All Quiet on the Orient Express — Magnus Mills

From the author of The Restraint of Beasts -- hailed by Thomas Pynchon as a "comic wonder" and shortlisted for the prestigious Booker and Whitbread Prizes -- comes a novel that proves Magnus Mills to be the master of pitch-black humor. Told with insidiously beguiling, deadpan charm, All Quiet on the Orient Express gives us the story of an itinerant odd-jobber -- our narrator -- watching the dregs of the summer run out in a run-down campground in England's Lake District, and waiting to set off for the East. When the owner of the campground offers him a small painting job, our hero thinks it would be rude to refuse. One job leads to another, however, and then another, each stranger and more inscrutable than the one before. Soon he is hopelessly and hilariously enmeshed in the off-season mysteries of a placid northern community, grappling with dark forces beyond his power -- some of which hang out at the local pub.