It is the Monaco Grand Prix in May 1968. Jack Preston, a mechanic for Team Sutton, is making the final checks on his car as the beau monde mingles with the drivers under the eyes of the world's press and the galleries of spectators. DeeDee, a starlet of great beauty, seems to be walking towards him, or perhaps towards the royal box. Without warning a fireball rips across the starting grid. Preston will always bear the scars as a consequence of his unthinking heroism, his saving th...

Returning home from a visit to a client late one summer's evening, antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow takes a wrong turning and stumbles across the derelict old White House. Compelled by curiosity, he approaches the door, and, standing before the entrance feels the unmistakeable sensation of a small hand creeping into his own, 'as if a child had taken hold of it'. Intrigued by the encounter, he determines to learn more, and discovers that the owner's grandson had drowned tragically many year...

Casper became a national celebrity when newspapers ran the story of the amazing cat that regularly took the No. 3 bus on 11-mile journeys around his home town, Plymouth, in Devon. While his devoted owner, Susan Finden, had wondered where her elusive pet was disappearing to each day, Casper was brightening the lives of countless commuters as they went about their business. Bus drivers, too, were getting well-acquainted with Casper, and notices went up in their depot alerting staff that a ve...

A charming, honest, funny, sad, tender and beautiful literary memoir, from Tim Rogers of You Am I. Think Patti Smith meet Dylan Thomas, by way of Banjo Paterson.'Rogers is a beautiful writer, both literate and lyrical ... Detours makes most rock memoirs look like How to Hypnotise Chooks. A heartbreaking work of staggering honesty.' West Australian'Of all the utterances delivered to me by strangers, my least favourite after "We can no l...

Caspar Jolley is a thrillseeker with a gift for always staying one step ahead. Doctor Evelyn Flowers is a woman of science – and sensuality. Brought together by an off-street speedboat-racing catastrophe, will they be able to overcome a bizarre and confounding injury?Hilarious, inventive and ultimately moving, Ahead of the Game is a brilliant new story from one of Australia's most unique comic voices.

ON THE ROAD: GROWING UP IN EIGHT JOURNEYS - MY EARLY YEARS is a new form of autobiography, in which TOP GEAR presenter Richard Hammond tells the story of his early life through a series of significant driving episodes. He's a child in the back seat of Dad's car on the way to the seaside in Weston-Super-Mare. He's on his first bike, a red one, in Solihull, then on his first motorcycle, a Honda MTX50. He's at the wheel of his first car (and in the back with his first girlfriend). He is drivi...

For thirty years Nick Coleman immersed himself in music, from rock'n'roll to "pro rock," jazz to classical, until one morning as he sat up in bed, his right ear went stone deaf. His left ear—as though to compensate—started to make horrific noises ". . .like the inside of an old fridge hooked up to a half–blown amplifier."The Train in the Night explores the world in which a music critic must cope with a world that has abruptly lost its most important element, sound. But Col...

An electrifying debut novel that becomes a shocking tale about... boredomIn a deeply compelling debut novel, Lee Rourke—a British underground sensation for his story collection Everyday—tells the tale of a man who finds his life so boring it frightens him. So he quits his job to spend some time sitting on a bench beside a quiet canal in a placid London neighborhood, watching the swans in the water and the people in the glass-fronted offices across the way ...

A spellbinding short story collection by one of Austria's most critically acclaimed authors.A man becomes obsessed with observing his neighbours. A large family gathers for Christmas only to wait for the one member who never turns up. An old woman lures a man into her house where he finds dolls resembling himself as a boy. Mesmerizing and haunting stories about loss of identity in the modern world.Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'I love Kafka and here we have a Kafk...

'A.S. Patric is a St Kilda writer and bookseller and his home city of Melbourne features strongly in this collection, especially in the title story. 'The Rattler' is a about a rogue tram driver who wants to be a writer.In these stories, Patric specializes in taking the familiar and making it strange, often through the eyes of a character who is somehow alienated. The stories are not exactly metafictions, nor are they magic realism; but they have qualities of both. The characters ar...

Brian Patten is renowned as an accessible and popular poet. Now his love poems, old and new, are collected together in his single volume.Widely acknowledged as one of Europe’s foremost writers, Brian Patten’s love poems earned him recognition far and wide. Truthful and tender, profoundly aware of the possibility of magic and the miraculous, these poems are beautiful, informed and, even at their darkest moments, filled with courage and hope.Alongside old favourites, this edi...

Unexpurgated recent personal journals and tour diaries documenting the turbulent life and misadventures of Libertines and Babyshambles frontman, Peter Doherty. The book hit headlines upon release in July 2014, not least because of entries about the rock star's famous, often tragic, friends including Peaches Geldof, Amy Winehouse and a certain supermodel.Truthful, provocative and sensitive, 'From Albion to Shangri-La' chronicles six tumultuous years (2008 - 2013) in the life of Pete...