A bold, haunting, and startlingly unique novel about the secrets we leave behind and the places that hold them long after we are gone, a “quintessential novel of Edinburgh at its darkest.” (Irvine Welsh) There are stories tucked away on every floor of 10 Luckenbooth Close 1910, Edinburgh. Jessie MacRae has been sent to a tenement building by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents—a curse that will last for the rest of the century. Over nine decades, 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls. An infamous madam, a spy, a famous Beat poet, a coal miner who fears daylight, a psychic: these are some of the residents whose lives are plagued by the building's troubled history in disparate, sometimes chilling ways. The curse creeps up the nine floors as an enraged spirit world swells to the surface, desperate for the true horror of the building's longest kept secret to be heard. Luckenbooth is a bold, haunting, and dazzlingly unique novel about the stories and secrets we leave behind—and the places that hold them long after we are gone.

Named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists Anais Hendricks, fifteen, is in the back of a police car. She is headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. She can't remember what’s happened, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and Anais is covered in blood. Raised in foster care from birth and moved through twenty-three placements before she even turned seven, Anais has been let down by just about every adult she has ever met. Now a counterculture outlaw, she knows that she can only rely on herself. And yet despite the parade of horrors visited upon her early life, she greets the world with the witty, fierce insight of a survivor. Anais finds a sense of belonging among the residents of the Panopticon—they form intense bonds, and she soon becomes part of an ad-hoc family. Together, they struggle against the adults that keep them confined. But when she looks up at the watchtower that looms over the residents, Anais realizes her fate: She is an anonymous part of an experiment, and she always was. Now it seems that the experiment is closing in. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content

The stunning new novel from the highly-acclaimed author of The Panopticon It's November of 2020, and the world is freezing over. Each day colder than the last. There's snow in Israel, the Thames is overflowing, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to drift just off the coast of Scotland. As ice water melts into the Atlantic, frenzied London residents evacuate by the thousands for warmer temperatures down south. But not Dylan. Grieving and ready to build life anew, he heads north to bury his mother's and grandmother's ashes on the Scottish islands where they once lived. Hundreds of miles away, twelve-year-old Estella and her survivalist mother, Constance, scrape by in the snowy, mountainous Highlands, preparing for a record-breaking winter. Living out of a caravan, they spend their days digging through landfills, searching for anything with restorative and trading value. When Dylan arrives in their caravan park in the middle of the night, life changes course for Estella and Constance. Though the weather worsens, his presence brings a new light to daily life, and when the ultimate disaster finally strikes, they'll all be ready. Written in incandescent, dazzling prose, The Sunlight Pilgrims is a visionary story of courage and resilience in the midst of nature's most violent hour; by turns an homage to the portentous beauty of our natural world, and to just how strong we can be, if the will and the hope is there, to survive its worst. - NPR “Best Books of 2016” – Family Matters, Identity & Culture, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Tales from Around the World

Features an anthology that includes key poets such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Norman MacCaig, Muriel Spark, Janet Paisley, Stewart Conn, Meg Bateman, Liz Lochhead, Iain Crichton Smith and Hugh MacDiarmid.

Without music, the world is just blah. That’s my take on life, anyway. Mum says rock is the only music worth listening to, but I think everyone should find their own beat. When I hear that Principal Keiren plans to cut all of the arts classes at Watterson Primary, there's no way me and my new mate Flynn are gonna let that happen. We're dragging our secret Broadway appreciation society into the spotlight. It's time for Watterson: The Musical!

Arianwyn fluffs her witch's assessment - instead of qualifying, she's declared an apprentice and sent to remote Lull in disgrace. Then her arch-enemy, mean girl Gimma, arrives on holiday determined to make her life a misery. But as a mysterious darkness begins to haunt her spells, Arianwyn realizes there's much more than her pride at stake ...

Yuu wants nothing more than to forget the mistakes of her past. The Gods have other plans. Once a renowned strategist and general, five years ago Yuu made a mistake that cost her everything. Now she is on the run, royal bounty hunters snapping at her heels. But what if there was a way to get back what she lost, a way to bring back a murdered prince? Every century, the gods hold a contest to choose who will rule from the Heavenly Jade Throne. Each god chooses a mortal champion, and the fate of all existence hangs in the balance. On a battlefield full of heroes, warriors, assassins, and thieves can Yuu survive long enough to learn the rules of the game, let alone master it? Pawn's Gambit is a stand alone story set in the award-winning Mortal Techniques universe. It's a wuxia adventure filled with heroes, gods, spirits, and magic.

The Dead Queen of Bohemia is a journey through a life lived on the edge. With a poetic style influenced by Gertrude Stein and William Burroughs, this collection is woven with surrealistic imagery that is both unflinching and dislocating. Fagan's poetry is raw and tough yet beautiful and tender and with themes of loss and recovery, hope and defiance, represents a clarion call from a self-taught poet who started writing at the age of seven and so far has not stopped. The Dead Queen of Bohemia documents the progression of a voice and a life written over the last twenty years. It opens with Jenni's most recent work and includes her previous two collections, both now out of print.

A powerfully poignant tale of one of the most turbulent moments in Scotland's history: the North Berwick Witch Trials. IT'S THE 4TH OF DECEMBER 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh's High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor – Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe. As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace – and the tantalising prospect of escape. Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terrible force of a king's violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day. 'This series has already produced two works of note and distinction. It raises the question – if a country cannot re-tell its history, will it be stuck forever in aspic and condemned to be nothing more than a shortbread tin illustration? Hex and Rizzio are showing the way towards a reckoning, and about time too' – Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

HellSans is set in a fictional UK, where HellSans is a ubiquitous typeface, enforced by the government in all communications and in all public spaces. It is the ultimate control device. The majority of the population experience bliss when they see the typeface, but there’s a minority who are allergic to it. The HellSans Allergic (HSAs) are persecuted, and live on the streets or in a ghetto on the outskirts of the capital city. Jane Ward, CEO of the company that manufactures the Inex (a cyborg doll-like creature that has replaced the smart phone as the essential aid and accessory) has everything: fame and fortune, until she falls ill with the allergy and becomes embroiled in the government’s internal power struggles. She loses her job and her wealth, ending up in the ghetto until she is rescued by Dr Icho Smith. Icho is a scientist who has developed a cure for the allergy, but she is on the run from the government and the Seraphs (the ghetto ‘terrorist’ group), who all have their own agenda for the cure. Jane and Icho work together, aiming to expose government corruption and bring the cure to the HSAs. HellSans is written in three parts. Parts one and two can be read in either order which provides a unique approach to the perspectives of the haves and have-nots in the run-up to the revolutionary conclusion. File Under: Science Fiction [ Dystopian Nightmare | Typography Matters | Artificial Friends | Nevertheless Resist ]