Nicola Barker Books in Order

These ten stories follow people whose desires and frustrations unsettle ordinary suburban life. A teenage girl, a widow and other outsiders negotiate loneliness, awkward attachments and peculiar encounters in a collection concerned with the distance between social expectations and private needs.

A London betting-shop cashier, an unsettled young man and a would-be cabaret performer become entangled through chance encounters. Around them, illness, desire and a greyhound named Little Buttercup help shape a network of mismatched hopes and relationships.

In a suburban park, shy gardener Phil works alongside gentle Ray under an abusive boss and a one-legged former curator. Their routines grow increasingly strained as unlikely attachments and small acts of resistance disrupt the park's peculiar hierarchy.

A collection of surreal stories brings together people caught in uncomfortable bodies, relationships and surroundings. Strange encounters, including an escaping unborn child and a boy with reversed internal organs, explore alienation through disruptions of everyday expectations.

The lives of an eccentric seaside community intersect through a weed killer, a lost-property worker and a family raising boars. Their unusual connections expose private damage, loneliness and unexpected possibilities for affection in a small English town.

During the summer of 1981, teenage Medve lives with her eccentric family in an isolated Devon island hotel. The arrival of La Roux, a young South African army deserter, unsettles their household and opens possibilities beyond its familiar confines.

Charismatic Wesley attracts a band of persistent followers who pursue him despite their competing motives and eccentric habits. When a newcomer turns her attention toward the isolated Catherine Turpin, the group’s tangled relationships begin to unravel.

David Blaine's public fast in a glass box above the Thames draws spectators into an increasingly unruly spectacle. Against the backdrop of his forty-four-day performance, the novel examines fame, hunger and the shifting relationship between a performer and his audience.

In modern Ashford, troubled lives are disturbed by a past that refuses to remain buried. An ancient court jester’s legacy shadows an eccentric cast as love, jealousy and obsession blur the boundaries between history and the present.

When twenty-seven stolen letters turn up in a village, police constable Roger Topping is assigned to investigate. The correspondence exposes rivalries, grievances and concealed entanglements, turning an apparently modest postal crime into a portrait of an unruly community.

In a Luton hotel bar in 2006, a failing professional golfer crosses paths with an assortment of troubled strangers. Their intersecting lives involve an agoraphobic tattooist, illness, desire and the unstable relationships forming around this unlikely meeting place.

An Irish muralist's arrival in Pett Level in 1971 becomes bound up with a family and its ailing daughter. Years later, an outsider investigates the resulting tragedy, confronting local resistance and connections that complicate his own role in the story.

Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual life is refracted through the people surrounding him, including his devoted but exasperated nephew Hriday. The novel rearranges history and legend to explore faith, bodily vulnerability and the difficulties of caring for a revered religious figure.

In a future community governed by a protective System, poverty, sickness and fear have disappeared. This apparent perfection leaves little room for uncertainty, as the act of telling a story begins to unsettle its orderly world.

Teddy bear maker Charles tries to sell his late mother's house with help from an impatient estate agent. A brief viewing by Wang Shu and her daughter becomes an unruly examination of ordinary conversation, personal control and the possibilities of fiction.

A man begins interrupting live cultural events, and one intervention attracts widespread attention online. A small group sets out to discover his identity and motives, finding their own ideas about art, authenticity and relationships challenged by the investigation.