Books in the Adrian Mole series

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first publication of Sue Townsends Adrian Mole, Penguin Audiobooks are re-releasing the audiobook edition of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 in downloadable audio. This classic of comic fiction is hilariously read by Stephen Mangan, who played Adrian Mole in the The Cappuccino Years and also starred in The Green Wing as the hapless Guy Secretan. Friday January 2nd I felt rotten today. Its my mothers fault for singing My Way at two oclock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a childrens home. Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and misunderstood intellectual, Adrians painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

'A satire of our times. Very funny indeed' Sunday Times FEATURED IN 'THE 100 BOOKS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' BBC ARTS The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 is the first book in Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny Adrian Mole series. Friday January 2ndI felt rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children's home.Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared._________'I not only wept, I howled and hooted and had to get up and walk around the room and wipe my eyes so that I could go on reading' Tom Sharpe'We laugh both at Mole and with him. A wonderful comic read, that, like all the best comedy, says something rather meaningful' HeatNOW A MAJOR MUSICAL

'Wonderfully funny and sharp as knives' Sunday TimesIn the third instalment of the hilarious Adrian Mole series, 16-year-old Adrian navigates his way into adulthood . . . Monday June 13th I had a good, proper look at myself in the mirror tonight. I've always wanted to look clever, but at the age of twenty years and three months I have to admit that I look like a person who has never even heard of Jung or Updike. Adrian Mole is an adult. At least that's what it says on his passport. But living at home, clinging to his threadbare cuddly rabbit 'Pinky', working as a paper pusher for the DoE and pining for the love of his life, Pandora, has proved to him that adulthood isn't quite what he expected. Still, without the slings and arrows of modern life what else would an intellectual poet have to write about . . .__________'Essential reading for Mole followers' Times Educational Supplement 'Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it' Sunday Telegraph'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

'An achingly funny anti-hero' Daily MailIn the SIXTH book in Sue Townsend's hilarious and iconic series, Adrian, Leicester's most unlikely ex-con, faces the nit-infested reality of being a single parent . . . __________Monday January 3, 2000So how do I greet the New Millennium? In despair. I'm a single parent, I live with my mother . . . I have a bald spot the size of a jaffa cake on the back of my head . . . I can't go on like this, drifting into early middle-age. I need a Life Plan . . .The 'same age as Jesus when he died', Adrian Mole has become a martyr: a single-father bringing up two young boys in an uncaring world. With the ever-unattainable Pandora pursuing her ambition to become Labour's first female PM; his over-achieving half-brother Brett sponging off him; and literary success elusive, Adrian tries to make ends meet and find a purpose.But little does he realise that his own modest life is about to come to the attention of those charged with policing The War Against Terror . . .__________'One of the great comic creations of our time. Almost every page of his diaries bring a smile to the face' Scotsman'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

'A classic. The Adrian Mole diaries are thoroughly subversive. A true hero for our time' Richard Ingrams'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAYThe fourth book in Adrian Mole's diaries, where we catch up with a hapless Adrian and his desperate attempts to win back the love of his life.__________Thursday January 3rdI have the most terrible problems with my sex life. It all boils down to the fact that I have no sex life. At least not with another person.Finally given the heave-ho by Pandora, Adrian Mole finds himself in the unenviable situation of living with the love-of-his-life as she goes about shacking up with other men. Worse, as he slides down the employment ladder, from deskbound civil servant in Oxford to part-time washer-upper in Soho, he finds that critical reception for his epic novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, is not quite as he might have hoped.But Adrian is about to discover that extraordinary and wonderful things may blossom even in the wilderness . . .__________'A very, very funny book' Sunday Times'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAYCelebrate Adrian Mole's 50th Birthday with this new edition of the FIFTH BOOK in his diaries, where Adrian faces divorce, fatherhood and (short-lived) television stardom . . . __________Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?). And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him.Frustrated, disappointed and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything . . .'With the Mole books, Townsend has an unrivalled claim to be this country's foremost practising comic novelist' Mail on Sunday'Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation. Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself' The Times'One of the greatest comic creations. I can't remember a more relentlessly funny book' Daily Mirror'Three cheers for Mole's chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family. We need him' Evening Standard

'Effortlessly hilarious. Brilliant satire and tragedy' Times'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAYIn the EIGHTH & FINAL BOOK in comic legend Sue Townsend's hilarious and iconic series, Adrian continues to struggle with his love life, endures a painfully awkward school play and contemplates the unsettling prospect of applying genital poultice . . .__________Sunday 1st JulyNO SMOKING DAY. A momentous day! Smoking in a public place or place of work is forbidden in England. Though if you a lunatic, a prisoner, an MP or a member of the Royal Family you are exempt.Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter. He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter. His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty. But all is not well.The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure. The spark has fizzled out of his marriage. His mother is threatening to write her autobiography (A Girl Called Shit). And Adrian's nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent . . .__________'A tour de force by a comic genius and if it isn't the best book published this year, I'll eat my bookshelf' Daily Mail, Books of the Year'Hilarious. Comic gold' Sunday Times'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin MoranThe hilarious SEVENTH BOOK in Sue Townsend's bestselling series, sees Adrian fall in love, be inconvenienced by the war and face his new nemesis: a swan from the local canal . . . _____________Wednesday April 2ndMy birthday.I am thirty-five today. I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death.Adrian Mole is middle-aged but still scribbling. Working as a bookseller and living in Leicester's Rat Wharf; finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair; locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud; measuring his expanding bald spot; and trying to win-over the voluptuous Daisy . . . Adrian yearns for a better more meaningful world. But he's not ready to surrender his pen yet...______________'Hilarious. Deft, gleeful mockery impales modish fads, from home make-overs to new-age crazes, while fiercer irony is trained on the country's involvement with Iraq' Sunday Times'Richly comic ... stuffed full of humour, tragedy, vanity, pathos and, very occasionally, wisdom' Guardian'Completely hilarious, laugh-out-loud, a joy' Daily Mirror

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole is the second book in Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny Adrian Mole series.Sunday July 18thMy father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched. In this second instalment of teenager Adrian Mole's diaries, the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother's pregnancy. And even though at the mercy of his rampant hormones and the fickle whims of the divine Pandora, a victim of a broken home and his own tortured (though unrecognised) genius, Adrian continues valiantly to chronicle the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence. ________'Funny, moving and a poke in the eye for adult morality' Sunday Express 'Written with great verve, and showing an uncanny understanding of the young, Sue Townsend holds the balance between innocence and precocity and the result is both hilarious and salutary' Daily Telegraph 'Life's no fun for an adolescent intellectual. For the reader it's a hoot' New Statesman