What are our favourite authors' words? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? How can we judge a book by its cover? Data meets literature in this playful and informative look at our favourite authors and their masterpieces.

'What fun this is! Ben Blatt's charming book applies numerical know-how to questions of literary style, teasing out insights about cliffhangers, adverbs' JORDAN ELLENBERG, author of How Not to Be Wrong

'Lively ... worthwhile ... Read this book thoughtfully. It's fun. And, I think, the shape of interesting things to come' The Times

'Fascinating ... the book had me humming with pleasure' The Sunday Times

***Nabokov's Favourite Word is Mauve***is a playful look at what the numbers have to say about our favourite authors and their classic books.

Journalist and statistician Ben Blatt asks the questions that have intrigued curious book lovers for generations: Does each writer have their own stylistic footprint? Do men and women write differently? What are the crutch words our best-loved authors fall back on?

Spanning from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to fan fiction, JK Rowling and Stephen King, Blatt reveals the quirks and oddities of the world's greatest writers.

This is a lighthearted, humorous book that uses numbers to inform our understanding of words to enlighten, to clarify, and, above all, to entertain.