The Great Big Book Exchange is a bookshop with a difference. Simon is living with his grandparents after the death of his parents when he happens on it and discovers that Kelly and her boss Terrance offer him the chance to find the books he needs to help him through his bereavement by finding an escape and away of understanding himself.
Simon undertakes a delightful journey of discovery.
Following the death of his parents, 16-year-old Simon moves into his grandparents' claustrophobic bungalow, which quickly becomes a refuge from his bullying peers. United by their voracious appetite for books, Simon and his grandmother stumble across the Great Big Book Exchange - a bookshop with a difference. There they meet impulsive, gothic Kelly and her boss, Terrance - and the friendships forged in the Great Big Book Exchange result in startling and unsettling consequences for all of them.
Paul Magrs was born in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear in 1969. He was educated at Woodham Comprehensive, in Newton Aycliffe, before attending Lancaster University. 'Strange Boy' was his twelfth published book, but his first for a teen audience. Exchange is his third novel for Simon & Schuster Children's. He's always wanted to write the kinds of book he could never find when he was a teenager. Nowadays he runs the Creative Writing MA course at Manchester University.
