Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby 
This book will be published on September 29, 2009.

“Hornby returns to his roots: music, manic fandom and messy romance in his funny and touching latest, dancing between three perspectives on fame: a sycophantic scholar, an appreciative audience member, a fabled singer-songwriter who can’t see what all the fuss is about.”
—From the Publisher’s Weekly review of Juliet, Naked 

In a dreary seaside town in England, Annie loves Duncan-or thinks she does, because she always has. Duncan loves Annie, but then, all of a sudden, he doesn’t anymore. So Annie stops loving Duncan, and starts getting her own life. She sparks an e-mail correspondence with Tucker Crowe, a reclusive Dylanesque singer- songwriter who stopped making music twenty-two years ago, and who is also Duncan’s greatest obsession. The email flirtation seems very safe, until Tucker is summoned from his Pennsylvania retreat back to the same country where his intriguing new Internet friend resides,

If you like Nick Hornby novels like Juliet, Naked,  High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good, or A Long Way Down, you might like these other modern stories of London relationships.

• Man of the Month Club by Jackie Clune
  Though 39-year-old Amy Stokes is one of London’s “leading designers in baby kitsch,” she claims to have no interest in a baby of her own. All of that changes when she finds an abandoned baby. Although Amy takes that baby to the local hospital, she embarks on a series of one night stands in a hilarious attempt to become pregnant before her 40th birthday.
• Playing with the Grown Ups by Sophie Dalh
  Born in England, Kitty grew up under the influences of her increasinly erractic bohemian mother. Marina is more artist than parent, and her antics include relocating to New York on the advice of her guru. Playing with the Grown-ups is an enchanting novel about growing up in a loving, utterly chaotic household; it is also hilarious, heartbreaking, and scandalous.
• Sky High by Helen Falconer
  Ferdia is a sixteen-year-old with problems. His estranged parents live at opposite ends of Abbey Road, each of them flirting with younger partners. Even so, being young, talented and beautiful in London has its compensations, and Ferdia finds an outlet for his frustrations in a fledgling punk band on the local estate. But when his relationship with a teacher twice his age threatens to scupper his schooling, his home life, and his place in the band, events take an unexpected turn for everyone .
• Second Chance by Jane Green
  After a terrorist attack on an Amtrak train kills 39-year-old Tom, living in the States, his estranged school friends back in England reunite to work through their grief together. The four friends find that each of their lives is impacted in ways they could have never foreseen.
• Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes
  In this tale of urban unmarried female angst, two Londoners who grew up in a small Irish town find themselves ignoring their unhappiness at 31. When a gay pal from back home needs their help, he also pushes each woman to make changes and search for love.
• One for my baby by Tony Parsons
  As his world crumbles around him, Alfie Budd loses himself in a string of numbingly pointless affairs with his students at Churchill’s Language School and tries to learn tai chi from an old Chinese man named George. Alternating seamlessly between laughter and tears, “One for My Baby” is an ingeniously turned story full of biting social insight and naked emotion.
• Flowering Judas, Elizabeth Palmer
  Staged in the bustling world of London’s corporate elite, this witty modern-day fairy tale still spoofs the genre beautifully. Charmian Sinclair is a PR expert with four married lovers, all important businessmen. When her brother-in-law is wrongly fired from a major London corporation, Charmian uses all of her connections and networking through her lovers to exact revenge. 
• Faithful: a novel by Davitt Sigerson
  Nick Clifford is a London trader who ends up married to a gorgeous flight attendant who is way out of his league. When Trish leaves him for the love of her life, she is also pregnant with his child. Even though Trish is married to someone else now,, she and Nick continue to meet for child visitation, which often turns into afternoon sex for the former couple. Stuck in the outsider role with his former family, Nick needs to make a new life for himself.
• Finishing school by Muriel Spark
  Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run a finishing school in Switzerland as a way to support themselves while he works on his novel. Into his creative writing class comes a seventeen-year-old literary prodigy whose historical novel-in-progress on Mary Queen of Scots has already excited the interest of publishers. The inevitable result: keen envy, and a game of cat and mouse not free of sexual jealousy and attraction. Nobody writing has a keener instinct than Muriel Spark for hypocrisy, self-delusion and moral ambiguity, or a more deliciously satirical eye.
• Rescuing Rosie by Isabel Wolff
  With the end of her marriage and her job as an advice columnist in jeopardy, Rose Costelloe takes in a new roommate, a geeky accountant with a passion for astronomy.
• Roomates Wanted by Lisa Jewell
  Toby Dobbs received a big Victorian house with too many bedrooms to count as a wedding present from his father, but his marriage is over within a month. Very alone, and very lonely, Toby posts an advertisement seeking the “Unexpectedly Alone” to become his roommates. Fifteen years later the wayward souls he takes in are still living with him, with no intention of leaving. Toby is in love and wants to get married, but first he and his girlfriend must help Toby’s house of sweet slackers and lovelorn misfits grow up, solve their problems, and set themselves free.

If you like the music and pop culture references in Nick Horby’s writing, try one of these novels:

• The music teacher: a novel by Barbara Hall
  Called “High Fidelity for the orchestra set” by one reviewer, this new novel focuses on a failed musician and recently divorced woman who trains a potential violin prodigy for the life she herself never had. Discussions between employees in a music store have been praised for ringing true.
• Nick & Norah’s infinite playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
  High school student Nick O’Leary, member of a rock band, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex-sweetheart.
• Good times, bad boys by Melanie Murray
  If Echo Brennan is going to have a career as a rock journalist, she’s going to have to have her bitter boyfriend rebuild her reputation, one lyric at a time.
• And my shoes keep walking back to you: a novel by Kathi Kamen Goldmark
  An offbeat spin through the world of country music begins when backup singer Sarah Jean Pixlie gets fired by a major country star because a song Sarah Jean wrote has been nominated for an award. She heads home to the Bay Area to crash with her parents and learns that her one-night fling with a guitarist has led to a pregnancy

Other authors you might enjoy if you like Nick Hornby include:

• Martin Amis 
• Michael Chabon
• Stephen Chbosky 
• Roddy Doyle
• Dave Eggers 
• Helen Fielding 
• John O’Farrell
• Zadie Smith 
• Anne Tyler
• Irvine Welsh 
• Louise Wener 

Also, check out my Author Spotlight on Nick Hornby on our library’s website.