This is the story of Jasper Jackson, a twenty-nine year old Londoner with an unusual and interesting occupation.

He is an engaging, intelligent and quick-witted young man and his commentary provides a funny guide to life in the modern day city. Though a little self-deluded, he has few serious troubles …

Until he meets Madeleine, a captivating but enigmatic woman who is his equal in every way. Madly vulnerable for the first time, he is bound for his comeuppance at last.

Jasper’s work is to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for a rich American client. As he completes his commission (revealing to us the fascinating art of the calligrapher), he discovers that these wise and beautiful love poems begin to illuminate his own experiences – of the difference between love and lust, between men and women, between truth and deceit and the cost of constancy.

As well as bringing modern London vividly to life, The Calligrapher is keenly perceptive on contemporary relationships and modern mores. Underlying its sparkling surface are Jasper's wry but heartfelt observations about the diminishment of our culture: the trivial masquerading as the consequential, the rising tide of ignorance, the triumph of the lowest common denominator.

At once wickedly witty and deeply serious, sweet and cynical, romantic and reflective, this stylish, wonderfully entertaining novel is a remarkably accomplished and exciting literary debut.

The Calligrapher                                  

Self-Help (UK) / Pravda (USA)

Set between London and St. Petersburg, "Self Help/Pravda" is the absorbing story of a family - half-English, half-Russian - with many secrets and a dark, disturbed history. Masha Glover returns home from exile, where she dies suddenly and alone. Her twins, Gabriel and Isabella, must come together and confront the contorted legacy of the past in the shape of their estranged, malevolent father, Nicholas, and the pitiless stranger, Arkady Artamenkov.

"Self Help" is a beautifully written novel, alive with feeling, intelligence and dark humour, and always directly engaged with the modern world. In addressing the most elemental of contradictions - human nature and nurture; honesty and deception; what it means to live with integrity when so much is so easily discredited - it emerges as that rarest of discoveries: a truly gripping story.