From the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny - the polyphonic story of a troubled teenager, with all of the humanity and trademark invention we expect from one of our most exciting writers.

Things keep slipping up for Shy. All he wants is sex, spliffs and his own turntables, and for all the red noise in his mind to disappear. But again and again he spirals past his senses and ends up with his head in his hands and carnage around him.

You mustn't do that to yourself Shy. You mustn't hurt yourself like that.

He's been kicked out of two schools, been cautioned, arrested, stabbed his stepdad in the finger and bottled a former Tumble Tots playmate, but it's the taunts and teasing of his new schoolmates that haunt Shy.

Shy's got no armpit hair / Shy needs fake ID to buy fags / Got your special meds, nutcase?

At Last Chance - a home for 'very disturbed young men' - he is surrounded by people who want to help him, but his night terrors aren't getting any better.

The night is huge and it hurts.

So tonight he's stepping into it, with the haunted beginnings of a plan.

About the Author

Max Porter's first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, won the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers' Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.

His second novel, Lanny, was a Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He has previously worked as a bookseller and editor and has also written The Death of Francis Bacon, the short film All of this Unreal Time and the pamphlet It's Going to Be a Bright New Day.