Author back with an ode to London

The author of High Fidelity has a new novel out, and it's a sweet sojourn to 1960s London, where a cast of writers and actors embark on a groundbreaking television show that changes the course of their lives.

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby follows Barbara Parker, who has the looks to be crowned Miss Blackpool, but who wants nothing more than to be the next Lucille Ball.

"She wished that she could be happy, of course she did; she wished she wasn't different," Hornby writes. "Her school friends and her colleagues in the cosmetics department at R.H.O. Hills didn't seem to want to claw, dig, wriggle, and kick their way out of the town like she did, and sometimes she ached to be the same as them."