Toby Litt Books

As editors Toby Litt and Ali Smith explain in their introduction: "newness is quite a venerable category. There's not much that's new about it. In the 1930s, when a magazine called "New Writing" was first published, it had to compete with "New Signatures," "New Country," "New Verse," the "New Statesman" "and Nation" and "New Theatre," and what with the "New Woman" of the 1890s and new everything else, even then, new wasn't the new new. . . If we've achieved diversity, it's because our submissions were themselves diverse; and the final selection is representative of the proportion of short stories to novel extracts, poems and essays that were submitted. Originality is only proven over time, paradoxically. We are confident that some of the names here you've never heard before will become very familiar. They may even disgrace themselves by winning prizes, becoming established, etc. But they'll be the kinds of writer, like the known names published here, for whom everything they write is a renewal - of language, of place, of the senses and of the contemporary."

This novel explores the dark side of boyhood as four boys engage in wargames in the English countryside. After one of them dies, their games intensify, turning against the adults they blame for their friend's death.

Edwin Paine and Charles Roland have a lot in common - they re both English schoolboys who love a good detective story, and they ve been known to dabble in mystery-solving themselves. They re also both dead, a condition which has proven to be less of a hindrance than one might think.

Written by the author of Adventures In Capitalism, this title features twists 'n' turns, sex 'n' violence, and glitz 'n' glamour.

Hospital is about blue murder anda saving lives, having sex and surgery, falling in love from a great height, crazy voodoo and hipnotic surveillance

A computer programmer feels reasonably satisfied with his life until he is sent with his colleague, the sexually-frustrated Raphael Tisserand, to train provincial civil servants on a new computer system.

A Writer's Diary is a novel that blends fact and fiction, invention and memoir with joyful creativity and remarkable literary ambition. In it, Toby Litt takes on some of the biggest questions of life and death, not to mention literary as well as human mortality and the steady march of time. At first, A Writer's Diary appears to be exactly what it claims to be. It is a daily summary of the events in a person called Toby Litt's life: his thoughts on creating literature, his concerns for his family and the people he teaches, his musings on the various things that catch his attention around his desk and his immediate surroundings... But as it progresses, questions start to arise. Is this fact? Or is it fiction? (And if it's both, which is which?) Is this a book about quotidian daily routines - one person's days as they unspool - or is something more going on? Is there something even larger taking shape? ... And so, seemingly by magic, an increasingly urgent narrative starts to build - a

A vast generation ship hurtles away from a violent, troubled Earth to settle on a distant planet orbiting an alien star. Those who set out on this journey are long-since dead. Those who will arrive at their destination have yet to be born. For those who must live and die in the cold emptiness between the stars, there is only the claustrophobic permanence of non-being. Life lived in unending stasis. Then the unthinkable happens: two souls - Auguste and Celeste - rebel. And from the fruit of their rebellion comes a new and powerful force which will take charge of the ship's destiny. "Journey into Space" is science fiction at its most classic and beguiling: timeless, vast in scope and daring in execution.

Dear Friend, How would you like to come—this August—and stay, completely free, in a lovely seaside house I've rented? Good food and plenty of alcohol will also be provided, gratis. But (you knew there'd be a but) afterwards you must allow me to write up the events of the month in a semi-fictionalised form. (In other words: you promise not to sue.) At the end of the book, you will have three full pages to say exactly what you like. If you think I've distorted things, told outright lies, etc., you can contradict me. I promise not to interfere editorially with your text in any way. Even if it is terribly libellous of me. I am inviting ten other people along, as well. Some of them you know; some of them you don't. I do so hope you can come. Love, Victoria

When Agatha and Paddy decide to leave London and buy a house on the coast, they are full of hope for themselves and their growing family � baby Max and a new child on the way. Three months later, when the builders move out and they move in, things look very different. A personal tragedy threatens to destroy all they have carefully built up and only a small miracle, it seems, will save them. . . Ghost Story is a book both haunted and haunting, which asks how we can ever mourn something that hasn�t lived. Emotionally resonant, beautifully crafted and ultimately redemptive, it will take you to the heart of suffering and desire.