Nicholas Royle’s love of second-hand books and the ‘inclusions’ he finds inside them, their presence betrayed by ‘shadow lines’, is about making connections. Someone has scribbled a number in a book? He’ll text or call. An old address? He’ll return the book to where it used to live. Follow him as he walks between bookshops, reading as he goes, on the hunt for treasure, for ways to make us feel closer – to the books on our shelves, to each other and to our own lives.

Share in Royle’s enthusiasm for the Rev W Awdry’s Railway Series, Penguin Modern Stories and Paul Auster’s cult classic, The New York Trilogy, as well as books in art and film.

The brilliant follow-up to the instant classic, White Spines.

Praise for White Spines

‘A fiercely intelligent memoir of an obsession by one of our leading prose stylists, but also a loving and enormously warm-hearted record of a life lived in books. I adored White Spines and will treasure my copy  every bit as much as Royle treasures his beloved Picadors.‘ –Alex Preston

If you love books, bookshops and browsing, this is your perfect all-year gift – head to your happy place with a copy Shadow Lines today! (Note: ‘inclusions’ not supplied.)

‘The tales collected in The Pre-War House? pick at psychological scabs in a register both wistful and brutal.’ –Anthony Cummins, The Times Literary Supplement

‘Moore’s writing is surprising and exact and culminates in the title story, the novella which brings the collection to a powerful crescendo’ –The Arkansas International

‘just as uncompromising and unsettling as The Lighthouse? Moore’s distinctive voice commands exceptional power’ –Dinah Birch, The Guardian

Eastmouth and Other Stories is her second collection, featuring stories published in the subsequent decade, including stories that have appeared in Best British Short Stories, Best British Horror and Best New Horror, as well as new, unpublished work.

A mix of memoir and narrative non-fiction, White Spines is a book about Nicholas Royle’s passion for Picador’s fiction and non-fiction publishing from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s. It explores the bookshops and charity shops, the books themselves, and the way a unique collection grew and became a literary obsession. Above all a love song to books, writers and writing.

Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or, more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume.

Featuring: Richard Lawrence Bennett, Luke Brown, David Constantine, Tim Etchells, Nicola Freeman, Amanthi Harris, Andrew Hook, Sonia Hope, Hanif Kureishi, Helen Mort, Jeff Noon, Irenosen Okojie, KJ Orr, Bridget Penney, Diana Powell, David Rose, Sarah Schofield, Adrian Slatcher, NJ Stallard, Robert Stone, Stephen Thompson and Zakia Uddin.

Following a family tragedy, Jessie Noon moved from the Fens to the Midlands and now lives in the Scottish Borders with a cat, a dog and – she is convinced – a ghost in the spare room. Her husband walked out almost a year ago, leaving a note written in steam on the bathroom mirror, and Jessie hasn’t seen her son for years. When Jessie meets Robert, a local outreach worker, they are drawn to one another and begin a relationship; meanwhile, Jessie has begun receiving messages telling her I’m on my way home.

As a translator, Jessie worries over what seems like the terrible responsibility of choosing the right words. It isn’t exactly a matter of life and death, said her husband, but Jessie knows otherwise. This is a novel about communication and miscommunication and lives hanging in the balance (a child going missing, a boy in a coma, an unborn baby), occupying the fine line between life and death, between existing and not existing.

The Pre-War House and Other Stories is the debut collection from Alison Moore, whose first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Specsavers National Book Awards 2012.

The stories collected here range from her first prize-winning short story (which appeared in a small journal in 2000) to new and recently published work. In between, Moore’s stories have been shortlisted for more than a dozen different awards including the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Lightship Flash Fiction Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize and the Nottingham Short Story Competition. The title story won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes.