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...

A 3,162 km race. A 48-year-old man. A 100-year-old bike. Made mostly of wood. That he built himself.Tim Moore sets off to recreate the most appalling bike race of all time. The notorious 1914 Giro d'Italia was an ordeal of 400-kilometre stages, cataclysmic night storms and relentless sabotage - all on a diet of raw eggs and red wine. Of the 81 who rolled out of Milan, only eight made it back.Committed to total authenticity, Tim acquires the ruined husk of a...

John Banville's Ancient Light is a story of obsessive young love and the power of grief'Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother.'In a small town in 1950s Ireland a fifteen-year-old boy has illicit meetings with a thirty-five-year-old woman - in the back of her car on sunny mornings, and in a rundown cottage in the country on rain-soaked afternoons. Unsure why she has chosen him, he becomes obsessed...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD'Crushing...intensely vital' Observer'It's impossible to tear yourself away' The Times'Such brilliant writing about female desire...honest and visceral' Marian KeyesShe's twenty-three and in love with love. He's older, and the most beautiful man she's ever seen. The affair is quickly consuming.But this r...

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...

The inside story of The Cure'Beautifully realised' Irish TimesComing of age in Thatcher's Britain in the late 70s and early 80s was really tough, especially if you lived in Crawley. But against the grinding austerity, social unrest and suburban boredom, the spark of rebellion that was punk set alight three young men who would become one of the most revered and successful bands of their generation. The Cure.Cured is...

Evening Standard Book of the Year. Observer Book of the Year. Guardian Book of the Year. Sunday Times Book of the Year. Telegraph Book of the Year. New Statesman Book of the Year. Herald Book of the Year. Mojo Book of the Year.Brett Anderson came from a world impossibly distant from rock star success, and in Coal Black Mornings he trac...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2012 WELLCOME TRUST BOOK PRIZEHow do you lose music? Then having lost it, what do you do next? Nick Coleman found out the morning he woke up to a world changed forever by Sudden Neursosensory Hearing Loss.The Train in the Night is an account of one man's struggle to recover from the loss of his greatest passion - and go one further than that: to restore his ability not only to hear but to think about and feel music, by going back to the series o...

Emily Chappell was never meant to be a cycle courier. She planned to earn her living using her mind rather than her legs. She thought it'd be a useful stopgap while searching for a 'real' job. Today, six years on, she's still pedalling. 'It's my most enduring love affair; the career that's shaped my life, made me what I am, and entirely derailed any hope of a normal existence.'As she flies through the streets of the capital, dancing with the traffic, Chappell records the pain and p...

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...

Cesare Saracino is bent on revenge! He doesn't realize that the woman he forces back to Italy is not the thief, but her identical twin, Milly Lee.With Cesare watching her every move, the usually mousy Milly struggles to masquerade as her sexy twin. And when desire unexpectedly flares between them, Milly is powerless to refuse Cesare's advances. Will the truth come out in the heat of passion?