ANTHONY MCGOWAN

The smiling one; the one who hurt; the shy one; the one who cried; the one who kissed - that is how he remembers the gang of boys who tormented him when he was a child. Now twenty years have passed and it is time to make them pay. But into the finely wrought net stumbles one man who had nothing to do with the nastiness in that minor public school. Matthew Moriarty carries demons of his own, but when Dominic Chance invites him along to a stag weekend in a remote country house, lost on a fold of the country beyond the reach of mobile telephones, he could never imagine the horror that awaits. Or the beauty. "Stag Hunt" tells the story of ghosts, of demons, of revenge, of desire; and finally of the possibility of redemption through love.

A funny and contemporary tale of Hector Brunty's attempts to survive at school with the help of Henry, his talking brain tumour . . .