Everyone has had their eye caught by an unusual classified advertisement and wondered about the story behind it. For the past two years William Shaw has investigated the eccentric, sad and occasionally alarming truth behind these ads and written about them for the Observer magazine. This book brings together, in expanded form, the most remarkable of those pieces. In it we encounter, among many others, the mother searching for the death certificate of her dead Bulgarian husband; the young woman investigating the healing power of crop circles; and the angry man, adopted in childhood, who after twenty years searching for his birth father was rejected by him and now wants to form a rock band with other adoptees. Small Ads is a transporting book that satisfies our insatiable curiosity about other peoples lives. It is as surprisingly moving as it is highly entertaining.

William Shaw writes the 'Small Ads' column in the Observer OM magazine. He works as a journalist in both the UK and the USA, writing for the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph and the Independent on Sunday, and for magazines such as GQ, The Face and Arena. His books include Spying in Guru Land (1994) on a year joining religious cults, Travellers (1993) on New Age travellers, and Westsiders (2000) on young men trying to make it in the hip hop industry.