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An ingenious, funny and moving novel about love, loss and second chances – and the power of music to bring us together.
Dinah has an especial hero: Bucky Bronco, who recorded a string of soul gems in the late Sixties and then vanished off the face of the earth. When she manages to contact Bucky she can't believe her luck.
Over in Chicago, Bucky Bronco is down on his luck – and has been since the loss of his beloved wife Maybelle. The best he can hope for is to make ends meet, and try and stay high. But then an unexpected invitation arrives, from someone he's never met, to come to somewhere he's never heard of. With nothing to lose – and in need of the cash – Bucky boards a plane. And so Bucky finds himself in rainy Scarborough, where everyone seems to know who he is – preparing to play for an audience for the first time in nearly half a century.
Over the course of the week, he finds himself striking up new and unexpected friendships; and facing his past, and its losses, for the very first time.
By the award-winning author of The Offing and The Gallows Pole. Perfect for fans of Nick Hornby, David Nicholls and Jonathan Coe.
Praise for Rare Singles:
Selected as a book of 2024 by the Guardian and New Statesman
'A book of rare charm by a writer who understands the magic of music' Ian Rankin
'An entertaining tale of grit, fecklessness and Northern Soul' Daily Telegraph
'The book you didn't know you need' Bobby Palmer
'A tale of soul music and second chances' Guardian
'The laureate of friendship, a chronicler of unexpected, transformative connection' Wendy Erskine
'A meditation on grief, love, and the redemptive power of music' Observer
Benjamin Myers was born in Durham in 1976. He is the author of ten books, including The Offing, which was an international bestseller and selected for the Radio 2 Book Club; The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and was adapted for a BBC series by Shane Meadows with A24; Beastings which was awarded the Portico Prize for Literature, and Pig Iron which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize. He has also published non-fiction, poetry and crime novels and his journalism has appeared in publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, Caught by the River and many more. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. benjaminmyerswriter.com / @BenMyers1
Following the Goldsmiths-winning Cuddy, a tale of soul music and second chances, as a washed-up American singer meets a Scarborough woman * GUARDIAN, Books to look out for in 2024 * Warm, witty and unexpected, Rare Singles is that rare thing – a novel filled with truth and tenderness and genuine humanity. The book you didn’t know you need -- BOBBY PALMER, author of Isaac and the Egg People, you’re going to love this. A beautiful vignette of redemption, loss, faded seaside glamour and Northern Soul -- MAT OSMAN Scarborough’s Northern Soul scene is the setting for Rare Singles by the Durham-born Benjamin Myers, who won the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize * NEW STATESMAN, 2024: The year in fiction * Returns Myers to his past as a music journalist, telling a warmly nostalgic tale of northern soul and unlikely friendship in Scarborough. The great but forgotten Bucky Bronco’s visit to the Yorkshire coast is handled with Myers’s customary humour and generosity of spirit. * GUARDIAN, Fiction to look out for in 2024 * Praise for Benjamin Myers: One of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers * I NEWS * What a radical thing, these days, to have written a book so full of warmth and kindness ... Gorgeous -- MAX PORTER A writer of extraordinary and incandescent talent -- ALEX PRESTON Here is a strong, spiritual writer who sees and loves every dewdrop, old oak, soft little animal and buried sword, and offers them up to us like the precious treasures they are * THE TIMES * Book by book, over the past decade, Ben Myers has proved himself to be one of the most singular, moving and crucial voices of our times -- DAVID PEACE
