'One of the books of the year. Cunnell's style is matchless: intimate, dark, sincere, wry and exquisitely beautiful' - Irish Times 'A cracking, urgent page-turner of a novel' - Observer The painter Terry Godden was on the brink of his first success. After a violent crisis, he finds himself outcast. In his fifties, and with little money, he retreats to a small island. Arriving in the winter, the island at first seems a desolate and forgotten place. As the seasons turn, Terry begins to see the island's beauty, and discovers that he is only one of many people who have sought refuge here. These independent outsiders, all with their own considerable struggles, have made a precarious home. The island is owned by the business man and art collector Alex Kaplan. His decision to enforce a rent increase as he seeks to improve his property looks set to destroy this community that cannot afford to lose the little they have left. As an artist, Terry believes making the invisible struggles of the island visible to the world will help - but will his interference save anybody other than himself? The Painter's Friend shows the human cost of gentrification for those dispossessed. The novel also explores the role of art in protest, and asks who gets to be an artist and what they owe in return. Written with visual lyricism and driven clarity, Howard Cunnell's incendiary story about class and resistance builds to an unforgettable climax. It is an urgent novel for our unjust times. 'I loved it. Cunnell's writing has an unforgettable visual and moral clarity' - Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley

The painter Terry Godden was on the brink of his first success. After a violent crisis, he finds himself outcast.

In his fifties, and with little money, he retreats to a small island. Arriving in the winter, the island at first seems a desolate and forgotten place. As the seasons turn, Terry begins to see the island’s beauty, and discovers that he is only one of many people who have sought refuge here. These independent outsiders, all with their own considerable struggles, have made a precarious home.

The island is owned by the business man and art collector Alex Kaplan. His decision to enforce a rent increase as he seeks to improve his property looks set to destroy this community that cannot afford to lose the little they have left. As an artist, Terry believes making the invisible struggles of the island visible to the world will help – but will his interference save anybody other than himself?

The Painter’s Friend shows the human cost of gentrification for those dispossessed. The novel also explores the role of art in protest, and asks who gets to be an artist and what they owe in return. Written with visual lyricism and driven clarity, Howard Cunnell’s incendiary story about class and resistance builds to an unforgettable climax. It is an urgent novel for our unjust times.

'There is so much aching love in this book, such pain and beauty. Behold, and rejoice.' - Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet Was he thinking, do I have to be this kind of boy to survive? Is this what being a boy is? As a boy growing up on the south coast of England, Howard Cunnell's sense of self was dominated by his father's absence. Now, years later, he is a father, and his daughter is becoming his son. Starting with his own childhood in the Sussex beachlands, Howard tells the story of the years of self-destruction that defined his young adulthood and the escape he found in reading and the natural world. Still he felt compelled to destroy the relationships that mattered to him. Saved by love and responsibility, Cunnell charts his journey from anger to compassion, as his daughter Jay realizes he is a boy, and a son. Most of all, this is a story about love - its necessity and fragility, and its unequalled capacity to enable us to be who we are. Deeply thoughtful, searingly honest and exquisitely lyrical, Fathers and Sons is an exploration of fatherhood, masculinity, authenticity and family.

The legendary 1951 scroll draft of "On the Road," published as Kerouac originally composed it
IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft of "On the Road"atyped as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll. A major literary event when it was published in Viking hardcover in 2007, this is the uncut version of an American classicarougher, wilder, and more provocative than the official work that appeared, heavily edited, in 1957. This version, capturing a moment in creative history, represents the first full expression of Kerouacas revolutionary aesthetic.

Five decades after it was first published, Jack Kerouac's seminal Beat novel On the Road finally finds its way to the big screen, in a production from award-winning director Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries) starring Sam Riley (Control, Brighton Rock), Garret Hedlund (Friday Night Lights), Kristen Stewart (Twilight), Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen. This edition is transcribed from the original manuscript: hundreds of typed pages taped together by Kerouac to form a 'scroll', published word for word as it was originally composed. Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion. One of the most influential and important novels of the 20th century, On the Road is the book that launched the Beat Generation and remains the bible of that literary movement. 'The most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat"' The New York Times

Was he thinking, do I have to be this kind of boy to survive? Is this what being a boy is? As a boy growing up on the south coast of England, Howard Cunnell's sense of self was dominated by his father's absence. Now, years later, he is a father, and his daughter is becoming his son. Starting with his own childhood in the Sussex beachlands, Howard tells the story of the years of self-destruction that defined his young adulthood and the escape he found in reading and the natural world. Still he felt compelled to destroy the relationships that mattered to him. Saved by love and responsibility, Cunnell charts his journey from anger to compassion, as his daughter Jay realizes he is a boy, and a son. Most of all, this is a story about love - its necessity and fragility, and its unequalled capacity to enable us to be who we are. Deeply thoughtful, searingly honest and exquisitely lyrical, Fathers & Sons is an exploration of fatherhood, masculinity, authenticity and family.