If This Is Home by Stuart Evers

A dazzling first novel from the critically acclaimed author of Ten Stories About Smoking. Mark Wilkinson has three names. He left his own behind in the rainy north of England. American immigration knows him as Joe Novak. And at the Valhalla, the mysterious complex where he sells lofty ambition and dark desires, he goes by Mr Jones. Since he was eighteen, Mark has been running away. Running from his small town, his vanished mother, his broken father. But one night in Las Vegas, shocked by violence and ambushed by memories, he is propelled back to his real name and his real past. Back to Bethany Wilder: carnival queen, partner in dreams, and tragic ghost. From the acclaimed author of Ten Stories About Smoking comes an electrifying novel about the power of dreams to destroy, of memory to distort – and of what it means to be home.