England Before the Rain

For some of us, childhood is only a nightmare away. When Stephen Connolly, a self-taught artist, drops out of Cambridge University to paint in the slums of 1970s and 1980s Liverpool, it soon gets much closer than that. He struggles against both anti-Semitism and his brutal Jewish mother, against merciless poverty and corrupting affluence. He is pulled apart by two passions, for bed-mate and for soul-mate. The prostitute Anna teaches him urban survival and the petite lecturer Jenny clings to him like a mad mollusc to an unstable rock.

The city is in turmoil from mass unemployment and riots. But the greatest threats to Stephen's sanity are the monsters and imaginary playmates that emerge from the fog of his solitary, haunted childhood.

Rough, sinister, bohemian, the story battles its way to a happy ending through tragedy, grim humour and the bastard miracle of love. Try this for something scarier and more hard-edged than the average historical romance.