In The Fib, The Swap and The Trick, George Layton's collections of short stories evoke a nostalgic, atmospheric view of growing up in the 1950s. Now published together for the first time as a bind-up

The coach started to move off. I felt frightened. All these weeks, looking forward to it, and now I didn't want to go. Please, Mum, let me go home. She was running alongside, waving her hanky and crying . . .

He'd nagged his mother for weeks to let him go on the school exchange, swapping his home in the backstreets of a northern town for a posh house in London. With a proper family. With a dad. But now it was all going wrong . . .