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The Gobbler
By Adrian Edmondson. 1995
Julian Mann, the hard drinking, preening, and sexually provocative star of the TV sitcome Richard the Nerd, feels caught on…
the horns of a dilemma: should he be concentrating on his career, which is on the slide after an unseemly bout of fisticuffs at the BAFTA awards; or following his baser instincts and bedding every young girl in sight?His twin dreams of comic immortality and a penthouse flat full of booze and young models seem to be frustrated by his wife and children; by Tom, his wife's best friend from university days, a pretentious 'National Theatre Player' who appears to be competing with Julian on the small sreen and in the bedroom; by the tax man, who's chasing him for sixty thousand pounds; and by Lillith, a psychotic fan, and member of a strange Herculean cult whose eight-year cycle of death and regeneration might augur Julian's imminent nemesis...Small Pleasures: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
By Clare Chambers. 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021'A WORD-OF-MOUTH HIT' Evening Standard 'A very fine book... It's witty and sharp…
and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche'David Nicholls'Perfect'India Knight 'Beautiful' Jessie Burton'Wonderful'Richard Osman 'Miraculous'Tracy Chevalier 'A wonderful novel. I loved it'Nina Stibbe 'Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind' Lissa Evans 'This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I honestly don't want you to be without it'Lucy Mangan'Gorgeous... If you're looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more' Pandora Sykes'Remarkable... Small Pleasures is no small pleasure'The Times'An irresistible novel - wry, perceptive and quietly devastating'Mail on Sunday'Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' Guardian'An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish' The Sunday Times 1957, the suburbs of South East London. Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness. But there will, inevitably, be a price to pay.Book of the Year for: The Times, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Daily Express, Metro, Spectator, Red Magazine and Good HousekeepingFrançoise Faucher: biographie
By Anne-Marie Villeneuve. 2000
Gilles Renaud: entretiens
By Jean Faucher. 2006
"Gilles Renaud a pratiquement tout fait au théâtre : régisseur, administrateur, metteur en scène, directeur de la section Interprétation française…
à l'École nationale de théâtre (1987-1992), enseignant et comédien. De Cherry Sundae au Père Didace, en passant par Monsieur Bovary, sur les planches ou devant les caméras, il est l'un des plus grands et des plus prolifiques acteurs de notre scène culturelle. Menés par Jean Faucher, préfacés par Michel Tremblay, ces entretiens nous révèlent un Gilles Renaud passionné par son métier et profondément humain. Ses croyances, ses amours, sa famille, ses expériences de tournages, ses déceptions et ses coups de coeur pour certaines oeuvres auxquelles il a travaillé nous sont ici révélés." -- 4e de couvEntre les murs (Folio Ser. #Vol. 4523)
By François Bégaudeau. 2008
« [...] Entre les murs s'inspire de l'ordinaire tragi-comique d'un professeur de français. Dans ce roman écrit au plus près…
du réel, François Bégaudeau révèle et investit l'état brut d'une langue vivante, la nôtre, dont le collège est la plus fidèle chambre d'échos. » -- 4e de couvThe Last Weynfeldt
By Steph Morris, Martin Suter. 2016
Adrian Weynfeldt is an art expert in an international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand…
Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings and antiques. Always correct and well-mannered, he's given up on love until one night-entirely out of character for him-Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccountable young woman. The next morning, he finds her outside on his balcony threatening to jump. Weynfeldt talks her down and soon finds himself falling for this damaged but alluring beauty and his buttoned up existence comes unraveled. As their two lives become entangled, Weynfeldt gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens to destroy everything he and his prominent family have stood for. This refined page-turner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart. Martin Suter, born in Zurich in 1948, is a novelist and screenwriter. He has written a dozen novels, many of them bestsellers in Europe and translated into thirty-two languages. Suter lives with his family in Zurich.Demons in the Spring: Stories
By Joe Meno. 2010
Demons in the Spring is a collection of twenty short stories by Joe Meno, author of the smash hits The…
Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned, with illustrations by twenty artists from the fine art, graphic art, and comic book worlds--Todd Baxter, Kelsey Brookes, Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Nick Butcher, Steph Davidson, Evan Hecox, Kim Hiorthoy, Paul Hornschemeier, Cody Hudson, Caroline Hwang, kozyndan, Geoff McFetridge, Anders Nilsen, Laura Owens, Archer Prewitt, Jon Resh, Jay Ryan, Souther Salazar, Rachell Sumpter, and Chris Uphues.Oddly modern moments which occur in the most familiar of public places, from offices to airports to schools to zoos to emergency rooms: a young girl who refuses to go anywhere unless she's dressed as a ghost; a bank robbery in Stockholm gone terribly wrong; a teacher who's become enamored with the students in his school's Model United Nations club; a couple affected by a strange malady-a miniature city which has begun to develop in the young woman's chest, these inventive stories are hilarious, heartbreaking, and unusual.Joe Meno is the best-selling author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned, The Boy Detective Fails, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Tender As Hellfire. He was the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.*A portion of the author's proceeds from the book will go directly to benefit 826 CHICAGO, a nonprofit tutoring center, part of the national organization of tutoring centers with branches in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle.*The Age of Dreaming: A Novel
By Nina Revoyr. 2008
"The Age of Dreaming is a masterpiece of the sort that doesn't just seduce the reader-it leaves you transformed. Nina…
Revoyr deserves to be counted among the top ranks of novelists at work today."-Jerry Stahl, author of I, Fatty"This is a riveting, wise, and gorgeous novel."-Mary Yukari Waters"Brilliant and original. . . . The carefully restrained voice of its narrator recalls Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day."-Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize winnerJun Nakayama was a silent film star in the early days of Hollywood, but by 1964, he is living in complete obscurity-until a young writer, Nick Bellinger, reveals that he has written a screenplay with Nakayama in mind. Jun is intrigued by the possibility of returning to movies, but he begins to worry that someone might delve too deeply into the past and uncover the events that led to the abrupt end of his career in 1922. These events include the changing racial tides in California and the unsolved murder of his favorite director, Ashley Bennett Tyler.The Age of Dreaming is part historical novel, part mystery, and part unrequited love story.Nina Revoyr was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Polish-American father, and grew up in Japan, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of two previous novels, The Necessary Hunger and Southland, which was a Book Sense 76 pick, winner of the Ferro-Grumley and Lambda Literary awards, a finalist for an Edgar Award, and one of the Los Angeles Times' "Best Books of 2003." She lives and works in Los Angeles.The Counselor: A Screenplay (Vintage International)
By Cormac Mccarthy. 2013
On the eve of becoming a married man, the Counselor makes a risky entrée into the drug trade--and gambles that…
the consequences won't catch up to him. Along the gritty terrain of the Texas-Mexico border, a respected and recently engaged lawyer throws his stakes into a cocaine trade worth millions. His hope is that it will be a one-time deal and that, afterward, he can settle into life with his beloved fiancée. But instead, the Counselor finds himself mired in a brutal and dangerous game--one that threatens to destroy everything and everyone he loves. Deft, shocking, and unforgettable, McCarthy is at his finest in this gripping tale about risk, consequence, and the treacherous balance between the two.Last Flag Flying: A Novel
By Darryl Ponicsán. 2017
Now a major movie starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne, directed by Richard Linklater!Darryl Ponicsan's debut novel The…
Last Detail was named one of the best of the year and widely acclaimed, catapulting him to fame when it was first published. The story of two career sailors assigned to escort a young seaman from Norfolk to the naval prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—and of the mayhem that ensues—was made into an award-winning movie starring Jack Nicholson. Last Flag Flying, set thirty-four years after the events of The Last Detail, brings together the same beloved characters—Billy Bad-Ass Buddusky, Mule Mulhall, and Meadows—to reprise the same journey but under very different circumstances. Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out his former captors in their civilian lives to help him bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have told him a lie about the circumstances of his son's death, he decides, with the help of the two others, to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so begins the journey, centered around a solemn mission but, as in the first book, a protest against injustice and celebration of life too, at once irreverent, funny, profane, and deeply moving.Last Flag Flying is now a major movie from Amazon Studios, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, and Laurence Fishburne.My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women
By Lucy Hannah. 2022
"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think,…
those dreams we are not allowed to dream"A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet. A petition writer reflects on his life as a dog lies nursing her puppies. A tormented girl tries to find love through a horrific act. A headmaster makes his way to work, treading the fine line between life and death."A precious collection of work, the first and maybe the last of its kind. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is a huge accomplishment" MONIQUE ROFFEY, author of The Mermaid of Black ConchMy Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is a landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women. Eighteen writers tell stories that are both unique and universal - stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity and cultural traditions."This book reminds us that everyone has a story. Stories matter; so too the storytellers. Afghan women writers, informed and inspired by their own personal experiences, are best placed to bring us these powerful insights into the lives of Afghans and, most of all, the lives of women. Women's lives, in their own words - they matter." Lyse Doucet in her IntroductionThis collection introduces extraordinary voices from the country's two main linguistic groups (Pashto and Dari) with original, vital and unexpected stories to tell, developed over two years through UNTOLD's Write Afghanistan project. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird comes at a pivotal moment in Afghanistan's history, when these voices must be heard."Men always want to speak on behalf of Afghan women, but now it is time for Afghan women to speak for themselves. Without fear, we want to share our stories with the world."With an Introduction by BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet and an Afterword by Lucy HannahABOUT UNTOLD UNTOLD is a writer development programme for marginalised writers in areas of conflict and post-conflict. Afghanistan has millions of Pashto and Dari speakers with little or no local support for creative writing, literary translation, or literary editing. Support for writers has been hampered by cultural norms, free expression issues, chronic instability, and internal displacement. UNTOLD has been working one-to-one with women on their short stories, with English-speaking literary editors and translators working with the writers to realise the potential of their stories for publication both locally and globally in translation.(P)2022 Quercus Editions LimitedGrafity's Wall Expanded Edition
By Ram V. 2020
When an aspiring street artist "Grafity" sees the illegal tenements outside his home destroyed, he finds in the debris, a…
lone, standing wall--one that'll go on to become a summer-long canvas for the lives of four friends getting by and growing up in the constantly changing and challenging environment that is the city of Mumbai.As Grafity's mural on the wall grows, it chronicles the lives of his friends--Jay, a young man with dreams of being a rapper lured into the dangerous path of a gangster. Chasma, a bright but awkward boy who chronicles his struggles as an outsider trying to belong in this city, by writing letters to strangers, to the city itself. And Saira, who comes to Mumbai with Bollywood dreams but must first survive the reality in this place of gangsters, con-men, friends and lovers.As the long Mumbai summer comes to a close, hearts are broken and leaps of faith, taken. This coming-of-age tale set in Mumbai's loving, unforgiving and chaotic embrace, is a unique exploration of that entirely universal experience--the falling, soaring, the grave permanence and fleeting transience of our adolescent years. From rising comic book stars Anand R. K. and Ram V (Paradiso, These Savage Shores, Batman Secret Files).Listed as the #3 best graphic novel of 2018 by Paste Magazine, enjoy this expanded edition featuring extra content!Hotel Theory
By Wayne Koestenbaum. 2007
Hotel Theory is two books in one: a meditation on the meaning of hotels, and a dime novel (Hotel Women)…
featuring Lana Turner and Liberace. Typical of Wayne Koestenbaum’s invigoratingly inventive style, the two books one fiction, one nonfiction run concurrently, in twin columns, and the articles a,” an,” and the” never appear. The nonfiction ruminations on hotels are divided into eight dossiers, composed of short takes on the presence of hotels in the author’s dreams as well as in literature, film, and history. Guest stars include everyone from Oscar Wilde to Marilyn Monroe. Hotel Theory gives (divided) voice to an aesthetic of hyperaesthesia, of yearning. It is an oblique manifesto, the place where writing disappears. A new mode of theorizing in fiction, in fragment, through quotation and palimpsest arises in this dazzling work.The Homecoming
By Ray Bradbury. 2006
Illustrated classics for adults! Here, Collins Design's WISP series pairs two legendary creators–writer Ray Bradbury and artist Dave McKean–to create…
an irresistible package perfect for Halloween and all year 'round.The WISP series (Wonderfully Illustrated Short Pieces) represents an ingenious marriage of two creative forces: the artistry of today's foremost illustrators and the literary legacy of beloved authors of popular short works for adults. The resulting offspring of this union are captivating, full–color illustrated editions of timeless classics that readers will want to savor and collect.For the first time ever, the series makes selected popular short works previously offered only in collections available in a unique, stand–alone format. Also for the first time, WISPs harness the talents of top illustrators for the benefit and delight of a new, older audience.This WISP presents Ray Bradbury's The Homecoming, a little boy's tale of his family reunion of vampires. This story was initially published in 1946 and later refashioned into further stories. Bringing this story to life are the wondrous illustrations of Dave McKean, whose delightful artwork perfectly matches the tale.These one–of–a–kind, attractively priced and invitingly formatted illustrated editions will make a great impulse buy and appeal to a broad audience.All Souls' Day
By Cees Nooteboom. 1998
"An outstanding addition to an impressive oeuvre" Times Literary SupplementArthur Daane, a documentary film-maker and inveterate globetrotter, wanders the streets…
of Berlin, a city whose recent past provides the perfect backdrop for his reflections on life and the universe as he collects images for his latest project - a film that will show the world through his eyes.With his circle of friends - a philosopher, a sculptor and a physicist - Daane discusses everything from history to metaphysics and the meaning of our contemporary existence, often over a hearty meal. Then, one cold winter's day, Daane meets the history student Elik Oranje and his world is turned upside down. And when she unexpectedly leaves the city for Spain, Daane is compelled to follow.All Souls' Day is an elegiac love story, a poignant and affecting tale in which the city of Berlin plays a prominent role, by one of Europe's major contemporary writers.Translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty"Displays with admirable lucidity the workings of a humane, civilized, and consistently interesting mind" Kirkus Reviews"One of the most remarkable writers of our time" ALBERTO MANGUELAll Souls' Day
By Cees Nooteboom. 1998
"An outstanding addition to an impressive oeuvre" Times Literary SupplementArthur Daane, a documentary film-maker and inveterate globetrotter, wanders the streets…
of Berlin, a city whose recent past provides the perfect backdrop for his reflections on life and the universe as he collects images for his latest project - a film that will show the world through his eyes.With his circle of friends - a philosopher, a sculptor and a physicist - Daane discusses everything from history to metaphysics and the meaning of our contemporary existence, often over a hearty meal. Then, one cold winter's day, Daane meets the history student Elik Oranje and his world is turned upside down. And when she unexpectedly leaves the city for Spain, Daane is compelled to follow.All Souls' Day is an elegiac love story, a poignant and affecting tale in which the city of Berlin plays a prominent role, by one of Europe's major contemporary writers.Translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty"Displays with admirable lucidity the workings of a humane, civilized, and consistently interesting mind" Kirkus Reviews"One of the most remarkable writers of our time" ALBERTO MANGUELLove Maps: A Novel
By Eliza Factor. 2015
"Who can plot the turns and reversals of the heart? Who can follow its illogical loyalties and mysterious obsessions? Who…
can reconcile its competing claims from lovers and family? Eliza Factor, that's who, in this stunningly assured novel about a pair of sisters--one a successful artist, the other a famous singer--and the handsome architect who comes between them. The cover should come with a warning to put your life on hold for a few days, because once you pick it up, you won't be able to do anything else until you finish."--Bliss Broyard, author of One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets"Eliza Factor's second novel is a beautiful and uplifting journey through the New York art scene of the 1980s, as lived by one true artist. You'll be hard-pressed to find a character more fully and honestly revealed across the pages of a book than Sarah Marker. A stunning and original exploration of family, romantic love, and the possibility of healing."--Joseph Weisberg, creator/executive producer of The Americans (FX Network)"By turns lyrical and flinty, searching and suspenseful, Love Maps is animated by the strivings and travails of characters who seek (and find) the real and the true, the territory instead of the map."--Thad Ziolkowski, author of Wichita"Eliza Factor's Love Maps is a delight, and I read it with mounting pleasure and admiration. It feels strange to think of Love Maps as a pleasure--this is, after all, a book that captures in technicolor detail the pain and vulnerability that come with just about every variety of human relationship. But prose this witty and psychologically deft, and structures this intricate and heartbreaking, don't come around often."--Ben Dolnick, author of At the Bottom of Everything"The tone and tension in Love Maps is expertly drawn. Between sisters and lovers, artists and architects, mothers and sons, and--of all things--people and ashes, Eliza Factor has managed to tell the truest kind of story: about the inconvenience of love, and the choices people make when they're most afraid."--Amanda Stern, author of The Long HaulThe love in Love Maps is not the kind associated with domestic bliss; it is the kind that bubbles up at inopportune moments, attaching itself to people who might be better off free, causing mayhem and longing, along with moments of rare beauty. The title is taken from a series of paintings by Sarah Marker, an artist who ekes out a living teaching humanities at a fancy high school in Connecticut.The story begins when Sarah receives a letter from Philip, her erstwhile husband. They have lived separately for seven years, without having seen each other once, without having formally severed ties, in a state of sustained ambivalence. Now he wants to visit. As much as Sarah would like to see him, she is terrified at what he will do when he discovers that he has a son.Sarah bundles up her son and once again takes flight, only to arrive in a place she had not intended. While navigating the terrain of the 1980s art scene in New York City, she must confront the terrible events surrounding Philip's departure, and reconcile the expectations of domestic life with her own fractured experience of family, confronting the violence and aching love at the heart of this story.No Space for Further Burials: A Novel
By Feryal Ali Gauhar. 2010
"In No Space for Further Burials, Feryal Ali Gauhar has crafted a novel of unrelenting truth held in transcendent prose…
and an exquisite grace. There is no easy redemption here, but there is light and more light."-Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Song for Night"In writing through the eyes of an American captive in Afghanistan, Feryal Ali Gauhar has fashioned a fascinating two-way mirror in which we see the author creating an Other confronting Otherness. As in Richard Powers' hostage novel Ploughing in the Dark, the mask of character reveals as much as it conceals."-Stewart O'Nan, author of Songs for the Missing"An unbearably beautiful book, one you will not soon forget. . . . What Gauhar shows us is that in a war there are only those who die and those who survive, and sometimes even those lines get blurred. And that's what keeps you hungrily turning the pages."-Radhika Jha, author of SmellSet in Afghanistan in late 2002, No Space for Further Burials is a chilling indictment of the madness of war and our collective complicity in the perpetuation of violence. The novel's narrator, a US Army medical technician in Afghanistan helping to "liberate" the country from the Taliban, has been captured by rebels and thrown into an asylum. The other inmates are a besieged gathering of society's forgotten and unwanted refugees and derelicts, disabled and different, resilient and maddened, struggling to survive the lunacy raging outside the asylum compound. The novel becomes a powerful evocation of the country's desolate history of plunder and war, waged by insiders and outsiders, all fueled by ideology, desperation, and greed.This astonishingly powerful story unfolds the tragedy of Afghanistan, as told by the captive narrator in hauntingly beautiful prose. While the characters try to cope with their individual destinies, the terrible madness of war is counterpointed with the poignancy of their lives and the narrator's own peculiar predicament-the "victor" now a victim, his ambivalence a metaphor for everything Afghanistan symbolizes.Feryal Ali Gauhar studied political economy at McGill University in Montreal, and has worked as a filmmaker and broadcaster in Europe and the United States. She has been imprisoned by two military regimes in Pakistan for her pro-democracy activism. In 1999 she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. She lives in Lahore, Pakistan, with fourteen cats, three dogs, a turtle, and four donkeys.Unity
By Michael Arditti. 2005
The story of a lost film about the relationship between Adolf Hitler and the English aristocrat Unity Mitford'A wonderful novel,…
written with exceptional knowledge and understanding of past and present Germany' Gitta Sereny'The most intriguing and thought-provoking novel I have read this year' Daily Express 'A remarkable, unsettling book' The Times'A gripping read packed with intrigue, sex, politics and death. What more could you possibly want?' AttitudeUnity tells the story of a lost film about the relationship between the English aristocrat, Unity Mitford, and Hitler, set against the background of the Red Army Faction terror campaign in 1970s Germany. Shooting has to be abandoned when the leading actress, Felicity Benthall, joins in the campaign, following her affair with a charismatic Palestinian. The author himself features in the narrative when, almost thirty years later, he attempts to uncover the truth about Felicity and another university friend, Luke Dent, who wrote the film-script. He consults Luke's letters from the set and the diaries of the former Hollywood child star and revolutionary socialist, Geraldine Mortimer, who played Diana Mosley; interviews two of the German actors and the film's producer, Thomas Bücher, an Auschwitz survivor turned high-powered pornographer; reads a revealing memoir by the director's widow; and corresponds with Carole Medhurst, a British actress turned Hollywood mogul. Their testimonies set up an intricate chain of associations from 1930s Britain to post-war Germany, painting a disturbing picture of corruption and fanaticism, and casting light on the nature of evil.The Young Pretender
By Michael Arditti. 2022
"An engrossing, enthralling and utterly captivating read, The Young Pretender tells a simply remarkable story with bounce, energy, wit, and…
lively authenticity . . . Michael Arditti's brilliant imaginative achievement offers high comedy, dark tragedy and everything between" STEPHEN FRY"The Young Pretender is an absolute joy - charming and funny, with the lightest hint of melancholy, and a wonderfully imaginative recreation of the Georgian theatre scene" KATE SAUNDERS"I loved how Arditti conjures...the smell of the theatre and the ghosts of these bygone players that haunt the stage...and the wonderful period details. Arditti wears his research so lightly" LARUSHKA IVAN-ZADEH, reviewing on Radio 4's FRONT ROW *****"A vivid, highly detailed portrait of life in rumbustious Regency London" Mail on SundayMobbed by the masses, lionised by the aristocracy, courted by royalty and lusted after by patrons of both sexes, the child actor William Henry West Betty was one of the most famous people in Georgian Britain.At the age of thirteen, he played leading roles, including Romeo, Macbeth and Richard III, in theatres across the country. Prime Minister William Pitt adjourned the House of Commons so that its members could attend his debut as Hamlet at Covent Garden. Then, as rivals turned on him and scandal engulfed him, he suffered a fall as merciless as his rise had been meteoric."Arditti's voice as Betty is impeccable. He is touchy, sometimes myopic, sincere in his ambitions. His attempts to reclaim lost glory are run through with an affecting melancholy" The TimesThe Young Pretender takes place during Betty's attempted comeback at the age of twenty-one. As he seeks to relaunch his career, he is forced to confront the painful truths behind his boyhood triumphs. Michael Arditti's revelatory new novel puts this long forgotten figure back in the limelight. In addition to its rich and poignant portrait of Betty himself, it offers an engrossing insight into both the theatre and society of the age. The nature of celebrity, the power of publicity and the cult of youth are laid bare in a story that is more pertinent now than ever."Entrancing and disturbing" ALLAN MASSIE, The Scotsman"Michael Arditti tells a story of a Regency child star with great panache and compassion, bringing a forgotten celebrity back to life for the modern age. A compelling read I was sad to finish." LINDA GRANT"Michael Arditti is a writer who takes risks. His material is always compelling and provocative, his techniques sophisticated and oblique" PATRICIA DUNCKER, Independent on Sunday "Arditti is a master storyteller" PETER STANFORD, Observer