Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (Penguin Books)

"The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole" is the second book in Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny "Adrian Mole" series. Sunday July 18th. My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy.

I pushed my sausages away untouched. In this second instalment of teenager "Adrian Mole's Diaries", the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother's pregnancy.

And even though at the mercy of his rampant hormones and the fickle whims of the divine Pandora, a victim of a broken home and his own tortured (though unrecognised) genius, Adrian continues valiantly to bronicle the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence.

Bestselling author Sue Townsend has been Britain's favourite comic writer for over three decades. "Funny, moving and a poke in the eye for adult morality". ("Sunday Express"). "Written with great verve, and showing an uncanny understanding of the young, Sue Townsend holds the balance between innocence and precocity and the result is both hilarious and salutary".

("Daily Telegraph")."Life's no fun for an adolescent intellectual. For the reader it's a hoot". ("New Statesman"). Sue Townsend is Britain's favourite comic author. Her hugely successful novels include eight "Adrian Mole" books, "The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 55 )", "Number Ten", "Ghost Children", "The Queen and I", "Queen Camilla" and "The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year", all of which are highly acclaimed bestsellers.

She has also written numerous well-received plays. She lives in Leicester, where she was born and grew up.