Treacle Walker

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize An extraordinary, “playful, moving, and wholly remarkable” (The Guardian) coming-of-age novel filled with myth and magic from one of England's greatest living writers. An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock is trying to make sense of the world. Living alone in an old house, he spends his time reading comic books, collecting birds’ eggs, and playing with marbles. When one day a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears on a horse and cart, offering a cure-all medicine, a mysterious friendship develops and the young boy is introduced to a world beyond his wildest imagination. Luminous, evocative, and sparely told, Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth, folklore, and the stories we tell ourselves.

A captivating novel by the author of the 2022 Booker Prize-longlisted Treacle Walker Based on a true story, Strandloper tells the extraordinary tale of a nineteenth-century Englishman, William Buckley, who was convicted and transported to Australia. Refusing to accept his fate he escaped and lived among the Aborigines for thirty years. In this visionary novel, Alan Garner is as true to William the Cheshire bricklayer and William the Aboriginal spiritual leader, as William is true to his fate. The result is extraordinary. 'A remarkable feat of literary imagination' Sunday Times

From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Treacle Walker and the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize-winning classic, The Owl Service The definitive collection of traditional British folk tales, selected and retold by the renowned Alan Garner.

Described by Philip Pullman as 'the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkein', Alan Garner has been enrapturing readers with works like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Owl Service, Red Shift and The Stone Book Quartet for more than half a century. Now, a group of the writers and artists he has inspired over the years have come together to celebrate his life and work in First Light. This anthology includes original contributions from David Almond, Margaret Atwood, John Burnside, Susan Cooper, Helen Dunmore, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Garner, Paul Kingsnorth, Katherine Langrish, Helen Macdonald, Robert Macfarlane, Gregory Maguire, Neel Mukherjee, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith, Elizabeth Wein, Michael Wood and many, many more. Whether a literary essay, a personal response to Garner's writing or a story about the man himself, each piece is a tribute to his remarkable impact. Edited by the acclaimed journalist and novelist Erica Wagner, First Light will touch the heart of anyone who grew up reading Alan Garner.

This concluding volume of the 'Weirdstone trilogy' features Professor Colin Whisterfield who spends his days at Jodrell Bank, using the radio telescope to look for his lost sister in the Pleiades. At the same time, and in another time, the Watcher cuts the rock and dances, to keep the sky above the earth and the stars flying.

A young girl and her brother are catapulted into a battle between good and evil for possession of a magical stone of great power that is contained in her bracelet.

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR From one of our greatest living writers, comes a remarkable memoir of a forgotten England. 'The war went. We sang in the playground, "Bikini lagoon, an atom bomb's boom, and two big explosions." David's father came back from Burma and didn't eat rice. Twiggy taught by reciting "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and the thirteen times table. Twiggy was fat and short and he shouted, and his neck was as wide as his head. He was a bully, though he didn't take any notice of me.' In Where Shall We Run To?, Alan Garner remembers his early childhood in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge: life at the village school as 'a sissy and a mardy-arse'; pushing his friend Harold into a clump of nettles to test the truth of dock leaves; his father joining the army to guard the family against Hitler; the coming of the Yanks, with their comics and sweets and chewing gum. From one of our greatest living writers, it is a remarkable and evocative memoir of a vanished England.

SEX, DRUGS, AND MURDER IN THE LAND OF THE LOTUS EATERS Anita Carbone was a good girl--and it bored her. That's why she took the long subway ride down to Greenwich Village, home of the Beats and the stoners, home to every kind of misfit and dropout and free spirit you could imagine. It was where she met Joe Milani, the troubled young war veteran with the gentle touch. But it was also where she met his drug-dealing roommate--a man whose unnatural appetites led to murder...