Anthony McGowan

Fourteen-year-old Hector, suffering from severe headaches, is diagnosed with a brain tumor which speaks in his head, calling itself Jack Tumor and making an effort to improve Hector's home life, increase his popularity, and win him a girlfriend before the operation that will mean the end of one or both of them.

"Anthony McGowan is a man at odds with the universe. Stumbling from one improbable fiasco to the next, he patrols the mean streets of West Hampstead like some unholy cross between Columbo, J. Alfred Prufrock and a common tramp, pondering the very stuff of life itself. For McGowan that's holed socks, unsatisfactory packed lunches, broken washing machines, Kierkegaard, the eccentricities of the British Library, liver salts, Morrissey and disapproving...

Things are getting tense at home for Nicky and Kenny as they wait for a visit from their estranged mother. To escape, they go for a walk on the moors, taking their little Jack Russell terrier with them. But what should have been a laugh, a lark, turns deadly when the weather changes and they are caught in a blizzard. Nothing will ever be quite the same again...

"When Kenny and Nicky rescue a rook left for dead, Kenny is determined to keep it alive. Nicky doubts the scruffy bird will make it, but then Nicky has plenty else to worry about. This time, it's not his dad or Kenny who needs help--his dad's sorting his life out and Kenny's busy making plans with his new best friend. Now it's Nicky's turn to struggle--with a school bully, his first love, and the fact that everything is about to go very, very wrong"--Provided...