Stick and Lipstick (Paperback or Softback)

Hayley Northcott's flying dreams are grounded by a world that values lipstick over stick-and-rudder skills. When the pandemic wrecks her budding pilot career, Hayley is forced to join PanEuro's retro 'Stewardess Academy'-a bizarre, nostalgia-soaked airline obsessed with glamour, tradition, and outdated gender roles. Alongside a cohort of fellow misfits, Hayley battles an absurd regime of posture drills, emergency lipstick checks, and the relentless pursuit of "timeless elegance," all while longing for her true place in the cockpit.

But PanEuro's quirky crew-fellow pilot-turned-cabin-crew Sarah Marsh, brash radio host Emma, and the fiercely independent Poppy-remind Hayley that rebellion is possible even in heels. As she navigates love affairs, aviation mishaps, and the peculiar world of post-Brexit low-cost airlines, Hayley must decide whether to conform, quit, or change the industry from within.

A keen listener of British CHR radio, Thomas's love affair with radio came in the early 2000s, as a keen listener of Wolverhampton's Beacon FM. Now, 20 years later, still listening to radio as a preferred medium at Breakfast, Thomas, as a 30something, has started writing fiction set in the world of Manic Radio, a fictional radio station.