Chris Cleave's debut novel, Incendiary—in which a grieving mother pens a raw, pleading letter to Osama bin Laden in the wake of a London terrorist attack—received a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and was adapted into a film starring Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor. The book gained notoriety for the macabre coincidence of its publication in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2005—the day of the London terrorist bombings. Cleave's second novel, Little Bee—an "astonishing, flawless novel" (Library Journal)—was a no. 1 New York Times bestseller that braided the fates of a Nigerian orphan and a wealthy British couple and examined the lack of compassion in the world of refugees. In Gold, the messily intertwined stories of three world-class British cyclists unfold during the final push for an Olympic medal.