Benjamin Johncock

★

Novels

The Last Pilot, 2015

Picador (USA)

Myriad Editions (UK)

★ Winner of Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award

★ Shortlisted for East Anglian Book of the Year Award

★ Longlisted for Not The Booker Prize, The Guardian

★ Book of the Year, Ian Rankin

★ Book of the Year, San Antonio Express

★ Selected, Brave New Reads

★ Best Summer Read, The Independent

★ Best New Books, People Magazine

★ Best New Books, Paste Magazine

★ Hidden Gems of the Year, The Observer

★ Favourite Reads of the Year, Jenny Rohn, The Guardian

★ Best Books of the Year, The Reading Agency

★ Best Books of the Year, Bookmunch

★ A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick

★ An Indie Next Pick

★ Editor’s Pick—Best Literature & Fiction, Amazon

★ Editor’s Choice, BookBrowse

★ Publishers Weekly (Starred & Boxed)

Set against the backdrop of one of the most emotionally charged periods in American history, The Last Pilot begins in the bone-dry Mojave Desert during the late 1940s, where US Air Force test pilots are racing to break the sound barrier. Among the exalted few is Jim Harrison; dedicated to his wife, Grace, and their baby daughter.

By the 1960s, the space race is underway and Harrison and his colleagues are offered a place in history as the world’s first astronauts. But when his young family is thrown into crisis, Jim is faced with a decision that will affect the course of the rest of his life – whether to accept his ticket to the moon and at what cost.

With echoes of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, The Last Pilot reignites the thrill and excitement of the space race through the story of one man’s courage in the face of unthinkable loss.

★

Select reviews

“Nostalgic and heart-rending... supercharged Hemingway at 70,000 feet.” —Washington Post

“A remarkable achievement... Johncock weaves a beguiling story. A book that hooks the reader from the very first sentence... lit by the fire of 1960s adventure, and also by the blazing beauty of a new literary star.”

—Boston Globe

“Reading Johncock one is reminded of Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy and especially of James Salter’s The Hunters. His mastery of the American idiom is perfect. This is a first-rate novel by a major new talent. Ten out of ten.”

—The Spectator

“With great skill (and some nerve), Benjamin Johncock has inserted his fiction into the true history of the early space race and it’s almost impossible to see the join. A big, muscular novel... tenderly undercut by the quite different theme of a marriage and a family under unbearable stress... convincing and moving.”

—Guardian

“Transports readers to a time of scotch-soaked bars, Walter Cronkite on the news, and astronauts as superheroes... Ingeniously plotted, deftly written, and engrossing.”

—People Magazine

More reviews here.

Further picks here.

★

Resources

Read the first chapter.

Download Book Club reading and discussion guides here and here.

★

Formats

Hardback

Paperback

Large Print

eBook (including Kindle)

Audible

Audio CD

Audio download

Available from all good bookshops & probably some crappy ones too.

★