Before Getting Rid of Gil and Josh is both a love story and a comedy-thriller, rather than any stark account of homicide. It is set in 1954, before it was legal for two men sexually to love one another and follows the attempt of an MP's twin to blackmail him. The MP and his partner decide they have to scare off this sibling but when their tactics unexpectedly result in death, they have to resort to desperate measures to avoid suspicion falling in the right place.

About a Boat Trip, a Hold Up, a Strip Show and You can be seen as a latter-day Brief Encounter, occurring some forty years later, in 1986. It concerns Stella McCabe, an attractive middle-aged woman who is thinking of leaving her husband and becoming the sort of person she would like herself to be - independent and far less conventional. Her world is diverted when she meets a man of half her age who turns out to be a Chippendale-type stripper - and, ridiculously, starts to fall in love with him. Is Vince the catalyst she needs or can a selfish husband undergo a change of heart?

Both books are lively, entertaining, and transport the reader to a world of light-hearted fiction, and once begun, will grip its reader until the final pages have been turned.

Praise for Stephen Benatar's previous works: A masterpiece...matchlessly clever...wholly unique - John Carey, Literary Critic Benatar writes with wit and humour about subjects most writers do not tackle - ageing, age, the frequent nastiness of family life. - Doris Lessing With this marvellous book, poetry and character return to the English novel. - The Times Literary Supplement