How funny! How dysfunctional. This is what it really means to be British, she thought. Everybody separate behind their walls and everybody drinking

Dennis has been carrying a torch for Gareth Moon since school; Sez conducts a psychological experiment with himself and two jam-jars the subjects; Estela spends sultry summer afternoons observing her neighbours over the fence; Hatima searches for an errant octogenarian in the local hostelries... Each of them encounters Monsterberry Crush, the local vagrant, until snapshot by snapshot his story is told.

Set in various homes, streets, parks and a nearby residence for the demented elderly, The Homeless Heart-throb is a journey into contemporary Wales lit up with the full gamut of human relationships: platonic, romantic and sexual.

Crystal Jeans was born and brought up in Cardiff. She lived in Bristol before doing first a Creative Writing BA then an MPhil at the University of South Wales. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2010), had poetry published by Seren Books, and two short stories published by New Welsh Review. Her first novel, Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize and her second, Light Switches are my Kryptonite, won Wales Book of the Year in the English language fiction category. She now lives in Pontypridd with her partner and daughter.