Heart the Lover begins in the 1980s, when a female college student meets two witty and intelligent fellow students, Sam and Yash, who come to play a very significant role in her life. Nicknamed ‘Jordan’ by the two men, she initially falls in love with Sam but his religious nature, stuffy family and his own tempestuousness (and generally dickishness if we’re being honest) soon put paid to that. She relatively quickly falls into a seemingly healthier relationship with Yash, but when she moves to Paris to become an au pair, he is distant in more senses than just the physical and seems less willing than Jordan to commit to their future together. When she returns to the US, he fails to meet her at the airport and she decides, heartbroken (and - unknown to Yash- pregnant) that their relationship is over.

The Offing takes place one summer in the years after the Second World War, in North-East England. Robert Appleyard, a sixteen year old from a Durham mining town, has finished his compulsory education and before he begins his expected path in life, following his lineage of male relatives into a mining career, he sets off on a journey south along the North Sea coast, aiming only to see more of the world outside of his small town. After a period sleeping under the stars, completing manual labour for those he meets along the way to pay for food, he stumbles upon a dilapidated cottage in the vicinity of Robin Hood’s Bay inhabited only by the bohemian Dulcie Piper and her dog Butler.

Vernon God Little is the story of Vernon Gregory Little, a teenager in smalltown Texas whose life is turned upside down when his best friend is responsible for a massacre at his high school. Although Vernon was absent for the event in question, running an errand for his teacher, he ends up being pinned with blame for the atrocity, accused of being an accessory and eventually perpetrator of the crime. He’s undone by a combination of outright self-serving treachery (from his mother’s romantic interest and all-round sleaze “Lally”), poor decision making from older relatives and friends (who encourage his repeated escapes from law and order) and herd mentality (where eventually everyone, including his own mother, comes to blame him, because the telly tells them to…)