Happy Numbers of Julius Miles

A terrific, warm, and funny novel about fathers and sons, relationships, and living in a modern metropolis

Julius Miles is a mathematical genius, but he is hefty of frame, awkward with the opposite sex, and struggling to bring his existence into balance. When he stumbles across the girl next door naked and dead on her Victorian tiles, he starts to unravel the one equation that's eluded him: that of his own life. And so it is that with the most unlikely of assistants—a transsexual Cupid with a penchant for drugs—he embarks on a quest to find the truth about love, death, family, and how, ultimately, you make your numbers happy. Witty, poignant, and darkly comic, this timely tale of personal relationships in the city is a triumph of linguistic inventiveness.

Jim Keeble is the author of Men and Other Mammals. He also has worked as a screenwriter for Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, John Landis, and Kenneth Branagh.