The Taxi Driver's Daughter

8vo. Pp. [iv], 289. Pictorial wraps.

Shortlisted for the Society of Authors' 2004 Encore Award for Best Second Novel. Longlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Set in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. When her mother is sent to prison for three months for assaulting a policeman with a stiletto shoe, fifteen-year-old Caris goes gently off the rails.

Born in the very house Jane Austen died in, in the Hampshire city of Winchester, Darling went on to have a diverse writing career as a playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer, after her move to Newcastle in 1980. Her first novel, Crocodile Soup, was published to great critical acclaim in 1998 and long-listed for the Orange Prize. She was working on her third novel, A Cure for Dying, when she succumbed to breast cancer, aged 48, in April 2005. "Inventive and quirky, charming and original. A delight." –The Observer