An author's walk "from source to sea along the Ouse in Sussex is a meandering, meditative delight" drawing on history, literature, and the river itself ( The Guardian, UK).In To The River, author Olivia Laing embarks on a weeklong, midsummer odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex, England, from its source near Haywards Heath to the sea, where it empties into the Channel at Newhaven. More than sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned he...

Queer love story meets true crime thriller in the dream factory of 1970s cinema, from the award-winning, bestselling author. Perfect for readers of André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley.SHORTLISTED FOR BLACKWELL’S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025A NEW YORK MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025RUNNER-UP FOR THE TADEUSZ BRADECKI PRIZE 2026‘Sublime’ The New York Times...

Tony Peake enjoyed unprecedented access to the visionary artist's archives in order to bring the extraordinary life of Derek Jarman to the page.This authorised and unique biography covers Jarman's story from the bleakness of post-war Britain and his RAF childhood, to student life at The Slade and his work as a designer, painter and filmmaker. It tells how energetic home filmmaking with dazzling friends led to distinctive feature films including Sebastiane, The...

**The Garden Against Time is the No.1 Sunday Times bestseller from acclaimed writer Olivia Laing; a passionate, epic exploration of the power and possibilities of gardens.'What a wonderful book this is' – Nigel Slater‘A book for thinking gardeners everywhere’ – Mary Keen**When Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants, the work drew them into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long a...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZEChosen as 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' by Observer, Guardian, Telegraph, Irish Times, New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement, HeraldWhen Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increas...

Read this meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness, which is also a powerful account of his life as an HIV positive man in the 1980s.In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness.Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray others flourished, ...

A dark yet compassionate comedy of art aspirations and friendships come to naught.First published in 2003, Gary Indiana’s turn-of-the-millennium novel traces the lives of a loosely connected group of New York artists and the dissolution of their scene.During the summer of 2001, the narrator of Do Everything in the Dark, a gallery curator, receives intermittent dispatches from his far-flung friends—many of whom resemble well-known figures in the art and inte...

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black is the only story collection from the legendary writer, actress, ex-biker and columnist Cookie Mueller, published in the UK for the first time.Mueller chronicles her high-risk, high-reward life in glorious technicolour, from becoming a part of John Waters’ legendary acting troupe to becoming a mother, from describing the hedonism of 1980s New York to critiquing the government’s dire response to the AIDS epidemic. Cookie’s...

The first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished.Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stoppe...

‘I couldn’t put it down’ – Sally Rooney‘Crudo is a hot, hot book’ – The Observer‘So fresh and clever and funny’ - Tessa HadleyKathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart.Kathy spends the first summer of her forties trying to adjust to making a lifelong commitment – marriage. But it’s not only Kathy who is changing. Political, social and natural landscapes ...

From the author's violent childhood in suburbia to eventual homelessness on the streets and piers of New York City, to recognition as one of the most provocative artists of his generation - Close to the Knives is his powerful and iconoclastic memoir. Street life, drugs, art and nature, family, AIDS, politics, friendship and acceptance: Wojnarowicz challenges us to examine our lives - politically, socially, emotionally, and aesthetically.

Why were so many authors of the greatest works of literature consumed by alcoholism? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing takes a journey across America, examining the links between creativity and drink in the overlapping work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver.From Hemingway's Key West to Williams's New Orleans, Laing pieces together a topographical map of alcoho...