AS the twentieth century breathes its very last, with Britpop at its zenith, twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through London’s music industry. Blithely crisscrossing the globe in search of the next megahit—fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine—Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of self-gratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he’s going to salvage his sagging career is by t...

Gary Irvine's wife refuses to sleep with him, so he pursues an even stingier mistress: golf. But despite his spending unconscionable amounts of time and money, his game is wretched. Until the day he takes a perfect swing . . . and then everything goes black.After waking up from a coma a few weeks later, with a golf-ball-sized dent in his temple, Gary discovers that his last perfect swing has been imprinted on his brain. However, his newfound prowess is accompanied by some ...

You thought you could leave the past behind.Think again.Donnie Miller counts himself lucky. Living in a beautiful, spacious house in the wild and remote landscape of central Canada, he spends his days writing for the local newspaper, working on a film script, and acting as house-husband. After a troubled and impoverished upbringing in Scotland, he now has all he wants: a caring wife, a bright and happy son, a generous father-in-law. As the brutal northern winter begins to b...

God takes a look at the Earth around the time of the Renaissance and everything looks pretty good – so he takes a holiday. In Heaven-time this is just a week’s fishing trip, but on Earth several hundred years go by. When God returns, he finds all hell has broken loose: world wars, holocausts, famine, capitalism and ‘fucking Christians everywhere’. There’s only one thing for it. They’re sending the kid back.JC, reborn, is a struggling musician in New York City, trying to teach the o...

‘Very funny’ Guardian‘Inkwell black and surprisingly tender’ ADAM KAY‘Outrageous’ MARINA HYDE‘A blockbusting explosion of toxic masculinity’ SpectatorIn a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth – no, sixth? – child into the world. But Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with ...

AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDA GUARDIAN BEST MEMOIR OF 2023A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023John Niven’s little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. After years of chaotic struggle against the world took his own li...

'I love John Niven's writing – OBVIOUSLY – but came late to his first book, and was blown away by what vivid, delicate time-travel it is. Every The Band fan in the world MUST read it - it's like living in the music. Just smoky, ravishing magic' Caitlin MoranTimed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Band's debut album, Music from Big Pink is John Niven's first novel – a heady blend of dru...

"Music From Big Pink is a moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's cliched and minor destiny into something approaching tragedy....This well-written first novel captures not just some of the dreams of that bygone era, but the way those dreams died."-Greg Kamiya, The New York Times Book ReviewMusic From Big Pink is faction: real people like Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman rub ...

Frederick John Niven, (born March 31, 1878, Valparaíso, Chile—died Jan. 30, 1944, Vancouver, B.C., Can.), was a regional novelist who wrote more than 30 novels, many of them historical romances, set in Scotland and Canada. Three of his best-known novels—The Flying Years (1935), Mine Inheritance (1940), and The Transplanted (1944)—form a trilogy dealing with the settlement of the Canadian west.Educated in Scotland, Niven worked in libraries in Glasgow and Edinburgh. He went to Canad...

Salmon P. Chase was one of the preeminent men of 19th-century America. A majestic figure, tall and stately, Chase was a leader in the fight to end slavery, a brilliant administrator who as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury provided crucial funding for a vastly expensive war, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the turmoil of Reconstruction, and the presiding officer of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Yet he was also a complex figure. As John Niven reveals in ...

Salmon P. Chase was one of the preeminent men of 19th-century America. A majestic figure, tall and stately, Chase was a leader in the fight to end slavery, a brilliant administrator who as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury provided crucial funding for a vastly expensive war, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the turmoil of Reconstruction, and the presiding officer of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Yet he was also a complex figure. As John Niven reveals in ...

God takes a look at the Earth around the time of the Renaissance and everything looks pretty good – so he takes a holiday. In Heaven-time this is just a week’s fishing trip, but on Earth several hundred years go by. When God returns, he finds all hell has broken loose: world wars, holocausts, famine, capitalism and ‘fucking Christians everywhere’. There’s only one thing for it. They’re sending the kid back.JC, reborn, is a struggling musician in New York City, trying to teach the o...