Very excited to be publishing my second novel set in Sheffield during the Thatcher years - this is to be published by Gibson Square in late May.

It is set in Sheffield in the 1980’s, when Margaret Thatcher was telling us all that ‘there is no such thing as society’. The narrator is a psychologist and body language expert, who is the ‘expert’ on body language, at least when it’s observed in the laboratory. But this is real life he’s confronted with now - unemployment, desperation, people trying to get by, self-constructions, the pressure still to be someone, lies and deceit. And he’s not immune to any of this, an academic at the start of his career claiming to be able to ‘read’ people, talking
himself up, trying to be someone, like everyone else. But can he read people when it really matters? Does he overstep the mark?

Gibson Square publish a really diverse and impressive list including books by Charles Darwin, Ernst Gombrich, Henry James, Richard Dawkins, W.H. Auden, Walter Scott.