A visceral and powerful exploration of contemporary multi-cultural London. A dozen encounters on a London bus weave their way towards a violent climax . A man haunted by his past and the many pasts of his family, but in love with the present; all that's now greeting the senses. A woman stifled by lack of affection but determined to do what's right. A man obsessed with architecture and in love with a painting. Everyone talks; layers of privacy are peeled away laying bare a wide variety of lives, desires and illusions as we head towards Boundary Road on the 13.

Modern-day New York, a subway train. David, an American-Jewish jazz musician, torn between his dreams and his parents' expectations, sees a woman across the carriage. Ameena, a British-Pakistani artist who left Manchester to escape the pressure from her conservative family, sees David. When a moment of sublime beauty occurs unexpectedly, the two connect, moved by their shared experience. From this flows a love that it appears will triumph above all. But as David and Ameena navigate their relationship, their ambitions and the city they love, they discover the external world is not so easy to keep at bay. Ami Rao's masterful debut novel picks apart the lives of two people, stripping them of their collective identities and, in doing so, facing up to the challenge of today: can love give us the freedom to accept our differences?

'He is ready to talk about her, his daughter. He is ready in a way. In a way.' When a teenage girl dies in a car accident while returning home from school, her father is left to deal with his grief. Sent home from work for the crime of showing his emotions in front of strangers, he cannot bring himself to utter his unspoken thoughts of guilt and blame - not even to his wife. Alienated from the world and, to some degree, his own mind, and with his marriage slowly collapsing, the man starts to consider his grief. In lyrical prose, Ami Rao experiments with language to explore grief, one of the most complex of human emotions. Inspired by the essays of Roland Barthes, this fragmented and philosophical novella is deeply moving.

**WINNER OF THE GENERAL OUTSTANDING SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017** Coping with your own death, when you are not yet dead, is a strange thing... A natural on a horse since he was able to walk, and imbued with a pure love of riding, Declan Murphy became one of the most brilliant jockeys of his generation before his world came crashing down at the final hurdle of a race at Haydock Park. His skull shattered in twelve places, he was believed to be dead, the last rites were read and the Racing Post prepared his obituary. Miraculously, and the word is not used lightly, he survived and defied medical thinking in recovering to the extent that eighteen months after his fall, he was able to saddle up for one more race. As usual, he won. For 23 years, Declan has been unable to tell his story, to bring to words existence on the frontier between life and death, to describe the incredible bond between man and horse. But now, in an extraordinary collaboration with Ami Rao, she has helped him find those words, a way to piece together what happened before, during and after, what it all meant and what it means to us all. It is a story of triumph, fear, love and loss, by turns primal, heartbreaking and inspirational, and ultimately, it is the story of hope, and of life.