Bøker av Nina de la Mer

Introducing an unforgettable heroine for our times, Nina de la Mer's bold and unflinching novel captures the mood of an urban generation, seduced by celebrity and fuelled by drink, drugs and pornography. Arriving in London, Hayleigh finds work as lap dancer 'Layla', intent on earning enough cash to make a fresh start. She has the wit, the looks and skilful moves, exploiting men before they can exploit her. But over the course of a chaotic week she must make the biggest decision of her life and fight for the one thing she truly wants. This is a brilliant and moving novel, imaginatively powerful and authentically conceived. Thirty years after the resounding success of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, and written in a similarly intense second-person narrative, Layla speaks for a new generation.

Set in the early 1990s on a British army base, 4 AM tells the story of Cal and Manny, soldiers posted to Germany as army chefs. Bored and institutionalized, the pair soon succumb to the neon temptations of Hamburg's red-light district, where they dive into a seedy world of recreational drugs and all-night raves. But it is only a matter of time before hedonism and military discipline clash head on, with comic and poignant consequences.Life-affirming raving soon gives way to gloomy, drug-fuelled nights in fast-food restaurants, at sex shows, and in Turkish dive bars. As a succession of events ratchets up the pressure on Cal and Manny their friendship is tested, a secret is revealed, and a shocking betrayal changes one of their lives forever.Drawing on personal experience and extensive research, 4 AM depicts life in a peacetime Army, and a civilian milieu in which conflict is never far away. Driven by two distinctive voices, and written in a lively and buzzing style, Nina de la Mer's debut novel holds a mirror up to youth culture at the end of the twentieth century. The reflection is not always a flattering one.

Embarrassing Sexual Misadventures is a hilarious and unique book full of factual accounts of bad bonking and fruitless fornication. It is a huge collection of incredible cautionary tales about the most undignified ways you can be caught getting your rocks off - and they're all true!