Tim Lott's parents, Jack and Jean, met at the Empire Snooker Hall, Ealing, in 1951, in a world that to him now seems 'as strange as China'. In this extraordinarily moving exploration of his parents' lives, his mother's inexplicable suicide in her late fifties and his own bouts of depression, Tim Lott conjures up the pebble-dashed home of his childhood and the rapidly changing landscape of postwar suburban England. It is a story of grief, loss and dislocation, yet also of the power of memor...

It was the 13th of September, 13 days after my 13th birthday, when I first learned how to be invisible.Strato Nyman couldn’t be more of an odd-one-out. He’s the only black kid in Hedgecombe-upon-Dray, he knows more about particle physics than his teacher, and he’s constantly picked on by school bully Lloyd Archibald Turnbull. It’s only at home that he blends in to the background – his parents are too busy arguing to notice he exists. But one day, Strato picks up a ...

Award-winning author Tim Lott's inspirational tale of a girl who risks everything in pursuit of justice.The smartly painted exterior of the City Community Faith School hides a disturbing secret. Behind its walls, one thousand girls are forced to labour in the city's laundry, separated from their families and deprived of their freedom. One of these girls is Little Fearless, a courageous spirit who never gives up hope that one day they will be rescued. Unafraid of th...

Yes! No! But Wait…! is the most straightforward book on writing a novel ever published.It is also the most practical, honest and useful.Tim Lott admits he can't teach someone how to write a novel (that's one of the myths propagated by the novel-writing industry).But he can help anyone construct a solid platform on which they can stand to discover whether they have the talent, will and imagination required of any novelist.A distillation of a lifetime...

The brilliant new novel from the author of The Last Summer of the Water Strider‘A sharp and very funny portrait of a brash era which is also a surprisingly tender take on flawed masculinity.’ Sarah Hughes, i paper**‘What a terrific novel - wickedly sharp, wildly entertaining - I was gripped from start to finish. With its twisty plots and interwoven characters it paints a vivid portrait of a crucial decade. It's laugh-out-loud funn...

A brilliantly observed story of crises and reconciliations within families and stepfamilies and the conflict between Millennials and their Baby Boomer parents. Funny, dark, yet limned with hope, Tim Lott returns to a family saga – and social commentary – that began with the award-winning White City Blue, continuing with When We Were Rich. It is a story for everyone trying to make sense of a sharply polarised world where the political has ...

Winner of the 1999 Whitbread First Novel Award‘Beautiful and brilliant’ Tony ParsonsEstate agent Frankie Blue is known on his home turf – White City, Shepherd’s Bush – as ‘Frank the Fib’. He’s a liar – but one who always tries to tell the truth. Frankie has been friends with Diamond Tony, a hairdresser, Colin, a computer nerd, and Nodge, a cabbie, since schooldays.Now they are thirty and trying to live the same life as they did then...

Summer 2008. Forty-year-old Salinger Nash leaves the London house he shares with his girlfriend, Tiane, for his brother's home in New Orleans. Carson Nash has persuaded Salinger that they should find their missing father, Henry - last known location New Mexico. But it is with a sense of foreboding that Salinger sets off with his brother… Tender, funny, unflinching, this is a road trip story in the great American literary tradition.

Strato Nyman couldn’t be more of an odd-one-out. He’s the only black kid in Hedgecombe-upon-Dray, he knows more about particle physics than his teacher, and he’s constantly picked on by the school bully. One day, Strato picks up a dusty book in a mysterious bookshop and learns how to become invisible. He discovers that people aren’t always what they seem…and realizes standing out isn’t so bad after all.

THE BESTSELLER THAT DEFINED AN AGEFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'Under the infl...

A new novel from Zadie Smith, set in Northwest LondonSomewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up here, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes—whatever that means. Living only stree...

From the bestselling author of The Fault in our Stars and Looking for Alaska, now a major TV seriesQuentin Jacobsen has always loved Margo Roth Spiegelman, for Margo (and her adventures) are the stuff of legend at their high school. So when she one day climbs through his window and summons him on an all-night road trip of revenge he cannot help but follow.But the next day Margo doesn't come to school and a week later she is still missing. ...