Stealing Happy
Loan shark Chick Lennon is notorious around Sonny Gilmour's way, and not for anything good.
So when Sonny discovers his mum has borrowed money from Chick to pay the rent, he finds himself in need of the quickest of get-rich-quick schemes.
With the help of best mate Jonah and quiet genius Carolina Swift, he hatches a plot – to pay back what Mum owes using Chick's own ill-gotten gains. It's not a fool-proof plan, and it's not helped by Sonny's Tourette's making him blurt out 'ROB CHICK LENNON!' at the top of his lungs every time things get dicey.
But with his dad suffering from long Covid and his mum already struggling to cope, Sonny knows it's down to him to keep his family out of Chick's clutches ...
An authentic, funny and heartfelt contemporary YA by multi-award-winning author, Brian Conaghan. Perfect for fans of Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Elle McNicoll
Brian Conaghan lives and works in the Scottish town of Coatbridge. He has an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow and for many years worked as a teacher in Scotland, Italy and Ireland. His novel When Mr Dog Bites was shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, The Bombs That Brought Us Together won the Costa Children’s Book Award, The Weight of a Thousand Feathers won the Irish Book Award for Teen/Young Adult Book of the Year and The M Word was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards. Cardboard Cowboys, Brian’s first middle-grade novel, was published in 2021 and Swimming on the Moon followed in 2023.
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