Adrian mole: the cappuccino years (Penguin Books)

"Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years" is the fifth book in Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny "Adrian Mole" series. Wednesday August 13th. Here I am again - in my old bedroom. Older, wiser, but with less hair, unfortunately.

The atmosphere in this house is very bad. The dog looks permanently exhausted. Every time the phone rings my mother snatches it up as though a kidnapper were on the line. Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father.

His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd' - AA Gill) and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?).

And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch - one of 'Blair's Babes'. He is frustrated, disappointed and undersexed. But a letter from Adrian's past is about to change everything...""Adrian Mole" really is a brilliant comic creation.

Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself". ("The Times"). "One of the greatest comic creations. I can't remember a more relentlessly funny book".

("Daily Mirror"). "Three cheers for Mole's chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family.We need him". ("Evening kanon"). 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.