Gavin Extence

It all starts, as these things sometimes do, with a dead man. He was a neighbour, not someone Abby knew well, but still, finding a body when you only came over to borrow a tin of tomatoes, that comes as a bit of a shock. At least, it should. And now she can't shake the feeling that if she hadn't gone into Simon's flat, if she'd had her normal Wednesday night instead, then none of what happened next would have happened. And she would never have met...

This is the story of 17-year-old Alex Woods, born to a clairvoyant mother and a phantom father, victim of an improbable childhood accident, who is stopped at Dover customs in possession of 113 grams of marijuana and the ashes of his best friend.

Gabriel is given only months to live after doctors discover a tumour on his brain. But something strange is happening: the position of the tumour is changing Gabriel's personality. He's becoming less selfish, less mercenary, less unlikeable. But it's a catch-22. The kinder and nicer Gabriel becomes, and the more people get to know the new, nicer version of him, the closer we draw to the inevitable.