Loan shark Chick Lennon is notorious around Sonny Gilmour's way, and not for anything good.
So when Sonny discovers his mum has borrowed money from Chick to pay the rent, he finds himself in need of the quickest of get-rich-quick schemes.
With the help of best mate Jonah and quiet genius Carolina Swift, he hatches a plot - to pay back what Mum owes using Chick's own ill-gotten gains. It's not a fool-proof plan, and it's not helped by Sonny's Tourette's making him blurt out 'ROB CHICK LENNON!' at the top of his lungs every time things get dicey.
But with his dad suffering from long Covid and his mum already struggling to cope, Sonny knows it's down to him to keep his family out of Chick's clutches ...
Brian Conaghan lives and works in the Scottish town of Coatbridge. He was a teacher for many years, and his novel When Mr Dog Bites was shortlisted for the 2015 Carnegie Medal. The Bombs That Brought Us Together won the 2016 Costa Children’s Book Award, The Weight of a Thousand Feathers won the 2018 Irish Book Award for Teen/YA Book of the Year, and We Come Apart, a verse novel co-authored with Carnegie Medal-winner Sarah Crossan, won the 2018 UKLA Book Award. Cardboard Cowboys, Brian’s first middle-grade novel, published in 2021 and is full of his trademark heart, humour and crackling dialogue.
