terry Lawson.

In the world of Porno, however, nothing is straightforward, as Sick Boy and Renton find out that they have unresolved issues to address, concerning the increasingly unhinged Frank Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other.