When unworldly 22-year-old Sam is offered the chance to swap life in his regulation bungalow for a job at a countryside retirement home, he drops everything and heads to the rolling fields of Sussex. But things at the eerie Edge Hill are far from what he imagined. The residents are easily over 100 years old, but due to rigorous cosmetic upkeep they look like they are in their twenties. The strange 'handlers' who work in the facility seem to have everything under control - until a geriatric stampede sets off a mind-blowing sequence of events that threatens to alter his life for ever. In this sensational debut novel set in the not-too-distant future, Robert Ford has created a universe of his own in order to brilliantly illuminate the one - and the age - we all share...

After graduating from Reading University in 2003, Robert briefly worked as a journalist in India before turning to the world of film editing, where he has been employed ever since. As well as prose, he has written several screenplays, and his directorial debut Sexy Pig was broadcast on the BBC HD channel last year. He now lives and works in north-west London, roaming the streets in search of inspiration, drinking too much coffee and not writing as much as he should. In 2012, he won Apostrophe Books' Fiction Fast-Track new-writing competition with "The King of Spain", which is his first novel.