That’s three sashimi rolls. Two vegetable dumplings. One life-changing encounter. Your delivery is on its way ?

For delivery rider Damir, time is money.

He races through cycle lanes next to Uber drivers and grocery vans, delivering your every desire. He arrives with your sushi rolls and pizzas and disappears into the night – Ping! Onto the next drop.

He is invisible: one player in the boardgame of the city.

But one summer’s evening, in a postcode that could be another universe, Damir arrives on Decca’s doorstep and there’s an immediate connection between them.

The man on the bike crosses the divide – suddenly fully seen. And a throwaway delivery sparks a chain of events that will change all their lives, forever.

Praise for Mark Watson:

‘One of my favourite writers’ Adam Kay

‘Funny, heart wrenching, beautifully written’ Jane Fallon

‘Funny and serious and daring and humane. I prefer Mark Watson to Leo Tolstoy – both as a novelist and a stand-up comedian’ Richard Curtis

Whatever I now know about life – or think I know – I found out through failure, disappointment, mortification. I’m writing it all down as much to remind myself as for anyone else – but now you’re here, I’d love you to stick around . . .

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he’s died many times. Not just on stage – though he’ll tell you about that – but in other ways, too. There’s been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all . . .

Eye-opening, revealing and painfully funny, this is a book about mortification, failure and all the times life doesn’t work out as planned. But it also wisely questions whether the things we strive for – recognition, success, the approval of others – are really the things that matter. It’s a book about death that reminds us how to live.

‘Mark Watson makes the base metal of failure into comedy gold’ Adam Kay

Whatever I now know about life – or think I know – I found out through failure, disappointment, mortification. I’m writing it all down as much to remind myself as for anyone else – but now you’re here, I’d love you to stick around . . .

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he’s died many times. Not just on stage – though he’ll tell you about that – but in other ways, too. There’s been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all . . .

Eye-opening, revealing and painfully funny, this is a book about mortification, failure and all the times life doesn’t work out as planned. But it also wisely questions whether the things we strive for – recognition, success, the approval of others – are really the things that matter. It’s a book about death that reminds us how to live.

‘Life is full of hurdles, but this hilarious book brilliantly demonstrates that we learn more by hitting them than clearing them’ Richard Herring

‘Mark Watson makes the base metal of failure into comedy gold’ Adam Kay

The unforgettable new book from award-winning writer and comedian Mark Watson!

‘Mark Watson is one of my favourite writers and Contacts is by far his best book yet’ Adam Kay
‘Witty, emotional and beautifully written’ Jill Mansell
‘It made me laugh, cry, reflect and want to check in on all my friends’ Emma Gannon
‘This is such a great book, funny and serious and daring and humane’ Richard Curtis
‘Funny, heartwrenching, beautifully written’
Jane Fallon

At five to midnight in Euston station, James Chiltern sends one text to all 158 people in his contacts. A message saying goodbye.

Five minutes later, with two pork pies and a packet of chocolate digestives in his pocket, he disappears.

Across the world, 158 phones light up. Phones belonging to James’s friends, his family, people he’s lost touch with. All of them now wondering, where has James gone? What happened to him? And more importantly, can they find him before it’s too late?

Funny and wise, tender and deeply moving, Contacts is a beautiful story about the weight of loneliness, the importance of kindness – and how it’s never too late to reach out.