Iris Murdoch pops into an internet chatroom to discuss sex, literature and life-after-death with the impetuous Funkymonkey ... Marion from the delicatessen counter fatally crashes her Fiesta while yelling into her mobile phone ... and the evil Dr Fu Manchu chases Virginia Woolf screaming through the streets of Bloomsbury ... Disasters, secret identities and heart-to-hearts in the middle of the night ...

From the wild and unfettered imagination of Paul Magrs comes his most extraordinary novel yet. Ostensibly a week in the life of an ordinary Norwich community, Aisles unfolds into a strange, tender fantasy. The lines between friendship and love, between affection and frustration, between being and not being; all are explored through the complex lives of his characters.

A novel for anyone who refuses to accept the ordinary, Aisles is the work of one of literature's most exciting young talents.

PAUL MAGRS is best known for his creations Brenda and Effie who face many challenges in a ghoulish version of Whitby. He has also written numerous Doctor Who novels, books for children and young adults and is lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

"His most extraordinary novel yet." -- Publishing News' Top Autumn Picks

"Packed with subversive imagination and emotional depth, this is a truly magical tale of seemingly ordinary lives." - Attitude

"..wonderfully realised..an amusing, truthful and inspiring novel." -- Gay Times

"Big themes such as the nature of afterlife, chance, fate, and making the most of your existence are all explored in a highly entertaining and intriguing way." -- The List

"This extraordinary novel is made up of a series of loosely-connected short stories set in England’s East Anglia. They feature a truly unusual cast of characters, ranging from two men struggling with their attraction to each other, to a husband coping inadequately with the accidental death of his wife, to a daughter -- long estranged from her mother -- who shows up at the mom’s funeral, to a four-foot-tall woman who has a house full of dogs and advice for anyone who crosses her path. An element of the surreal helps to weave the stories together, climaxing in the final chapter, where the various characters stroll the aisles of the local supermarket. . . .To say that AISLES is a different kind of novel is understating the case, since it is one of those rare ones deserving a second reading." -- I Love a Mystery