The Locust Room

John Burnside

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Vintage

A moving, unforgettable memoir of two lost men: a father and his child. He had his final heart attack in the Silver Band Club in Corby, somewhere between the bar and the cigarette machine. A foundling; a fantasist; a morose, threatening drinker who was quick with his hands, he hadn't seen his son for years. John Burnside's extraordinary story of this failed relationship is a beautifully written evocation of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father's world: men defined by the drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo. A Lie About My Father is about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made and how they fall apart, about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father. Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Lie about My Father

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Vintage Books USA

Glister

The children of Innertown exist in a state of suspended terror. Every year or so, a boy from their school disappears, vanishing into the wasteland of the old chemical plant. Nobody knows where these boys go, or whether they are alive or dead, and without evidence the authorities claim they are simply runaways. The town policeman, Morrison knows otherwise. He was involved in the cover-up of one boy's murder, and he believes all the boys have been killed. Though he is seriously compromised, he would still like to find out the killer's identity. The local children also want to know and, in their fear and frustration, they turn on Rivers, a sad fantasist and suspected paedophile living alone at the edge of the wasteland. Trapped and frightened, one of the boys, Leonard, tries to escape, taking refuge in the poisoned ruins of the old plant; there he finds another boy, who might be the missing Liam and might be a figment of his imagination. With his help, Leonard comes to understand the policeman's involvement, and exacts the necessary revenge - before following Liam into the Glister: possibly a disused chemical weapons facility, possibly a passage to the outer world. A terrifying exploration of loss and the violence that pools under the surface of the everyday, Glister is an exquisitely written, darkly imagined novel by one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

The Dumb House

Contemporary

VINTAGE (RAND)

The Mercy Boys

JONATHAN CAPE.

Page edges tanned, light shelf wear. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

The Asylum Dance

Poetry

London: Jonathan Cape, 2000

Ashland & Vine

ASHLAND & VINE

Literary

In these remarkable stories, John Burnside takes us into the lives of men and women trapped in marriage, ensnared by drink, diminished by disappointment; all kinds of women, all kinds of men - lonely, unfaithful, dying - driving empty roads at night. These are people for whom the idea of 'home' has become increasingly intangible, hard to believe - and happiness, or grace, or freedom, all now seem to belong in some kind of dream, or a fable they might have read in a children's picture book. As he says in one story, 'All a man has is his work and his sense of himself, all the secret life he holds inside that nobody else can know.' But in each of these normal, damaged lives, we are shown something extraordinary: a dogged belief in some kind of hope or beauty that flies in the face of all reason and is, as a result, both transfiguring and heart-rending. John Burnside is unique in contemporary British letters: he is one of our best living poets, but he is also a thrillingly talented writer of fiction. These exquisitely written pieces, each weighted so perfectly, opens up the whole wound of a life in one moment - and each of these twelve short stories carries the freight and density of a great novel. Scottish Book of the Year 2013.

Something Like Happy. by John Burnside

Common knowledge

Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.

<p>In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature. Wallace Stevens was born in Pennsylvania in 1879. "Harmonium", published in 1923, became a landmark in modern American poetry with its startling imagery and meditations on art, reality and imagination. It was followed by "Ideas of Order", "The Man with the Blue Guitar and Other Poems", "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction", "Transport to Summer" and "The Necessary Angel". Stevens died in 1955.</p>

Wallace Stevens (Poet to Poet)

Faber&Faber

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Books by John Burnside