Going Postal

Moist is watched over by Mr. Pump, a huge clay golem who never lets him escape, and helped by the elderly Junior Postman Groat and the pin-obsessed young Stanley. The post office has been defeated by the clacks, a network of semaphore towers that sends messages across the continent and is now run by a greedy and dangerous businessman, Reacher Gilt, who cares only for profit.

Using all his tricks of showmanship and persuasion, Moist brings the post office back to life, invents postage stamps, promises impossible deliveries and dreams up a daring race against the clacks. Along the way he falls for Adora Belle Dearheart, a fierce, chain-smoking golem rights campaigner whose family was ruined by Gilt. The novel is a funny satire of business, technology and greed, but also a story about finding honesty and meaning. It can be read without knowing the earlier Discworld books.

Funny, clever and heartfelt, one of the best places to start reading Discworld, with a hero who discovers that doing good can be the greatest trick of all. It is followed by Making Money and Raising Steam. About 474 pages in the Corgi paperback.