“A Note on Wanting”: enjoy this early preview of Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet, the follow-up to number one bestseller Reasons to Stay Alive. From the audiobook, read by the author.
‘An immense and moving jazz riff… The acutely immersive world of American Histories is irresistible, and these profoundly moving stories will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading.’
Colin Grant
The Guardian
Watch Robert Webb read from his bestselling memoir How Not to be a Boy at the Hay Festival: ‘I thought only wimps needed manners, and only tough guys were brave.’
Robert Webb
The Hay Festival
“Wideman is a writer who excels at dramatising African American sensibilities and this collection typically addresses issues of race, injustice and inequality with power and potency. Crystallised moments of experience carry entire worlds in stories … from the whimsical to the political. This is published alongside Wideman’s earlier novels and is a gem for anyone yet to discover his work.”
Observer
“Laidlaw brought Glasgow to life more viscerally than any book I had read before: the good and the bad, the language and the humour, the violence and the drinking … This book made me realise that pacey, streetwise thrillers didn’t have to be American: we had mean streets enough of our own.”
The Guardian asked great crime writers to pick their favourite crime novels, and Christopher Brookmyre thinks you should be reading William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw.
“An excellent new book is imminent: Fully Coherent Plan for a New and Better Society features 254 new illustrations, all drawn in his distinctive thick black pen on stark white paper, the naivety of the image offset by the scabrous, surreal or darkly comic text.”
David Shrigley interviewed in the Observer.
Observer
Robert Webb on gender conditioning (or, the way you’re told how to behave because of what’s in your pants) – from the number one bestseller How Not To Be a Boy.
Pre-order David Shrigley’s FULLY COHERENT PLAN
and you could win a fine statuette of his Fourth Plinth commission, to remind you forever that things are Really Good.
The Chosen Ones
The message had been carried through the dawn chorus and into the cold pink morning. Effie Truelove was going to die on Friday…
The Chosen Ones is the thrilling second book in the Worldquake sequence, out now!
Meg Jay talks to Robin Ince on Book Shambles about her book Supernormal, adversity and resilience.
If you haven’t yet listened to the Guardian’s new podcast The Start, about artistic beginnings, then you’re missing out. Our own Lemn Sissay was on talking about his poem ‘Invisible Kisses’, the early relationship that inspired it, and how as a child he was separated from his mother and his name. You can listen to the full episode, and the poem itself is included in Gold from the Stone.