The Facts of Life

Spanning three generations, the first half of this novel focuses on Edward and Sally, who can't find happiness until Edward can forget his dark past in Germany's prison camps. The second half continues with the lives of Edward's grandchildren, Alison and Jamie, searching for independence and love.

The facts of life

GALE, Patrick

Flamingo

Dangerous pleasures: A decade of stories

Tree Surgery for Beginners

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Flamingo; An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers

<p>A collection of Patrick Gale's most brilliant pieces of short fiction. The subjects are wide-ranging and various -- curious childhood loyalties, long-hidden memories, newly discovered joys, startling secrets, dislocated relationships, overwhelming, thrilling passions. In prose which is vivid and fresh, Patrick Gale explores the subtle boundaries that shift between the fantastic and shockingly real. With characteristic insight and wit and with consummate ease, he draws the reader into lives both familiar and strange, revealing a world that shines with possibilities and will never fail to delight.</p>

Dangerous Pleasures: A Decade of Stories

HarperCollins, Publishers

<p>From the author of The Facts of Life comes a cunning mix of tragedy and comedy, featuring one man's journey to self-discovery. * As befits the hero of a modern fairy tale, Lawrence Frost has neither father nor siblings, and fits so awkwardly into his worldly mother's life, he might have dropped from the sky. Like many such a hero, he grows up happier with plants than people. Whilst he is straightforward, honest, and a doting dad, he can be a difficult, taciturn husband -- but he's the last person one would suspect of being a killer...* Waking one morning to find himself branded a wife-beater and under suspicion of murder, his small world falls apart as he loses wife, daughter, liberty, livelihood and, almost, his mind...* With a bold mixture of tragicomedy, harsh truth and sublime fantasy, Patrick Gale has created a vivid and compelling portrait of a man at odds with himself, and an extended family of friends and lovers trying to take its proper shape.</p>

A subtle and entertaining tragicomic love story. Julian as a small boy is taken on the perfect Cornish holiday. When glamorous American cousins unexpectedly swell the party, however, emotions run high and events spiral out of control. Though he has been brought up in the forbidding shadow of the prison his father runs, though his parents are neither as normal nor as happy as he supposes, Julian's world view is the sunnily selfish, accepting one of boyhood. It is only when he becomes a man - seemingly at ease with love, with his sexuality, with his ghosts - that the traumatic effects of that distant summer rise up to challenge his defiant assertion that he is happy and always has been.

Rough Music

Ballantine Publishing Group

Friendly Fire

Harper-perennial

Notes from an Exhibition

4th Estate

When forty-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? This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plotlines removed.

The Whole Day Through

Fourth Estate Ltd.

A moving and intensely felt examination of the steps to which we will go to seek protection and security in others. Returning to haunted Cornish landscapes familiar from other Gale novels, it is the story of individuals in search of a family. Dido, the nine-year-old heroine and emotional centre of Patrick Gale's latest painful comedy, knows that the adults who surround her, the adults who should know better, depend on her for happiness. So who is she to turn to when her short life turns upside down and tragic family history threatens to repeat itself. Eliza, the clever, depressive aunt who has brought Dido up, and whose brilliant academic career has foundered due to the demands of unlooked-for motherhood, tries and fails to give Dido the happy normal childhood she never had herself. Her ex-husband Giles needs Dido back in his life, feeling it has lost all meaning, all substance, without her. Then there is Pearce, the new love interest in Eliza'a life, desperate to give Eliza and Dido the security and protection they need. But will Eliza let him? Does she love him or is she using him to restart a stalled career? Only Dido, unheard of in the clamour of others' needs, has the power to make or break the happiness of these children in adult clothing.

A Sweet Obscurity

Harperperennial

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GALE, Patrick. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by GALE, Patrick

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GALE, Patrick. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The facts of life

Dangerous pleasures: A decade of stories

Tree Surgery for Beginners

Dangerous Pleasures: A Decade of Stories

Tree Surgery for Beginners

Rough Music

Friendly Fire

Notes from an Exhibition

The Whole Day Through

A Sweet Obscurity