Hunky Dory — Paul Magrs

Dodie Golightly has just taken charge of Hunky Dory café: the best café in the world. In a neglected corner of south Manchester they've been serving frothy coffee and late night pizzas longer than Dodie's even been alive. She's in her mid-thirties, still living at home, and waiting for her life to start. She's hidden herself away too long..!Her mother Elena has other ideas for the café her recently-deceased husband created. She's decided it's time to go upmarket and continental. This glamorous widow is a bundle of energy: intent on saving the local library, finishing off her memoirs and even organising a little light kidnapping of unruly Creative Writing Professors...New to the Golightly circle is Ian - a young gay man who comes to work at the café: whose dream is to have a tiny secondhand bookshop and watch the world go by. He's cynical about love and stuck in a mostly-off romance with a lad who works on the market. But this is the year that Ian's about to fall in love at last...It looks as if Dodie has found love, too - with a sexy, slightly tubby guy who's writing the strangest-sounding sci-fi novel in the world.These three and their best friends and neighbours embark on all kinds of adventures through long summer nights in Manchester, with library sit-ins, nights out dancing, hostage-takings and lots of nocturnal coffee and gin... A bit like Armistead Maupin in multicultural south Manchester - it's a novel about storytelling, friendship and love: and about finding your place in the world.