The trailers for Space Hopper (below) and Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life
Joe loves predictability. But his life is about to become a surprising adventure.
Joe Nathan is a young neurodivergent man who works at The Compass Store. He lives with his mum and makes sense of the world through two books of advice – one blue, one yellow – that she’s carefully written for him over the years. Joe is gentle, thoughtful and finds comfort in routines and structure. He’s a devoted fan of FRIENDS, enjoys a weekly Friday night trip to the pub with his mum, spends hours doing jigsaws in the workshop his dad built, and finds peace in wandering cemeteries, reading the words left behind on headstones.
At the heart of the story is Joe’s desire for connection – especially with a boy called Charlie, who doesn’t treat him kindly. Joe is determined to befriend him, no matter what. His gentle persistence and the way he meets life’s difficulties with honesty and heart invite us to reflect on our own responses to difference and kindness.
This is a novel about friendship, family and finding your place. It’s about embracing who you are, the importance of belonging, and the unexpected ways people can surprise us. As with all my books, you’ll find humour, heartbreak and hope in equal measure.
‘Extraordinary. Melted my heart’ Heidi Swain, author of The Book-Lovers' Retreat
Believe the unbelievable
“The loss of my mother is like a missing tooth: an absence I can feel at all times, but one I can hide as long as I keep my mouth shut. And so I rarely talk about her.”
Faye loves her life, she has a loving husband and adores her children, she has a great job and good friends, but the loss of her mother when she was a child is a grief that she carries with her always. Faye has little in the way of reminders of her mother, in fact just a photograph of herself as a six-year-old sitting in an empty Space Hopper box under a Christmas tree. Faye treasures the photograph because she knows her mother was there, behind the camera, taking the picture.
One day, Faye encounters that same box - now old and battered - in her husband’s study; he’s brought it down from the attic and used it to store textbooks. Faye, feeling possessive, empties it and returns it to the attic where she hits her head on a lightbulb and shatters it. When she steps into the box to avoid the broken glass, she falls through it, landing (painfully) in the 1970s, under the Christmas tree in the house she grew up in. Her mother, and her six-year-old self are asleep upstairs. Faced with the chance to finally seek answers to her questions about the past - but away from her husband and children – how much is Faye willing to give up for more time with her mother?
For fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife comes an original and heart-warming story about bittersweet memories, how the past shapes the future, and a love so strong it makes you do things that are slightly bonkers.