Ergebnis von "Patrick Gale" in Alle Kategorien

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.

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.

When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children are left to unravel a legacy of secrets and emotional damage.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Devastatingly moving and full of psychological insight, A Perfectly Good Man is a warm, humane Cornish novel from the best-selling author of A Place Called Winter. 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.

When 40-something Laura Lewis is obliged to abandon a life of stylish independence in Paris to care for her elderly mother it seems all romantic opportunities have gone up in smoke. Then she runs into Ben, the great love of her student days - and, as she only now dares admit, the emotional touchstone against which she has judged every man since. Are they brave enough to take a second chance at the lasting happiness fate has offered them?

A father makes an unexpected discovery about his son which is too hard for him to cope with. A son wreaks revenge through the power of cookery. A bored wife finds happiness when an old lag teaches her the art of angling. A dog-training lesson with a puppy who hasn't grasped the meaning of 'obedience' leads to the discovery of a murder....

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.   

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.... 

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.... 

Musical-obsessed Hilary Metcalfe, abandoned by his lover Rufus on his birthday, gets drunk, discovers a baby and brings it home to his flat above a corner shop to provide comfort and company. Rufus, meanwhile, allows himself to be seduced by a frivolous young woman, who is actually Hilary's professional, high-powered sister, romancing under a pseudonym to escape the reality of her own loneliness. In this witty, bawdy slice of sex and lies, the trio will find themselves drawn together ever more tightly by the lures of hedonism, self-delusion and the inescapable desire to be needed. 

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.