e2
Bantam
What happens when you reply to spam? Will making a tit of yourself on YouTube get you on Big Brother? Is selling your boss's office furniture on eBay a sensible way to pay off tricky gambling debts? Is it OK for children to smoke if the cigarettes are really tiny? Is text a suitable medium for a suicide note?
Ten years after e, Matt Beaumont's sequel bravely continues to tackle the questions that matter - frankly, the questions that no other author is asking. "What is literature for if it isn't to examine the complex nature of our existence?" Matt rightly contends. He confidently expects this one to be his shot at the Booker.
Fact 1: upon publication e2 propelled Matt to #2 on the heat Hot List, where he was beaten only by the legendary singer, lover and raconteur, Peter Andre. He finished higher than, among others, sexy Calvin Harris and smouldering Shakira. And he didn't have to resort to Shakira's tacky stunt of donning a flesh-tone body stocking to gain attention.
‘A witty and brilliantly crafted comic novel.’ heat
‘You’ll struggle to find a book with as many guffaws as this all year.’ Den of Geek
‘It’s fun – and fun is not something you see all that often in books for grown ups.’ Bookmunch
e
HarperCollins
Reissued in a shiny new cover with ducks on it, e is a tale of everyday sleaze, dishonesty and incompetence in Adland. It tells the story of the Miller Shanks agency's desperate chase for the Coca-Cola account and it tells it entirely in emails.
e caused something of a stir on its publication, not least in London advertising circles where the debate centred around who the book’s characters were based on. It went on to become a bestseller in several countries. Matt is still curious how his pope joke translated into Chinese. Anyone who has read the Chinese version might like to let him know.
Fact: an Advertising Age survey found e to be the Fourth Best Media Book of All Time. It is the only book in the top ten in which a silicon breast implant explodes. In fact, none of the other books – not one! – contains any mention of surgically-enhanced breasts. Or any other kind of breasts.
Click here to buy this book in the UK
Click here to buy this book in the USA
‘A genuinely enjoyable page-turner.’ The Times
‘Lively, viciously funny and about as switched on as a novel can be.’ Daily Mirror
‘A brilliantly plotted comic novel… It gave me more sense that literature is alive and kicking than anything else I’ve read in these twelve moths.’ Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times
The e Before Christmas
HarperCollins
The most common gripes about this one are that it is a hurriedly knocked off sequel, shamelessly cashing in on the success of e, and, at only 120 pages, it’s hardly a novel. True, true and true, but, c’mon, it only costs £2.99.
And it does contain some new characters as well as some excellent jokes that didn’t make it into its predecessor. More importantly, if some books can be read in a long toilet session, this one can be finished over the course of a medium-length slash – a definite bonus in this time-poor age.
Small World
Black Swan
‘Some paths cross, others collide.’ That’s what it says on the cover and it pretty much sums it up. This is the story of interconnected lives: a woman desperate for a baby, a stalker desperate for the woman and an au pair desperate for a new nose; a shoplifting sales assistant, a God-fearing nurse and a self-loathing policeman; a washed-up comedian, a luckless dope dealer and a murderer.
It’s a story about a world where – whether you know it or not, and usually you don’t – you are only ever two steps away from death, redemption or bumping into Charlize Theron; in short, a story about us, and the world we all live in.
Fact: this was Maria’s book. She started it, got to page 63, had a fag break, and that’s when Matt nicked it off her.
Click here to watch a trailer for Small World
'An ingeniously constructed plot and enough emotional heft to lift it above the herd.' Daily Telegraph
'A page turner and a triumph... Makes his position as one of Britain's best comedy authors more permanent.' Daily Express
The Book, the Film, the T-Shirt
HarperCollins
Two Major Acting talents, a Hot Director, a Sizzling Script, a Squeaky Rubber Dress, Top Quality Drugs. Sooo, like Hollywood…
Hounslow, actually. They’re making an ad there, immediately under Heathrow’s eastern approach. It’s only for tyres – you know, round black things, go on cars – but it’s going to be sensational.
Well, it might be if the starlet (hadn’t got herself arrested. Oh, and if her co-star didn’t want to kill her. But as the producer points out between blowjobs, ‘We’re professionals, darling.’ They’ll sort things out. Won’t they?
Matt would like to apologise to anyone who has already bought this and been disappointed to discover that it is, in fact, just a book. Adding the words Film and T-Shirt to the title was a cheap con designed to boost sales. He promises it won’t happen again. Rumours of a sequel called The Book, the Jag, the Free Holiday in Barbados are utterly groundless.
‘Good salacious stuff, satisfyingly vicious… Jeffrey Archer with irony.’ Daily Mail
‘Very funny from start to finish.’ Time Out
‘Matt Beaumont may be no poet, but he’s a technical whiz kid at his craft.’ Guardian
Staying Alive
HarperCollins
Were those Travolta’s feet strutting through the title sequence of Saturday Night Fever or did they belong to a stunt double? Did he really prepare for the role of Tony Manero by spending a year training with Shaolin disco monks? Neither of these fascinating question is answered in Staying Alive, a novel that doesn’t once mention the Gibb brothers or the seventies disco explosion.
Instead it tells the story of Murray, who is given just a few months to live by a woman in a white coat. In choosing to leave this world with a bang rather than his usual whimper, he crams more action into a few weeks than he has managed in all his preceding thirty years. Along the way he also manages to screw up his career and his love life and he ends up in deep shit with some very bad men indeed.
But so what? Isn’t the one good thing about dying the fact that you don’t have to live with the consequences?
Oh, if it’s any endorsement, Maria loves this book.
‘A brilliant read.’ heat
‘Truly hilarious.’ B magazine
‘Beaumont is an unflaggingly funny writer.’ Guardian
Where There’s a Will
HarperCollins
When Alvin Lee sees a knife-twirling mugger attacking an old lady, of course he steps in. That’s the kind of man he is. No matter that he’s just walked out of a sleazy massage parlour and that the resulting publicity might lose him everything.
Alvin, you see, is a Good Guy. He’ll do anything for anyone and expect nothing in return. Take his job: he works tirelessly with violent, abusive teenagers. He only visited the massage parlour to help one of them. But in a world curdled by cynicism, who’s going to believe that? Not even the woman who knows him better than anyone, the woman he loves.
So instead of being feted as a have-a-go hero, he is cast out, deserted by friends and family, fired from his job and punched in the street by people who don’t even know him. Alvin Lee is a man who sees the good in everyone. But who’s going to see the good in him?
‘Beaumont displays the acute ear for dialogue and the unerring sense of comic timing that has won him many fans.’ The Times
‘With his customary élan, Beaumont has written another richly comedic novel.’ Daily Mail
‘An action-filled narrative keeps you guessing right up to the final page. Where There’s a Will doesn’t disappoint.’ heat
‘Thoroughly entertaining.’ Marie Claire