|
Showing 1 - 25 of
48 matches in All Departments
'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.
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
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?
|
The Seal Club (Paperback)
Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh, John King
|
R348
R285
Discovery Miles 2 850
Save R63 (18%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
'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
|
Trainspotting
Irvine Welsh
|
R420
R328
Discovery Miles 3 280
Save R92 (22%)
|
Ships in 5 - 10 working days
|
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
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.
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.
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
|
Scottish Stories (Hardcover)
Walter Scott, James Hogg, Robert Louis Stevenson, Margaret Oliphant, John Buchan, …
|
R330
R285
Discovery Miles 2 850
Save R45 (14%)
|
Ships in 5 - 10 working days
|
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.
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
In October 2007, writers Mike Small and Kevin Williamson launched
Bella Caledonia at the Radical Book Fair in Edinburgh. Since then,
Bella has consistently explored ideas of self-determination and
offered Scotland's most robust political commentary. In the run up
to Scottish independence referendum, international interest grew
and Bella Caledonia had more than 500,000 unique users a month,
with a peak of one million in August - in 2015, the site was named
as one of the top 10 political blogs in the UK by Cision. This
anthology, curated by Mike Small, is a flavour of Bella's output
over these 14 years the editor's pick. Bella is aligned to no
political party and sees herself as the bastard child of parent
publications too good for this world; from Calgacus to Red Herring,
from Harpies & Quines to the Black Dwarf. Under Mike's
editorship, Bella has developed a 'Fifth Estate' as a way of
disrupting the passive relationship of old media, creating
something more active and appropriate for the 21st century - it's
about concentration of ownership, and bringing together radical
coverage with cultural analysis. Hence the plethora of wide-ranging
voices in this anthology, each representing outlier viewpoints in
contemporary society - novelists, poets, bloggers and journalists
publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media.
"Bella Caledonia has been a flagship for progressive thought in
Scotland, providing a platform for informed and creative writing,
advocating a progressive and independent nation fit for the
future." Stuart Cosgrove "Bella has been to be a constant thorn in
the side of the powerful voices who would prefer that conventional
wisdom went unchallenged, that awkward questions went unasked, and
bold solutions went unheard." Peter Geoehgan
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
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.
|
Performers (Paperback)
Irvine Welsh, Dean Cavanagh
|
R183
R152
Discovery Miles 1 520
Save R31 (17%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
**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
|
Crime (Paperback)
Irvine Welsh
1
|
R240
R207
Discovery Miles 2 070
Save R33 (14%)
|
Ships in 5 - 10 working days
|
Welsh's sizzling new novel, Crime, is a thrilling journey into the
bright glamour of the Sunshine State and
a seething underworld of utter darkness.
Now bereft of both youth and ambition, Detective Inspector Ray
Lennox is recovering from a mental breakdown induced by
occupational stress and cocaine abuse, and a particularly
horrifying child sex murder case back in Edinburgh. On vacation in
Florida, his fiancee Trudi is only interested in planning their
forthcoming wedding, and a bitter argument sees a deranged Lennox
cast adrift in strip-mall Florida. In a seedy bar, Lennox meets two
women, ending up at their apartment for a coke binge, which is
interrupted by two menacing strangers. After the ensuing brawl,
Lennox finds himself alone with Tianna, the terrified ten-year-old
daughter of one of the women, and a sheet of instructions that make
him responsible for her immediate safety.
Lennox takes the girl to an exclusive marina on the Gulf coast, and
quickly suspects that he has stumbled into a hornet's nest: a gang
or organized paedophiles, every bit as threatening as the monster
that haunted him back in Edinburgh. His priority is to protect the
abused girl, but can the edgy Lennox trust his own instincts? And
can he negotiate her inappropriate sexuality as well as his own
mental fragility?
In Crime, Welsh has written a shocking and gripping story about the
corruption and abuse of the human soul and the possibilities of
redemption.
21ST ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IRVINE WELSH He
was Britain's most wanted man. He spent seven years in America's
toughest penitentiary. You'll like him. During the mid 1980s Howard
Marks had forty three aliases, eighty nine phone lines and owned
twenty five companies throughout the world. At the height of his
career he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons of
marijuana, and had contact with organisations as diverse as MI6,
the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia. Following a worldwide operation by
the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was arrested and sentenced to
twenty-five years in prison at the Terre Haute Penitentiary,
Indiana. He was released in April 1995 after serving seven years of
his sentence. Told with humour, charm and candour, Mr Nice is his
own extraordinary story. 'The story of a remarkable life, lived by
the very brilliant and exceptionally wonderful Mr Nice' Irvine
Welsh 'Frequently hilarious, occasionally sad, and often surreal'
GQ 'A man who makes Peter Pan look like a geriatric' Loaded 'A folk
legend' Daily Mail
In Bruce Robertson, Welsh has created one of the most corrupt,
misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction, and has written a
dark, disturbing and very funny novel about sleaze, power, and the
abuse of everything.
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
Dorian is a good-natured young man until he falls in with the
cunning and quick-tongued Lord Henry, who unveils to Dorian the
power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deeper
into a glamorous and decadent world of selfish luxury, he seems to
remain physically unchanged in spite of age and the stresses of his
corrupt lifestyle. But in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his
portrait tells a different story.
Roy Strang is engaged in a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission: to eradicate the evil predator-scavenger bird, the Marabou Stork, before it drives away the peace-loving flamingo from the picturesque Lake Torto. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous immigration to Africa, and his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals. As one world crashes into the other, this potentially charming story of ornithological goodwill mutates into a filthy tale of violence, abuse and redemption.
From the number one bestselling author of Trainspotting Meet Lucy
Brennan - an aggressive personal trainer who has just become a
media hero after taking down a would-be gunman in Miami. The one
witness to the daring rescue is Lena Sorensen - an overweight
depressive who is becoming increasingly obsessed with Lucy...
Irvine Welsh's latest creation captures the two great obsessions of
our time - how we look and where we live - and tells a story so
subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.
With the festive season almost upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is winding down at work and gearing up socially - kicking off Christmas with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are irritating flies in the ointment, though, including a missing wife, a nagging cocaine habit, a dramatic deterioration in his genital health, a string of increasingly demanding extra-marital affairs. The last thing he needs is a messy murder to solve. Still it will mean plenty of overtime, a chance to stitch up some colleagues and finally clinch the promotion he craves. But as Bruce spirals through the lower reaches of degradation and evil, he encounters opposition - in the form of truth and ethical conscience - from the most unexpected quarter of all: his anus. In Bruce Robertson, Welsh has created one of the most corrupt, misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction and has written a dark, disturbing and very funny novel about sleaze, power, and the abuse of everything. At last, a novel that lives up to its name.
|
You may like...
Hampstead
Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson, …
DVD
R66
Discovery Miles 660
Southpaw
Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, …
DVD
R99
R24
Discovery Miles 240
|