Keith Waterhouse

"In the early 1960s, a golden age for newly-discovered writers, Chris Duffy was something of a nearly man. His debut novel was reasonably successful; his second was turned down as being too like the first. Thanks to procrastination and heavy drinking, he has published nothing since." "Settled now in Brighton, where he ekes out a living running a market bric-a-brac stall, Duffy dreams of the blurred decades that seem to have slipped through his fingers: where did it all go wrong?" "But during one confusing weekend, on the opening days of the Brighton Literary Festival, everything looks set to change. Lurching through the razzmatazz of stilt-walkers, mime artists and unicyclists, Duffy learns of the existence of a long-lost manuscript by a famous novelist, now dead, and resolves to get hold of it, pass it off as his own and thus give his wilted career a kick-start. Unfortunately, little in Duffy's disordered life ever runs smoothly, particularly on this crowded weekend."--BOOK JACKET.

"Ralph Messenger is a man who knows what he wants and generally gets it. As director of the prestigious Holt Belling Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Gloucester, he is much in demand as a pundit on developments in artificial intelligence and the study of human consciousness. Known to his colleagues as a womanizer, he has reached a tacit understanding with his American wife Carrie to refrain from philandering in his own backyard.". "This resolution is already weakening when he meets and is attracted to Helen Reed, a recently widowed novelist who has taken up a post as writer in residence at Gloucester. Fascinated and challenged by a personality and a worldview radically at odds with her own, Helen is aroused by Ralph's bold advances but resists on moral principle. The standoff between them is shattered by a series of events and discoveries that dramatically confirm the truth of Ralph's dictum that "we can never know for certain what another person is thinking.""--BOOK JACKET.

Continuing his memoirs after "City Lights", Keith Waterhouse records his arrival in Fleet Street in the early 1950s. He tells of his partnership with Willis Hall, writing for the theatre, screen and television, and their sojourn in Hollywood, creating an impression of an eventful era.

A gift for Aunt Sally starts a chain of events that takes Worzel Gummidge, the talking scarecrow, from his home in England to adventures in and around an Irish castle.

Allison is a young divorcee living in a squalid apartment in Seattle, working too many hours as an assistant manager of an ice cream parlour, coaxing a few more miles out of a dying Nova, and doing whatever it takes to get a better life for her 10 year-old son, Ethan. Dexter is a prominent cancer researcher who divides his time between his enormous penthouse in the city and his family’s hundred year-old orchard estate on the ritziest island in the Sound.They’ve got nothing in common except Bunny Barnes Winchester, society’s most hilarious grande dame and Alison’s oldest best friend.Well, there is one other thing they have in common: an anonymous tryst about 10 years ago. A tryst so wonderful, so mysterious, that neither has been able to forget it, even after the passing of over a decade. And when Allison gets one good look at a picture of Dexter Needham at age ten, and holds it up next to a school portrait of Ethan, suddenly Ethan’s special talents in science class don’t seem so random after all… and Allison’s life and everything she has ever believed is about to get turned upside down in the most wonderful of ways…