Sideways Trilogy

The follow-up novel to the blockbuster Sideways tracks the continuing story of Miles Raymond and his buddy Jack. It's seven years later. Miles has written a novel that has been made into a wildly successful movie, and the movie has changed his life. Jack, contrarily, is divorced, has a kid, and is on the skids. Phyllis, Miles's mom, has suffered a stroke that's left her wheelchair-bound and wasting away in assisted-living. She desperately wants to live with her sister in Wisconsin. When Miles gets invited to be master of ceremonies at a Pinot Noir festival in Oregon, he hatches a harebrained road trip. With Jack as his co-pilot, he leases a handicapped-equipped rampvan, hires a pot-smoking Filipina caretaker and, with his mother's rascally Yorkie in tow, they take off for Wisconsin via Oregon's fabled Willamette Valley, where Miles is Master of ceremonies of the International Pinot Festival. It is a road novel for the smart set and wine lover, and anything but predictable.

From bestselling author Rex Pickett comes “Sideways: New Zealand”, the next delightfully dark and funny novel. Miles Raymond thought things were going relatively well. Miles, the now iconic alter ego of author Rex Pickett, who was first introduced in the critically acclaimed book Sideways and its award-winning movie adaptation, resurfaces on the South Island of New Zealand. All he has in life is a half hectare of Pinot Noir, a guest cottage where his days are numbered, a special needs cat named Max, and a winemaker partner pressing him for a more committed relationship. These modest assets are balanced by the impending publication of Miles's new novel, “A Year of Pure Feeling”. His fledgling publicist has arranged for a book tour that will take Miles along the east coast of New Zealand, from Oamaru to Auckland, to a series of increasingly interesting Kiwi book clubs. In a six-ton camper van! In the winter! Jack Manse, after a divorce and a financial disaster, has reinvented himself and gleefully volunteers to copilot, too delighted at the prospect of a road trip and a reunion with Miles to heed his friend's objections. Alternately blackly comical and poignantly heartbreaking, what started as a book tour through New Zealand becomes a journey through Miles's soul.