Best Selling Books by Nick Hornby

A wise and hilarious novel morality and what it means to be a "goof person" from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Just Like you, Funny Girl and High Fidelity. A brutally truthful, compassionate novel about the heart, mind, and soul of a woman who, confronted by her husband’s sudden and extreme spiritual conversion, is forced to learn “how to be good”—whatever that means, and for better or worse… Katie Carr is a good person…sort of. For years her husband’s been selfish, sarcastic, and underemployed. But now David’s changed. He’s become a good person, too—really good. He’s found a spiritual leader. He has become kind, soft-spoken, and earnest. Katie isn’t sure if this is deeply felt conversion, a brain tumor—or David’s most brilliantly vicious manipulation yet. Because she’s finding it more and more difficult to live with David—and with herself.

A wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll from the bestselling author of About a Boy and Dickens and Prince Now a Hulu series starring Zoë Kravitz! "I''ve always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It''s funny and heartbreaking all at the same time."—Zoë Kravitz Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films; top five Elvis Costello songs; top five episodes of Cheers. Rob tries dating a singer, but maybe it''s just that he''s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think that life with kids, marriage, barbecues, and soft rock CDs might not be so bad.

A wise, hilarious novel from the beloved, award-winning author of Dickens and Prince, Funny Girl and High Fidelity Will Freeman may have discovered the key to dating success: If the simple fact that they were single mothers meant that gorgeous women – women who would not ordinarily look twice a Will – might not only be willing, but enthusiastic about dating him, then he was really onto something. Single mothers – bright, attractive, available women – thousands of them, were all over London. He just had to find them. SPAT: Single Parents – Alone Together. It was a brilliant plan. And Will wasn’t going to let the fact that he didn’t have a child himself hold him back. A fictional two-year-old named Ned wouldn’t be the first thing he’d invented. And it seems to go quite well at first, until he meets an actual twelve-year-old named Marcus, who is more than Will bargained for…

At the age of fifteen, Sam Jones''s girlfriend Alicia gets pregnant and Sam''s life of skateboarding and daydreaming about Tony Hawk changes drastically, so Sam turns to Hawk''s autobiography for answers.

From the New York Times bestselling author—the shooting script to his award-winning film, with an original Introduction and vivid stills from the movie. Jenny is a 16-year-old girl stifled by the tedium of adolescence; she can’t wait for her sophisticated adult life to begin. One rainy day her suburban existence is upended by the arrival of David, a much older suitor who introduces her to a glittering new world of concerts, art, smoky bars, urban nightlife, and his glamorous friends, replacing her traditional education with his own version. It could be her awakening—or her undoing. This edition of Hornby’s adapted screenplay, which includes stills from the film, is a perfect accompaniment to the highly anticipated movie, which stars Carey Mulligan as Jenny, Peter Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson, Dominic Cooper, and Alfred Molina. It is a must-have for fans of Hornby’s novels, featuring his signature pitch-perfect dialogue, mordant wit, and the resonant humanity of his writing. Watch a Video

Intrepid young Sophie Straw navigates her transformation from provincial ingénue to television starlet amid a constellation of eccentric characters in 1960s London. By the best-selling author of About a Boy. (general fiction). Simultaneous.

“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.” —Nick Hornby, from Songbook A wise and hilarious collection from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Just Like You, Funny Girl and About a Boy. Songs, songwriters, and why and how they get under our skin… Songbook is Nick Hornby’s labor of love. A shrewd, funny, and completely unique collection of musings on pop music, why it’s good, what makes us listen and love it, and the ways in which it attaches itself to our lives—all with the beat of a perfectly mastered mix tape.

A wise, affecting novel from the beloved, award-winning author of Dickens and Prince, High Fidelity, and About A Boy. New York Times-bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they''ve reached the end of the line. A Long Way Down is now a major motion picture from Magnolia Pictures starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul, and Imogen Poots. Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come together on New Year''s Eve: a former TV talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother. Three are British, one is American. They encounter one another on the roof of Topper''s House, a London destination famous as the last stop for those ready to end their lives. In four distinct and riveting first-person voices, Nick Hornby tells a story of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own mortality. This is a tale of connections made and missed, punishing regrets, and the grace of second chances. Intense, hilarious, provocative, and moving, A Long Way Down is a novel about suicide that is, surprisingly, full of life.

“Whether you are interested in football or not, this is tears-running-down-your-face funny, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest about Hornby’s obsession and the state of the game.” —GQ A brilliant memoir from the beloved, bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Funny Girl, and High Fidelity. In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that’s before the players even take the field. Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby’s award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom—its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men’s coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.

Here, Nick Hornby writes about 31 songs - most of them loved, some of them once loved, all of them significant to him. He begins with Teenage Fanclub''s Your Love is the Place that I Come From and ends with Patti Smith''s Pissing in a River, encompassing varied singers along the way, such as Van Morrison and Nelly Furtado, and songs as different as Thunder Road and Puff the Magic Dragon (reggae style). He discusses, among other things, guitar solos, singers whose teeth whistle and the sort of music you hear in the Body Shop.

”[A] charming, funny, touching, and relevant comedy.” —The Boston Globe “A provocative yet sweet romantic comedy.” —People, Best of Fall 2020 From the beloved author of Dickens and Prince, About A Boy, and High Fidelity, this warm, wise, highly entertaining twenty-first century love story is about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she’d been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she’s a nearly divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn’t exactly looking for love—she’s more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It’s not a match anyone one could have predicted. He’s of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through. Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person—someone you didn’t see coming.

“Read what you enjoy, not what bores you,” Nick Hornby tells us. That simple, liberating, and indispensable directive animates each installment of the celebrated critic and author’s monthly column in the Believer. In this delightful and never-musty tour of his reading life, Hornby tells us not just what to read, but how to read. Whether tackling a dismayingly bulky biography of Dickens while his children destroy something in the next room, or getting sucked into a serious assessment of Celine Dion during an intensely fought soccer match featuring his beloved Arsenal, or devouring an entire series of children’s books while on vacation, Hornby’s reviews are rich, witty, and occasionally madcap. These essays capture the joy and ire, the despair and exhilaration of the book-lover’s life, and will appeal equally to both monocle-wearing salonnieres and people, like him, who spend a lot of time thinking about Miley Cyrus’s next role.

A hilarious and true account of one man''s struggle with the monthly tide of the books he''s bought and the books he''s been meaning to read.

A heartbreaking, funny, and honest look inside of a marriage falling apart and the lengths a couple would go to in order to fix it from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, About a Boy and High Fidelity Now an Emmy award winning SundanceTV series starring Rosamund Pike and Chris O''Dowd Tom and Louise meet in a pub before their couple''s therapy appointment. Married for years, they thought they had a stable home life--until a recent incident pushed them to the brink. Going to therapy seemed like the perfect solution. But over drinks before their appointment, they begin to wonder: what if marriage is like a computer? What if you take it apart to see what''s in there, but then you''re left with a million pieces? Unfolding in the minutes before their weekly therapy sessions, the ten-chapter conversation that ensues is witty and moving, forcing them to look at their marriage--and, for the first time in a long time, at each other.