American singer-songwriter Steve Earle makes an impressive fictional debut with these short stories, based on his life as a veteran of the music business over the last three decades.

There is the gut-wrenching portrait of a nearly famous singer who has become overwhelmed by drugs, and the musical theme continues through Billy The Kid, a fable about everything which will never happen in Nashville. Perhaps more interesting are some of the other stories in the collection which explore more personal facets of Earle's own character. A shady international wanderer known as The American features in several of the stories. This Vietnam veteran and sometime drug smuggler is in many ways Earle's alter ego, the person he believes he would have become had he been drafted. There some surprises too - Wheeler Country is a romantic bittersweet tale of a hitchhiker stranded for years in a small Texas town.

(Secker & Warburg, £10)