It's June 2011. Best friends Stick and Mac can't wait to turn eighteen and escape their north Manchester estate. They've spent months planning a road trip to Spain, but the night before they're due to leave Mac ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and now Stick must face an uncertain future alone. Resisting his family's well-meaning attempts to help, he focuses on seeking justice for his friend and then meets a girl he can't stop thinking about. When riots break out across the country, Stick is still burning with rage and grief and searching for a way to express them . . .

Sarah Butler is in her early thirties and lives in Manchester. She is the author of Ten Things I've Learnt About Love, which was pre-empted by Penguin USA in a six-figure deal and translated in fourteen languages. She also runs a consultancy which develops literature and arts projects that explore and question our relationship to place. Sarah has been writer in residence on the Central Line, the Greenwich Peninsula, and at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and has taught creative writing for the British Council in Kuala Lumpur.