John Niven Livres

An instant Sunday Times bestseller, O Brother is by turns heart-breaking and hilarious - evoking a working-class childhood of the 1970-80s and trying to answer the questions that often haunt the survivors of suicide

In a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth - no, sixth? - child into the world. Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with a townhouse in the West End and a shiny Tesla ready to drive his wife and baby home. Jada is a hustling, small-time criminal who is already planning how to separate Dan from some of the luxuries Jada has never been able to enjoy in his tiny flat in a Brutalist sixties council block. Both men find that the birth of their sons has fired their ambitions. Dan plans to walk away from his saccharine TV success and finally knuckle down to writing that novel he always felt he had in him. While, for Jada, it's the opportunity for one last get-rich-quick scheme - ripping off a local airport. When a tragedy occurs, their worlds are brought closer than either could ever have imagined - close enough that it could mean destruction for both of them . . .

But it's also a proper novel about the Trumpian era, of the reality TV era, the fake news era.

Only two things would improve Gary Irvine's life - children and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely- Gary's wife Pauline is planning to leave him for a self-made carpet millionaire, and unfortunately Gary is an appalling golfer. Meanwhile, in the murky depths of the criminal underclass, Gary's luckless brother Lee has botched up too many drug deals, and local crime overlord Ranta Campbell understands the PR value of a certain kind of violence to keep people in line. He gives Lee one more job, one last chance to get it right...Then Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and knocked into a coma. He wakes to find that the neurological trauma he's suffered has resulted in some pretty radical side effects - among them an absolutely perfect golf swing.Their stories converge as the two brothers stumble into uncharted territory - Lee towards murder and Gary teeing it up in the Open Championship...

The Son of God is back on Earth and starring on American Pop Star. God takes a look at the Earth around the time of the Renaissance and everything looks pretty good - so he takes a holiday. In Heaven-time this is just a week's fishing trip, but on Earth several hundred years go by. When God returns, he finds all hell has broken loose: world wars, holocausts, famine, capitalism and Christians. Everywhere. There's only one thing for it. They're sending the kid back. JC, reborn, is a struggling musician in New York City, trying to teach the one true commandment: Be Nice! His best chance to win hearts and minds is to enter American Pop Star. But the number one show in America is the unholy creation of a record executive who's more than a match for the Son of God... Steven Stelfox."

"It is 2017 - the time of Trump and Brexit. The time for the return of Steven Stelfox - exactly twenty years on from his Britpop heyday. Now forty-six, and rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he works only occasionally as a music industry 'consultant'. A fixer. A problem solver. He's had a call from his old friend James Trellick, who is now president of Unigram, one of the largest record companies in America. Trellick has a huge headache on his hands in the shape of... Lucius Du Pre. The biggest pop star on earth. Well, he was the biggest pop star on earth. Now he's a helpless junkie and a prolific, unrepentant paedophile. Through a programme of debt restructuring so complex even Trellick can barely understand it, Du Pre is also now massively in hock to the record company. The only way he can possibly pay it off is to embark on an enormous comeback tour he's in no shape to do. The picture is further complicated when the parents of one of Du Pre's 'special friends' begin blackmailing him. If their video gets out, Du Pre's brand will be utterly toxic, taking Unigram down with it. With stealth and cunning Stelfox begins to chart a road out of the nightmare. Needless to say, the body count on this road will be high."--Provided by publisher

Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning sixty. They live in a small Dorset town and have been friends since school. On the surface Susan has it all - a lovely house and a long marriage to accountant Barry. Life has not been so kind to Julie, but now, with several failed businesses and bad relationships behind her, she has found stability: living in a council flat and working in an old people's home. Then Susan's world is ripped apart when Barry is found dead in a secret flat - or rather, a sex dungeon. It turns out Barry has been leading a double life as a swinger. He's run up a fortune in debts, and now the bank is going to take Susan's home. Until, under the influence of an octogenarian gangster named Nails, the women decide that, rather than let the bank take everything Susan has, they're going to take the bank. With the help of Nails and a thrill-crazy, wheelchair-bound friend they pull off the daring robbery, but soon find that getting away with it is not so easy.

"Frank Brill, a retired small-town newspaper editor, has just been given a terminal diagnosis. Rather than compile a bucket list of all the things he's ever wanted to do in his life, he instead has at the ready his 'fuck-it list'. Because Frank has had to endure more than his fair share of personal misfortune, not to mention having to live through two terms of a Trump presidency. Armed with the names of all those who are to blame for the tragedies that have befallen him, it's time for revenge." Klappentext.

Kennedy Marr is a novelist from the old school. Irish, acerbic, and a borderline alcoholic and sex-addict, his mantra is drink hard, write hard and try to screw every woman you meet. He's writing film scripts in LA, fucking, drinking and insulting his way through Californian society, but also suffering from writers block and unpaid taxes. Then a solution presents itself - Marr is to be the unlikely recipient of the W. F. Bingham Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Modern Literature, an award worth half a million pounds. But it does not come without a price: he must spend a year teaching at the English university where his ex-wife and estranged daughter now reside. As Kennedy acclimatises to the sleepy campus, inspiring revulsion and worship in equal measure, he's forced to reconsider his precarious lifestyle. Incredible as it may seem, there might actually be a father and a teacher lurking inside this 'preening, narcissistic, priapic, sociopath'. Or is there... Straight White Male is a no-holds-barred look into the mid-life crisis and the contemporary male sexual psyche. It is a brilliant new satire from one of Britain's sharpest writers.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING NICHOLAS HOULT, ED SKREIN AND JAMES CORDEN. Meet Steven Stelfox. London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine, searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification. But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cut throat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.

***Now available for preorder- KILL 'EM ALL, the stunning sequel to KILL YOUR FRIENDS*** The viciously funny novel by John Niven, bestselling author of Kill Your Friendsand Straight White Male. What do you do when a homeless man knows your name? How about when he turns out to be a friend you haven't seen in twenty years? Do you treat him to a hot meal and see him on his way? Give him a wad of middle-class guilt money? Or take him in and get him back on his feet? For Alan, there's no question - only natural that he'd want to see his old mate Craig off the streets, even if only for a few nights, and into some clean clothes. But what if the successful life you've made for yourself - good job, happy marriage, lovely kids, grand Victorian house (you did well out of the property boom, thank you very much) - is one that that your old pal would quite like to have too? Even if it means taking it from you? Following the divergent lives of two childhood friends, No Good Deedis a funny and painful examination of friendship, the strange currents of ambition, loathing, pity and affection that flow between people over the decades, and of men getting older as they fail and succeed.

"Music From Big Pink is a moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's cliched and minor destiny into something approaching tragedy....This well-written first novel captures not just some of the dreams of that bygone era, but the way those dreams died." -Greg Kamiya, The New York Times Book ReviewMusic From Big Pink is faction: real people like Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman rub shoulders with fictional characters and actual, documented events thread their way through text alongside imagined scenarios. Through the eyes of 23-year-old Greg Keltner, drug-dealer and wannabe musician, we witness the gestation and birth of a record that will go on to cast its spell across five decades - bewitching and inspiring artists as disparate as The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Travis, Wilco and Mercury Rev.

Donnie Miller counts himself lucky. Living in a beautiful, spacious house in the wild and remote landscape of central Canada, he spends his days writing for the local newspaper, working on a film script, and acting as house-husband. After a troubled and impoverished upbringing in Scotland, he now has all he wants: a caring wife, a bright and happy son, a generous father-in-law. As the brutal northern winter begins to bite, he can sit back and enjoy life. But his peace is soon to be broken. There are noises in the nearby woods, signs of some mysterious watcher. When the family dog disappears, Donnie makes a horrifying discovery. Is it wolves, as the police suspect, or something far more dangerous, far darker? What secrets has Donnie been keeping? And why does he have the terrible sense that his dream was never going to last?

This book explores the interrelated themes of modernization and slavery, issues that created reform movements in the North, defensive sectionalism in the South, social disruption, and a general failure of political leadership. During this period the Union underwent the increasing strains of uneven social and economic development. Modernization and slavery provide the backdrop for the action and reaction of northern and southern players who sought but ultimately failed to allow an accommodation that would let competing social and economic institutions coexist.

»Da kommt Gott – tut so, als wärt ihr beschäftigt« - der SPIEGEL-Bestseller von John Niven zum Thema Nächstenliebe Kaum hat Gott sich im Himmel eine kleine Auszeit gegönnt und Seinem Sohn Jesus Christus die Geschäftsführung überlassen, schon herrscht auf Erden das nackte Chaos. Bürgerkriege, Umweltsünden, Armut, Hassprediger, tödliche Krankheiten, moralischer Verfall und gnadenloser Kommerz, so weit das Auge reicht. Was wurde aus der Menschenliebe und dem einzig wahren Gebot: SEID LIEB? Gott denkt nach und findet nur eine Lösung – Sein Sohn Jesus muss erneut auf die Erde zurückkehren, um Gutes zu tun. Doch werden die Menschen auf JC hören?

Susan Frobisher e Julie Wickham si stanno avvicinando alla sessantina. Vivono in un piccolo paesino del Dorset e sono amiche dai tempi della scuola. Le solite sospette di John Niven è un divertente romanzo che racconta in modo spietato come vogliamo essere e come siamo in realtà. In apparenza infatti Susan ha tutto: una bellissima casa e un lungo matrimonio con Barry. La vita non è stata così clemente con Julie, ma adesso, dopo diversi lavori fallimentari e pessime relazioni sentimentali lasciate alle spalle, ha trovato la sua stabilità: vive in un grazioso appartamento e lavora in una casa di riposo per anziani. Il mondo della splendida Susan viene però repentinamente messo sottosopra quando il suo amato Barry viene trovato morto in un appartamento segreto, o meglio, in una casa del sesso. La donna viene così tristemente a conoscenza della doppia vita del marito e si ritrova anche senza casa visto che l’uomo era pieno di debiti e la banca decide di toglierle tutto. Le due amiche però escogitano un piano e dopo aver conosciuto un vecchio gangster pronto ad aiutarle decidono di gabbare loro la banca. Ma sarà davvero così facile come pensano? Ad aiutarle un gruppo di vecchie e pazze amiche pronte a tutto, anche alla fuga, pur di fuggire dalla loro noiosa vita. Le solite sospette di John Niven è un romanzo sull’amicizia, in tarda età, sulle donne della middle class inglese raccontate da uno dei più divertenti autori britannici.

Kennedy Marr è un donnaiolo, un egocentrico, un narciso. Un uomo baciato dal successo, uno di quei bastardi a cui la vita ha servito le carte migliori. E ha scoperto che Hollywood è un posto formidabile per praticare gli eccessi. Nulla al mondo lo convincerebbe a lasciare la California per tornare nello sprofondo inglese. Ma non ha fatto i conti con l'Agenzia delle entrate. Così, quando inopinatamente viene insignito di un prestigioso - e ricco - premio letterario è costretto ad accettare. Anche se ciò significa passare un anno in un college inglese a insegnare scrittura creativa a dei pivelli senza talento. E soprattutto ritrovarsi faccia a faccia coi fantasmi del passato. Dopo lo strepitoso Gesù Cristo protagonista di A volte ritorno , John Niven inventa un altro personaggio iperbolico e irresistibile, un uomo capace di fare a pezzi per sempre la reputazione del maschio contemporaneo.