Showing results by author "Patrick Gale" in All Categories

Laura, an impoverished Cornish girl, meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura's husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her boy alone, working as a laundress and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius.

When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies she leaves behind an extraordinary body of work - but for her family there is a legacy of secrets and painful revelations. To her children she is both curse and blessing, as they cope with the inheritance of her passions - and demons. Only their father's gift of stillness can withstand Rachel's destructive influence and the suspicion that her family came second to her art.

Forced to abandon his wife and child, Harry Cane signs up for emigration to the newly colonized Canadian prairies. His allotted homestead in a place called Winter is a world away from the golden suburbs of turn-of-the-century Edwardian England. And yet it is here, isolated in a seemingly harsh landscape, under the threat of war, madness, and an evil man of undeniable magnetism, that the fight for survival will reveal in Harry an inner strength and capacity for love beyond anything he has ever known before.

Seth, a musical prodigy on the eve of his 16th birthday, is obsessed with sex and with the men he might meet, as well as with his strange family - his arch mother, his beautiful sister and his damaged, distant father. Mo, a policewoman struggling with moral dilemmas and her sexuality in the violent, bigoted police force of the 1980s, wants only to find romance. In this haunting tale of self discovery and hidden identities, Mo and Seth will connect to face unexpected truths about themselves and those they have chosen to love.

From the author of the best-selling Notes From an Exhibition comes an irresistible, searching and poignant historical novel of love, relationships, secrets and escape to find yourself, sometimes you must lose everything .A privileged elder son, and stammeringly shy, Harry Cane has followed convention at every step. Even the beginnings of an illicit, dangerous affair do little to shake the foundations of his muted existence.

Gentle, witty and sometimes disturbing, Dangerous Pleasures is Patrick Gale's first collection of much-loved short stories. A funeral party ends in an unexpected manner; parents are faced with difficult decisions about their daughter; a housewife transforms her personality with a simple touch-up; a father's trip to his former school brings back memories of love he thought buried forever.

In his second collection of short stories, Patrick Gale creates worlds where the making and breaking of relationships - between mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, lovers and strangers - offer unforgettably dark and moving twists to these utterly unpredictable lives.

1970s Weston-Super-Mare, and 10-year-old oddball Eustace, an only child, has life transformed by his mother's quixotic decision to sign him up for cello lessons. Music making brings release for a boy who is discovering he is an emotional volcano. He laps up lessons from his young teacher, not noticing how her brand of glamour is casting a damaging spell over his frustrated and controlling mother.

From the best-selling author of A Place Called Winter, Tree Surgery for Beginners is a funny, elegant and eclectic novel of love, lies and the secrets we live with. When Lawrence Frost wakes up one morning to discover his wife and child have gone missing, there is gruesome evidence to suggest he may be the main suspect in a murder investigation. Confused, threatened with the loss of everything he loves, Lawrence is sent to the Caribbean on a kill-or-cure cruise.

Truly compelling and rich with emotional insight, Patrick Gale's Cornish novel Rough Music is a beautiful story of a marriage and the secrets a family holds. Julian is a contented if naïve only child, and a holiday on the coast of North Cornwall should be perfect, especially when distant American cousins join the party. But their arrival brings upheaval and unexpected turmoil. It is only as a seemingly well-adjusted adult that Julian is able to reflect on the realities of his parents' marriage and to recognise that the happy, cheerful boyhood he thought was his is infused with secrets, loss and the memory of betrayals that have shaped his life.

On a clear, crisp summer's day in Cornwall, a young man carefully prepares to take his own life and asks family friend John Barnaby to pray with him. Barnaby - priest, husband and father - has always tried to do good, though life hasn't always been rosy. Lenny's request poses problems, not just for Barnaby but for his wife and family and the wider community, as the secrets of the past push themselves forcefully into the present for all to see.

I shouldn't have been there. The mistress should not, as a rule, be present at the wife's funeral.... Mary is often mistaken for a spinster - a game spinster, but a spinster nonetheless. In fact, she's the long-term mistress of Tom Spellman, a well-known captain of industry. When Tom's wife dies, he's certain Mary will agree to marry him. After all, she and his son, Josh, get along terribly well, and it would make life really rather easy. But Mary isn't at all sure she wants to be anyone's wife; she likes her independence and is perfectly happy being a mistress.

Insightful and full of understanding and warmth, Patrick Gale's Friendly Fire is a richly compelling story of adolescence, sexuality and the lessons we carry forever. Sophie, an orphan in love with learning, is sure she will thrive in Tatham's, an esteemed boarding school, having survived years of institutional living. But she soon finds herself lost among its cliques and rituals. Befriending two teenage boys, she experiences the first ache of futile love, then a brilliant teacher's inappropriate attention to one of the trio threatens to destroy them all.

Eight years ago, Robin fled from his family, friends, and entire life to suffer a complete breakdown in an island monastery. Now he's reconnecting with those he left behind: his mother and father, with their own small secrets, and Jake and Candida, both of whom were impossibly close to Robin when he disappeared. But while the people he abandoned have missed him, Robin finds that everything has changed. He alone can decide what he will do in this new world of resentment, possibility and triumphant love....

American Professor Evan Kirby, moving to Barrowcester to research paradise after a successful book on hell, expects a very English cathedral society of gentle clergymen and coffee mornings. What he finds instead is a town thrown into chaos by strange, supernatural events, scandalous pregnancies and a Satanic summoning of a young feral girl.

Laura has left Paris to return to her childhood home, to act as carer to her ageing, but still brilliantly sharp, mother. Ben has moved away from his beautiful and loyal wife to support his brother, alone since their own mother's death. A chance encounter will remind Ben and Laura both of the relationship they once shared, many years ago. On one day, they will come face-to-face with the feelings they had, the chemistry that still lies between them and the choices they must make: to be true to themselves or true only to what they believe to be right.

German composer Edward Pepper escapes to England just before the war begins in earnest. Struck with TB, he is recuperating in hospital when he meets Sally, a young doctor who has battled her way through medical school, despite the opposition of her parents. They fall in love and marry, settling in the fenlands of East Anglia. Years later, Edward watches as his grandchildren trip up against life and death and realises that patterns can repeat themselves, bringing both pain and unexpected discovery.

Bittersweet and startling, A Sweet Obscurity is a novel of childhood, love and the consequences of how lives are lived. Since her mother's death, nine-year-old Dido has been living with her eccentric aunt, acting as peacekeeper between Eliza, her estranged husband, Giles, and his girlfriend. They are each cruelly burdened in different ways. Chance draws them down to Cornwall, where a country idyll offers to lighten their urban cares.

Judith shares her life with her partner, Joanna, on the lonely wilds of Bodmin Moor, far from the memories and trauma of her childhood. But when Judith's sister, Deborah, is tragically widowed, the women agree to meet. And what is intended to be a harmonious reunion turns into an entanglement of resentment, jealousy and desire, as aspects of the past force themselves into an uneasy present, with some surprising results.

Domina Tey is a playwright, celebrated by friends, her husband, and the public alike, yet she fears losing her vital edge. Her solution: to leave her beautiful home in Bristol and seek adventure in a squalid West London bedsit, where she will live under an assumed name with only her typewriter for companionship. Once installed, however, she can't resist meddling in the business of others, forgetting that blurring fact with fiction can be a dangerous game....