A novel from an American writer.

An ex-circus strongman and Notting Hill rough-justice artist, meets his own personal holocaust and 'Einsteinian' destiny. There is maximum boredom and minimum love-making advised, while a new strain of schizophrenia overwhelms the young son of a 'father of the nuclear age'. This book offers a collection of stories that reveal a deep preoccupation.

The narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life... all Samson has to do is to write it as it happens.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

Fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little is in trouble, and it has something to do with the recent massacre of 16 students at his high school. Soon, the quirky backwater of Martirio, barbecue capital of Texas, is flooded with wannabe CNN hacks, eager for a scapegoat.

By the author of Canal Dreams and The Wasp Factory , this novel is about three men - Graham Park, Steven Grant and Quiss. No trio of people could be further apart, but their separate courses are set for collision.