Will Wiles – författare

A bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice.Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for his piece ‘Variations on Tram Timetables’. He lives with his wife and two cats in an unnamed Eastern European city. But this book isn’t really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. Meanwhile, he has entrusted an old friend to take care of his perfect, beautiful apartment.Despite Oskar leaving extensive notes on how to keep his flat in pristine condition, a tiny oversight initiates a chain of farcical, and even fatal, disasters. ‘Care of Wooden Floors’ is about loneliness, friendship and the quest for, and struggle against, perfection. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors.

A bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice.Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for a piece called Variations on Tram Timetables. He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city.But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. He has entrusted an old university friend with the task of looking after his cats, and taking care of his perfect, beautiful apartment.Despite the fact that Oskar has left dozens of surreally detailed notes covering every aspect of looking after the flat, things do not go well.Care of Wooden Floors is about how a tiny oversight can trip off a disastrous and farcical (fatal, even) chain of consequences. It's about a friendship between two men who don't know each other very well. It's about alienation and being alone in a foreign city. It's about the quest for perfection and the struggle against entropy. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors.

A taster of some of the brightest and best new novels from the rising stars of fiction.From a time-bending love story to an Irish political drama, from a big American book about talent on the pitch to a hedonistic coming-of-age tale, there is something in here to suit all readers of really good novels. Championed by bestselling authors such as Hilary Mantel, Tash Aw and Patrick Gale, this collection is proudly bought to you by Fourth Estate.

A taster of some of the brightest and best new novels from the rising stars of fiction.From a time-bending love story to an Irish political drama, from a big American book about talent on the pitch to a hedonistic coming-of-age tale, there is something in here to suit all readers of really good novels. Championed by bestselling authors such as Hilary Mantel, Tash Aw and Patrick Gale, this collection is proudly bought to you by Fourth Estate.

A taster of some of the brightest and best new novels from the rising stars of fiction.From a time-bending love story to an Irish political drama, from a big American book about talent on the pitch to a hedonistic coming-of-age tale, there is something in here to suit all readers of really good novels. Championed by bestselling authors such as Hilary Mantel, Tash Aw and Patrick Gale, this collection is proudly bought to you by Fourth Estate.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE KITSCHIES`The Way Inn’ takes the polished surfaces of modern life, the branded coffee and the free wifi, and twists them into a nightmare.The Way Inn is a global chain of identikit mid-budget hotels, and Neil Double is a valued member of its loyalty scheme. Neil is a professional conference-goer, a man who will attend trade fairs, expos and conventions so you don't have to. This life of anonymised, budget travel would be hell for most, but it’s a kind of paradise for Neil, who has turned his incognito professional life into a toxic personal philosophy.But Neil is about to change. In a brand new Way Inn in an airport hinterland, he meets a woman – a woman he has seen before in bizarre and unsettling circumstances. She hints at being in possession of an astonishing truth about this mundane world. And then she disappears. Fascinated, and with his professional life unravelling, Neil tries to find the woman again. In doing so he is drawn into the appalling secret that lurks behind the fake smiles and muzak of the hotel…

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE KITSCHIES‘The Way Inn’ takes the polished surfaces of modern life, the branded coffee and the free wifi, and twists them into a nightmare.The Way Inn is a global chain of identikit mid-budget hotels, and Neil Double is a valued member of its loyalty scheme. Neil is a professional conference-goer, a man who will attend trade fairs, expos and conventions so you don''t have to. This life of anonymised, budget travel would be hell for most, but it’s a kind of paradise for Neil, who has turned his incognito professional life into a toxic personal philosophy.But Neil is about to change. In a brand new Way Inn in an airport hinterland, he meets a woman – a woman he has seen before in bizarre and unsettling circumstances. She hints at being in possession of an astonishing truth about this mundane world. And then she disappears. Fascinated, and with his professional life unravelling, Neil tries to find the woman again. In doing so he is drawn into the appalling secret that lurks behind the fake smiles and muzak of the hotel…

‘Wiles is basically Kafka, if Kafka had spent more time in British hotels and pubs’ David BaddielWill Wiles both re-invents and murders the London novel, in a spectacular act of evil, surgical intensity’ Warren Ellis‘It’s outstanding’ Mail on Sunday, Event Magazine The dark, doomy humour of Care of Wooden Floors mixed with the fantastical, anarchic sense of possibility of The Way Inn, brought together in a fast moving story set in contemporary London. Jack Bick is an interview journalist at a glossy lifestyle magazine. From his office window he can see a black column of smoke in the sky, the result of an industrial accident on the edge of the city. When Bick goes from being a high-functioning alcoholic to being a non-functioning alcoholic, his life goes into freefall, the smoke a harbinger of truth, an omen of personal apocalypse. An unpromising interview with Oliver Pierce, a reclusive cult novelist, unexpectedly yields a huge story, one that could save his job. But the novelist knows something about Bick, and the two men are drawn into a bizarre, violent partnership that is both an act of defiance against the changing city, and a surrender to its spreading darkness.With its rich emotional palette, Plume explores the relationship between truth and memory: personal truth, journalistic truth, novelistic truth. It is a surreal and mysterious exploration of the precariousness of life in modern London.

‘Wiles is basically Kafka, if Kafka had spent more time in British hotels and pubs’ David BaddielWill Wiles both re-invents and murders the London novel, in a spectacular act of evil, surgical intensity’ Warren Ellis‘It’s outstanding’ Mail on Sunday, Event MagazineThe dark, doomy humour of Care of Wooden Floors mixed with the fantastical, anarchic sense of possibility of The Way Inn, brought together in a fast moving story set in contemporary London.Jack Bick is an interview journalist at a glossy lifestyle magazine. From his office window he can see a black column of smoke in the sky, the result of an industrial accident on the edge of the city. When Bick goes from being a high-functioning alcoholic to being a non-functioning alcoholic, his life goes into freefall, the smoke a harbinger of truth, an omen of personal apocalypse. An unpromising interview with Oliver Pierce, a reclusive cult novelist, unexpectedly yields a huge story, one that could save his job. But the novelist knows something about Bick, and the two men are drawn into a bizarre, violent partnership that is both an act of defiance against the changing city, and a surrender to its spreading darkness.With its rich emotional palette, Plume explores the relationship between truth and memory: personal truth, journalistic truth, novelistic truth. It is a surreal and mysterious exploration of the precariousness of life in modern London.

‘Funny, chilling, intriguing: each tale offers something different from the last, and the overall result is like listening to a perfectly made album.’ —Mark WatsonAn anechoic chamber is a soundproofed room with no echo. The profound silence it produces is disturbing enough. But listen carefully and you’ll hear something worse … In this new collection of uncanny short stories, award-winning author Will Wiles finds sinister creatures and subtle nightmares in mundane modern environments and bureaucracy. A cursed NHS file brings doom to whoever handles it. A memory-foam mattress breaks down the walls of sleep. A marketing executive for a property developer turns to the occult. And horror seeps from the most unexpected places: eBay purchases, boxes of holiday photographs, and the hidden corners of the smart TV menu. While mostly modern in setting, this is a collection steeped in the tradition of the weird tale and the ghost story, and includes homages to the greats of the previous century: a doomed Edwardian antiquarian is drawn into a murderous plot involving a Roman mosaic, and river boatmen uncover eldritch terror in a deserted mining town. You’ll never look at some things the same way again.