David Annand: Peterdown

Peterdown, an industrial town with a noble past and a lacklustre present, has been chosen as the regional hub of Britain's first state-of-the-art bullet train network. High Speed+ promises the town a prosperous future but to make way for the new station, a local landmark will be have to be razed to the ground. On the shortlist are the Larkspur housing estate, a significant modernist masterpiece; and the Chapel, the beloved home of the town's football team. Local sports reporter Colin is as desperate to save the Chapel as his architect partner Ellie is determined to save the Larkspur, and they soon find themselves leading increasingly passionate and opposing campaigns. Out of this spins an epic, wide-angle novel, rich with character and incident. Affairs are embarked upon. Conspiracies are uncovered. A broad-based popular insurgency ignites. Peterdown is a riotous novel that brings England's beleaguered streetscape to life and finds lurking there a playful and storied counterculture: mad monks and machine breakers, avant-gardists and non-conformists