Canongate Night Boat to Tangier Barry Kevin

This award-winning story collection summons all the laughter, darkness and intensity of contemporary Irish life. A pair of fast girls court trouble as they cool their heels on a slow night in a small town. Lonesome hillwalkers take to the high reaches in pursuit of a saving embrace. A bewildered man steps off a country bus in search of his identity - and a stiff drink • These stories, filled with a grand sense of life’s absurdity, form a remarkably surefooted collection that reads like a modern-day Dubliners

In this dazzling collection, Nam Le takes us across the globe as he enters the hearts and minds of characters from all over the world. Whether it’s the story of fourteen-year-old Juan, a hit man in Colombia; an ageing painter in New York mourning the death of his much-younger lover; or a young refugee fleeing Vietnam, crammed in the ship’s hold with two hundred others, the result is unexpectedly moving and powerful • This is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human

In The Keys to Kindness Claudia Hammond takes us on an eye-opening tour of kindness: what constitutes kindness (it’s not what you think), effective strategies to build more of it into our lives and the benefits of being kind. She draws on the latest research from psychology and neuroscience, and her work in collaboration with the University of Sussex and the BBC, including the largest global survey ever undertaken into attitudes to kindness. The book is structured around the seven keys of kindness, including • There is more kindness in the world that you might think • Being kind makes you feel good and that’s OK • Kind people can be winners • Remember to be kind to yourself • You are kinder than you think, but we could all be kinder still – with enormous benefits for our personal mental health and wellbeing

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 alcoholism, and strips away the tangle of mythology to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert

Robert Webb tried to follow the rules for being a man • Don’t cry • Drink beer • Play rough • Don’t talk about feelings • Looking back over his life he asks whether these rules are actually any use. To anyone

“John is so many miles from love now and home. This is the story of his strangest trip.” • A novel of family, ghosts, love, music and the quest for truth, Beatlebone recounts a wild journey through the west of Ireland in 1978. At its helm is John, a maddened genius fleeing fame and seeking peace. With his deadpan Irish driver, Cornelius, at his side, John is hellbent on reaching the Island of Dorinish, an assignment he arranged ten years before • Lyrical, freewheeling, quixotic and fun, Beatlebone is a sad and beautiful comedy

The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are still some posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the Northside Rises and the eerie bogs of Big Nothin' that the city really lives • For years, Bohane has been in the cool grip of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. But now they say his old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and there's trouble in the air

Night Train to Lisbon tells the story of mild-mannered, middle-aged Classics scholar Raimund Gregorius. When, one afternoon, he walks out of his class while in the middle of giving a lesson, his uncharacteristic impulsiveness surprises him as much as his students. This break from his usually predictable routine is driven by two chance encounters that morning on his way to work - the first with a mysterious Portuguese woman, and the second with a book discovered in a forgotten corner of an old bookshop, the journal of an enigmatic Portuguese aristocrat. With the book as his talisman, Mundus finds himself boarding the night train to Lisbon on a journey to find out more about its author, Amadeu del Prado - who was this man whose words both haunt and compel him, seeming somehow clairvoyant?His investigations lead him all over the city, and bring him into contact with those who were entangled in Prado's life

Japanese fairy tales - enchanting, enigmatic stories of animals, human beings and the great natural world • Dark and innocent, sublime and whimsical, Miyazawa's stories have the ageless feel of the best fairy tales. There are animal allegories such as 'The Ungrateful Rat' where a rude rodent insults all the objects he meets - until he meets the Rat Trap/ There are morality tales such as 'The Restaurant of Many Orders', where two hunters become the hunted. There are also transcendent stories of childhood and mortality like Miyazawa's best-known 'Night Train to the Stars', where a magical steam train carries children through the night and up to the heavens • These stories reveal the unique brilliance of one of Japan's most beloved early twentieth-century writers

A kiss that just won't happen. A disco at the end of the world. A teenage goth on a terror mission. And OAP kiddie-snatchers, and scouse real-ale enthusiasts, and occult weirdness in the backwoods • Dark Lies the Island is a collection of unpredictable stories about love and cruelty, crimes, desperation, and hope from the man Irvine Welsh has described as 'the most arresting and original writer to emerge from these islands in years'. Every page is shot through with the riotous humour, sympathy and blistering language that mark Kevin Barry as a pure entertainer and a unique teller of tales

The comic autobiography of 2014 • A comedian's autobiography? • I wonder if he's ever used humour to deflect from his insecurities? • To avoid being bullied? • Is there heartache behind the humour? • I wonder if he's a manic-depressive? • Tears of a clown? • Yes, all of that • Discover the hilarious life-story of one of Britain's best-loved comedians in Kevin Bridges' brilliant memoir • 'First of all, I have never written a book before, you probably haven't either, so there we have it; a connection is established between reader and writer . . .' • Aged just 17, Kevin Bridges walked on stage for the first time in a Glasgow comedy club and brought the house down. He only had a five-minute set but in that short time he discovered that he really could earn a living from making people laugh

The Solar System – so what is it? • We've all learned the basics at school but how much can you remember? Expert astronomers and co-presenters of The Sky at Night Chris North and Paul Abel take a fascinating guided tour of our Solar System and explain its wonders • They look at all the major players, including our more familiar neighbours – the Sun, the planets and their moons – the occasional visitors to our planet – asteroids, meteors and comets – as well as distant stars and what might be beyond our Solar System – Earth Mark II? • Chris and Paul recount the history of how everything came about and the myths that once shaped astronomy. They explain the latest science and discoveries, and reveal how any amateur astronomer can view and interpret the Solar System