<div>Three generations of a British family struggle through war, intolerance, infidelity, and illness in this &ldquo;extraordinary blockbuster&rdquo; (Time Out London). In the Roundel, an odd, secluded, eight-sided house in the English countryside, Edward Pepper and Sally Banks build a life. Hoping they&rsquo;ve left hardship behind&mdash;they met when Sally, a doctor, treated Edward for tuberculosis after he escaped from Nazi Germany to England&mdash;they raise a family together. The German-Jewish composer has his devoted wife&rsquo;s support&mdash;though he is sidetracked by the temptations of the movie industry. But for Edward and Sally, their children, and their children&rsquo;s children, tragedy and joy will always go hand-in-hand, as they maneuver through a world of often bitter and brutal realities. And as the decades pass, a family shaped in equal measure by love and human failing will find itself sorely tested by mistrust, tyranny, misunderstanding, and an AIDS diagnosis. It will take more than the strength they found in their wartime romance to fight the battles of everyday life. The critically acclaimed novels of Patrick Gale have been compared to the writings of literary giants from Iris Murdoch to Gabriel Garc&iacute;a M&aacute;rquez. Powerful, moving, and magnificent, this multigenerational family saga is one of Gale&rsquo;s most compassionate and memorable works, a truly masterful fiction that Armistead Maupin, author of Tales of the City, calls &ldquo;achingly true and beautiful.&rdquo; </div>

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The Facts of Life

<div>Bestselling British author Patrick Gale chronicles the misadventures of a misfit tree surgeon in this &ldquo;modern-day myth of self-discovery&rdquo; (The Guardian). It was in the ancient cathedral city of Barrowcester that eight-year-old Lawrence Frost began his love affair with the trees that had &ldquo;sprung up on the site of an ancient plague grave and unconsecrated resting place for the city&rsquo;s outcasts.&rdquo; And it is there that the thirty-two-year-old forester and arborist returns one night, after sleeping out in his truck in his beloved Wumpett Woods, to find blood staining the kitchen sink and floor of his farmhouse&mdash;his wife and daughter gone. Lawrence is suspected of beating his wife, Bonnie, for cheating on him with an American architect. It appears Bonnie and their daughter, Lucy, have done the sensible thing and fled. But when a corpse turns up, burned beyond recognition, the police decide to comb Wumpett Woods in search of a second body. Soon Lawrence is branded a murderer and arrested. Then Bonnie and Lucy turn up alive, and Lawrence is cleared. But he has lost his family. He takes a five-hundred-passenger cruise on the SS Paulina, where a chanteuse of a certain age&mdash;and uncertain gender&mdash;captivates him. Lawrence begins a new journey, a spiritual and erotic odyssey that takes him back to the buried secrets of his past and then onward toward the future. From the English provinces to the Caribbean to America&mdash;and the giant redwoods of northern California&mdash;filled with Shakespearean twists and turns and happy coincidences, Tree Surgery for Beginners is a sprawling, Dickensian carnival of a book. With multiple viewpoints and cameo appearances that include a vacillating tiger, it sweeps readers along as Lawrence himself learns to move forward. By turns moving and tragic, this is a triumphant novel of growth, love, and healing from the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition.</div>

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Tree Surgery for Beginners

<div>This bestselling bittersweet story of love and second chances takes place over the course of a single summer day . . . or does it? The only child of eccentric academics who never married, Laura Lewis was an undergrad at Oxford when she met Ben Patterson. They shared an idyllic few months of passion, only to go their separate ways when Ben ended their relationship. Two decades later, Laura is a self-employed accountant with a history of unfulfilling liaisons with married men, her adult life &ldquo;mapped out in relationships not achievements.&rdquo; She leaves Paris to return to England, determined to keep her osteoporosis-stricken mother from the indignities of an institution by caring for her at home. At a hospital in historic Winchester, Laura runs into her former love. A onetime HIV consultant, Ben has also come home to be a caregiver to his gay younger brother with mosaic Down syndrome. Ben is now married to Chloe, a former model he doesn&rsquo;t love. In spite of the obstacles against them, Laura and Ben rekindle their affair. The Whole Day Through takes place over twenty-four hours, while simultaneously spanning decades to tell Laura and Ben&rsquo;s story. As the narrative threads move inexorably toward each other, past and present merge in a haunting collage of memory, mortality, missed chances, and the obligations and regrets of love. This novel from the bestselling British author of Notes from an Exhibition was a Sainsbury&rsquo;s Book Club pick in the UK. </div>

The Whole Day Through

<div>Four siblings discover truths about their late mother, a troubled artist&mdash;and themselves&mdash;in this &ldquo;uplifting, immensely empathetic novel&rdquo; (The Guardian). Gifted painter Rachel Kelly lived a life of manic highs and suicidal lows. Her husband, a gentle, devout Quaker, gave her a safe haven where she could create and be herself, but her mental illness still took its toll on her family. Now, after a fatal heart attack, a retrospective of Rachel&rsquo;s work attracts art lovers who marvel at her skill, but her grown children are busy coping with the shattering effects of her death&mdash;and her life. Her eldest son has been bequeathed a letter that shakes him to his core. Another son reflects on the years he spent trying not to upset his mother&rsquo;s delicate equilibrium while negotiating his own relationship with his lover. The youngest son was much beloved by Rachel, for reasons not everyone knows. And Rachel&rsquo;s only daughter seems to have inherited her talent&mdash;but also her demons. Set against the wild and beautiful landscape of Cornwall, this novel by the acclaimed author of A Place Called Winter and A Perfectly Good Man shifts back and forth in time and place as it moves effortlessly between characters, offering a revealing window into the symbiotic relationship between genius and mental illness and the effects both have on maternal love and the creation of enduring art. In the words of Armistead Maupin, &ldquo;few writers have grasped the twisted dynamics of family the way Gale has. There&rsquo;s really no one he can&rsquo;t inhabit, understand, and forgive.&rdquo;</div>

Notes from an Exhibition

<div>A nine-year-old English girl must look after the dysfunctional adults in her life in this novel from the bestselling British author of Notes from an Exhibition Everyone needs Dido. All the adults in her life&mdash;grown-ups who act like children&mdash;depend on her for their happiness and stability. The nine-year-old orphan lives with her aunt Eliza, who adopted Dido when her mother died. A depressed musicologist unable to balance her brilliant academic career with motherhood, Eliza ruined her marriage with an illicit affair and is now paying the price. Her estranged husband, Giles, is an opera singer whose girlfriend, Julia, uncovers a shocking secret while concealing one of her own. As Dido shuttles between Eliza&rsquo;s squalid flat and Giles&rsquo;s elegant townhouse, she acts as both tactful diplomat and insightful analyst. Until something happens that powerfully impacts her young life. Narrated from the alternating viewpoints of Eliza, Giles, Julia, and Pearce, a Cornish cattle farmer who falls in love with Eliza, A Sweet Obscurity plays out like one of the Tudor madrigals at its heart: Each character is a counterpoint to another. And the theme running through their intersecting lives is Dido, who is supposed to save them all. But who will save Dido? </div>

A Sweet Obscurity

<div>The bestselling British novel about love, marriage, family, secrets, and how the power of faith can transform lives even in the midst of inconsolable loss After being paralyzed in a rugby accident, twenty-year-old, wheelchair-bound Lenny Barnes feels he has nothing left to live for and is putting his affairs in order before committing suicide. As lively Mazey Day celebrations take place in the Cornish town of Penzance, Lenny summons a parish priest to his home. Father Barnaby Johnson is shocked to discover that he has been called in not to comfort but to deliver last rites. Lenny&rsquo;s death will reverberate not only in Barnaby&rsquo;s life but in the lives of his family and those around them, from Barnaby&rsquo;s wife, Dorothy, to Modest Carlsson, a parishioner and former teacher whose affair with an underage student cost him his job, his marriage, and, quite possibly, his soul. Narrated in a nonlinear style from the characters&rsquo; shifting perspectives and ages, this spellbinding, exquisitely crafted novel exposes the fault lines in relationships as it limns the consequences of our actions. The novel that author Patrick Gale describes as &ldquo;an echo chamber&rdquo; to his international bestseller Notes from an Exhibition, A Perfectly Good Man reveals another family in crisis and asks what it truly means to be good. This Richard &amp; Judy Book Club pick is a story of warmth, wisdom, and compassion on crises of faith, the power of prayer, morality, and what it means to be a parent. </div>

A Perfectly Good Man

<div>Patrick Gale&rsquo;s perennially popular debut novel takes a wry and romantic look at love both in and out of the closet. At fifteen years and eleven months, violinist Seth Peake is a musical prodigy who&rsquo;s secretly attracted to men. Scheduled to begin music college in the fall, he is en route to Cornwall to spend the summer at the Trenellion Festival, a pacifist festival of art and music his family helped to found. There he falls head over heels for a gorgeous, unsuitable sculptor named Roland. Seth&rsquo;s older sister, Venetia, has a problem. Her period is five weeks late. But she&rsquo;s a virgin and no one has touched her sexually except her father, Huw&mdash;a secret she has told no one. Is the world about to bear witness to history&rsquo;s second immaculate conception? Doing her best to hold the family together is mother and wife Evelyn, who prays for Venetia to find fulfillment, Seth to be spared from pride, and her problems with Huw magically to vanish. Inspector Maude Faithe&mdash;Mo to her friends&mdash;is a lesbian cop who fought for the right of policewomen to wear pants, given that they&rsquo;re doing a &ldquo;man&rsquo;s job.&rdquo; She has risen through the ranks of London&rsquo;s Metropolitan Police and been promoted twice for bravery. She lives alone with her large cat and a secret tragedy&mdash;until she falls passionately in lust with a singer. As Mo and Hope become lovers, Mo&rsquo;s dogged pursuit of the person responsible for stealing and desecrating the predictions of a newspaper astrologer leads to a surprising culprit. A witty and wise novel about sexual equality and the thrills and perils of wish fulfillment, The Aerodynamics of Pork is an exhilarating ode to love that remains a cult favorite with Patrick Gale fans and readers of gay and lesbian fiction. </div>

The Aerodynamics of Pork

<div>Bestselling British author Patrick Gale casts an empathetic and ferocious eye on the domestic wounds inflicted by families and lovers in this dark comedy. One minute Deborah Curtis&rsquo;s husband, Julian, is alive, a handsome figure leaving their rented house in an African principality, kissing his wife goodbye in the early morning sunshine. The next moment he&rsquo;s dead, the ground shaking in the aftermath of a deafening explosion. Months later, Deborah is still recovering from the assassination of her spouse and the collateral damage to her own body and soul. Bestselling author Judith Lamb is living with her partner of eight years in an isolated farmhouse on the Cornish moors, struggling with her latest novel. Her American lover, the tall, statuesque Joanna Verdura, is currently on assignment in Seneca. After reading about a diplomat killed by a car bomb meant for someone else, Joanna feels a strong compulsion to visit the dead man&rsquo;s widow. After all, Deborah is Judith&rsquo;s younger sister. Although she has been estranged from Judith for years, Deborah doesn&rsquo;t resist when Joanna whisks her off to Cornwall to grieve in peace, far from the political spotlight. But Joanna has unleashed a demon: the sisters&rsquo; buried past. As old unresolved wounds bleed into the present, a history of abuse comes to light. Forced to confront painful memories, the women&rsquo;s secrets and lies collide in a shattering, unbearably moving climax in a cat sanctuary. From the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition, told in the very different voices of its three female characters, The Cat Sanctuary is an ultimately redemptive tale about family and forgiveness and the love and steadfast devotion needed to find grace. </div>

The Cat Sanctuary

<div>At an elite English boarding school in the late 1970s, an orphaned fourteen-year-old girl falls in love with two boys&mdash;one of them gay&mdash;in this coming-of-age novel The town orphanage has been Sophie Cullen&rsquo;s only home since she was five years old. She knows not whether her parents are living or dead, and has no memory of her life before Wakefield House. No one is more surprised than Sophie when she wins the last scholarship to an exclusive boarding school. Tatham&rsquo;s was founded in the fourteenth century, and it is only the rare female scholar who gains entry. Even with the girls outnumbered twenty-five to one, Sophie only has eyes for upperclassman Lucas Behrman. Until she sees him kissing a boy. Then she meets Charlie Somborne-Abbot, whose life is shadowed by scandal. And solid, dependable Will Franks, who gives her her first kiss. But her education is just beginning. It will take a fall from grace and a devastating tragedy for Sophie to discover who she is and find her true place in the world. From the author of the bestselling Notes from an Exhibition, Friendly Fire is a wise and affecting chronicle of the painful angst of adolescence. A novel about friendship, family, and love, it explores the intransigence of beauty, the ephemerality of youth, the exhilaration of learning, and that most British of all preoccupations: class.</div>

Friendly Fire

<div>Love&mdash;common and uncommon, vengeful and transformational&mdash;is the theme of this superb collection from the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition. From subtle tales of domestic unease to a story featuring a caravan that transports three generations of a family away from their small-town lives, author Patrick Gale proves in his second story collection that he is a master at mining the loneliness, yearning, and eternal optimism of the human spirit. The lonely wife of a prison governor&mdash;and the only female on an inaccessible island&mdash;gets a lesson in angling from an inmate who will pay a high price in &ldquo;The Lesson.&rdquo; In &ldquo;Saving Space,&rdquo; a widower returns to a summer music festival to revisit bittersweet memories of his wife&mdash;and receives consolation from another woman&rsquo;s ghost. In &ldquo;Petals on a Pool,&rdquo; a female author bonds with a male poet at a book convention in Hong Kong where no one has heard of them&mdash;until she sees something odd floating among the petals in the hotel&rsquo;s pool. The puppy training lessons at the center of &ldquo;Obedience&rdquo; serve as the catalyst for the rekindled sex life of a couple when the husband is suspected of murder. Gentleman&rsquo;s Relish also features chilling tales of blood and revenge. In &ldquo;Making Hay,&rdquo; a senior citizen living in a retirement home conceives a diabolical payback in the form of family folklore told to her young grandchildren. And in &ldquo;Cookery,&rdquo; a son exacts a nasty retribution against his homophobic father when he whips up an extra-special dinner. Some of these stories unfold like dreams&mdash;or nightmares&mdash;and others dissect with the precision of a surgeon&rsquo;s scalpel. Narrated with wit, glee, and surprising tenderness, this collection includes unsung masterpieces like &ldquo;Hushed Casket,&rdquo; in which a husband on his honeymoon discovers an old tea casket in an abandoned church that releases a macabre spirit, and suddenly, the homely spouse is transformed into an irresistible sex magnet. Additionally included here are stories originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4, as well as &ldquo;In the Camp,&rdquo; which explores the childhood of Laura Lewis, the heroine of Gale&rsquo;s acclaimed novel The Whole Day Through. With Gale&rsquo;s sharp eye for detail and unerring ear for dialogue, this pitch-perfect, something-for-everyone collection is sure to lure readers in&mdash;and keep them hooked. </div>

Gentleman's Relish

<div>A world-weary playwright takes on a fake name and a sleazy apartment&mdash;and learns to live again&mdash;in this charming novel from bestselling author Patrick Gale. Success came quick to Domina Tey. An award-winning playwright, Domina was famous before she finished university, and life has been easy ever since. Twenty years later, she churns out plays in the beautiful house she shares with her longtime lover, a novelist whose books are unreadable and whose sense of romance died long ago. Worst of all, Domina&rsquo;s muse has deserted her, and so she decides to go slumming for as long as it takes to get her life back on track. She takes a bedsit in Bayswater, one of London&rsquo;s seedier districts, with the hope that privacy will finally allow her to get some real work done. But she&rsquo;s barely written a page before she finds herself getting involved with her fellow tenants: a wannabe actress, a gay French lothario, and a devout member of the local Greek Orthodox Church. They show Domina a side of life she&rsquo;s never seen before, and she quickly learns that before she can start writing again, she will have to live. This sparkling second novel from Patrick Gale shows the wit, good humor, and deep understanding of human emotions that made him a rising star of literary London. As insightful as it is funny, Ease will make you want to pack a suitcase and find a bedsit of your very own. </div>

Ease

<div>A young man returns to London from a monastery to become a godfather&mdash;and gets a second chance at love&mdash;in this &ldquo;blithe, original, engaging satire&rdquo; (The New York Times). Robin has not gone outside for five years. When he first arrived at the remote island monastery, he had attacks so violent that the brothers thought he might do himself harm, so his room was stripped of all but the bed. Robin seemed to like it that way. But now, after years of penance for some unspoken sin, he is pale, drawn, and emotionally fragile&mdash;nothing like the promising university student he once was. Indeed, he is a ticking time bomb of unexpressed anger, and he is about to be unleashed upon the world. Robin came to the monastery after his childhood playmate, Candida, became engaged to Jake, their irresistibly sexy mutual friend. Now, Candida is a mother, and she wants her long-lost friend to be the child&rsquo;s godfather. When he returns to London after his long exile, Robin finds the modern world strange and unfamiliar, but he must fight through it if he is to conclude the unfinished business that caused him to flee, and take his place in the world once again. Written at the height of the AIDS crisis, Little Bits of Baby is an intensely personal and romantic book from an author who writes with an intimate understanding of the labyrinth of the human heart. Winsomely funny and bittersweet, it may be the most remarkable novel Patrick Gale has ever produced. </div>

Little Bits of Baby

<div>Eleven electric stories of lost women, gay men, curious children, and nostalgic adults from the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition. A woman tries on a wig and it unlocks a side of herself she never knew existed. Visiting his old boarding school, a man is nearly undone by memories of a romantic encounter with a former classmate. When she introduces her girlfriend to her family, a young woman is shocked by her mother&rsquo;s all-too-welcoming reaction. These are the stories of Patrick Gale: loving and warm, familiar and surprising, and all crafted with the precise wit that has made him one of Britain&rsquo;s most beloved authors of short fiction. The eleven stories that make up Dangerous Pleasures reveal the hidden joys and buried agonies that lie behind our friends&rsquo; and neighbors&rsquo; happy smiles. Gale understands that the moments that can alter our lives forever come quietly, unexpectedly&mdash;as soft and innocuous as a platinum-blond wig. The Sunday Times calls Gale&rsquo;s short fiction &ldquo;nattily subversive, sexually ambiguous, intelligent and disturbing.&rdquo; More than anything, his prose displays an unerring sense of humanity, in every brilliant story, and every perfect line. </div>

Dangerous Pleasures

<div>A riotous dark comedy set in the backstreets of London about an unconventional love triangle, a lonely teacher, and a lost baby. Hilary Metcalfe is an English teacher who loathes his work so thoroughly that he requires a half bottle of scotch in order to grade a stack of homework. His only joys are private ones: American musicals, from South Pacific to The King and I, and his absolutely gorgeous lover, Rufus, whom he has utterly failed to domesticate. Once, he had dreams of being an actor, a star of London&rsquo;s West End. Now he would settle for the knowledge that Rufus is his and his alone. He&rsquo;ll get neither&mdash;but he may get something much better instead. When Rufus stands him up on his birthday, Hilary discovers something astonishing in the subway station: a frightened, abandoned baby boy. Drunk and lonely, Hilary brings the baby home to his seedy Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush flat, and soon finds he cannot live without the child. As Rufus falls into a romantic encounter with, of all people, Hilary&rsquo;s sister, the three are caught in a bizarre love triangle&mdash;with a baby in the middle. A spiritual sequel to Patrick Gale&rsquo;s second London novel, Ease, this is a charming portrait of the British capital at its most cosmopolitan. For anyone who has ever wished for a life different from his own, Kansas in August is a captivating tale. </div>

Kansas in August

<div>An intimate biography of the gay icon whose Tales of the City changed America&rsquo;s understanding of LGBT culture during the 1970s and &rsquo;80s. Step into Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s house, and you will be greeted by a strapping young gardener, a wave of marijuana smoke, and the most gracious host in the world. When he isn&rsquo;t flitting from protests to orgies, Maupin is a natural storyteller, and San Francisco is his favorite subject. Pull up a chair and prepare to be swept away on a wave of wit, gossip, and the most outrageous sexual anecdotes you&rsquo;ve ever heard. His house seems like a scene out of his legendary Tales of the City, and that&rsquo;s no accident: Every moment of his groundbreaking series was drawn, one way or another, from Maupin&rsquo;s remarkable life, from a middle-class upbringing in North Carolina to a stint in the navy during Vietnam. Maupin landed in San Francisco just in time to chronicle the gay rights revolution that was sweeping the city and the country as a whole, and from the moment his Tales were first serialized, that city was never the same. This is an intimate biography, written by Maupin&rsquo;s longtime friend, Patrick Gale. From his fling with Rock Hudson to the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, Maupin saw it all&mdash;and lived to tell the tale.</div>

Armistead Maupin

<div>Bestselling author Patrick Gale&rsquo;s quirky and hilarious novel of English country life is &ldquo;a ridiculously crazy tour de force&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). The town of Barrowcester&mdash;pronounced &ldquo;Brewster&rdquo;&mdash;is English as can be. From its cozy little pubs to its immaculate cathedral close, the quiet city seems straight out of the pages of Thomas Hardy. For American academic Evan Kirby, it&rsquo;s paradise, a welcome escape from the United States, where he was haunted by the grim memories of his brutal divorce. A historian of angels and demons, he has come to Barrowcester to explore the cathedral library. But he will find there are no angels in this peculiar little village&mdash;only demons lurking around every corner. From the agnostic bishop and his cannabis cookie&ndash;addicted mother to the sex-mad cardinal and the schoolboy with a very unusual relationship with his spaniel, every Barrower has a secret, each more shocking than the last. Evan came to bury himself in work, but as redemption comes to Barrowcester one sinner at a time, will he find love instead? Inspired by Patrick Gale&rsquo;s own youth in England&rsquo;s ancient capital, Facing the Tank is a loving satire of the absurdities at the heart of provincial life. An homage to Anthony Trollope, it is as sparkling a novel as Britain has produced in the last fifty years. </div>

Facing the Tank

<div>Two deeply empathetic novels about families in crisis from an international bestselling British writer &ldquo;with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit&rdquo; (The Observer). Armistead Maupin says of Patrick Gale: &ldquo;Few writers have grasped the twisted dynamics of family the way Gale has. There&rsquo;s really no one he can&rsquo;t inhabit, understand, and forgive.&rdquo; In both the international bestseller, Notes from an Exhibition, and its subtly linked companion novel, A Perfectly Good Man, Gale&rsquo;s generous compassion for his characters and their struggles resonates on every page. Notes from an Exhibition: Gifted painter Rachel Kelly lived a life of manic highs and suicidal lows, which took its toll on her family. After a fatal heart attack in her studio in Penzance, Rachel is honored with a retrospective of her work, attracting art lovers but also stirring up emotional turmoil in her husband and four grown children as they try to come to grips with a legacy of secrets and the devastating effects of her bipolar disorder. Told from the multiple viewpoints of the family members&mdash;including Rachel&mdash;Gale&rsquo;s compassionately curated novel evolves into &ldquo;an engrossing portrait of a troubled and remarkable character&rdquo; (The Mail on Sunday). &ldquo;A warm, well-written novel about creativity and the perils of living with the creative spirit.&rdquo; &mdash;The Times Literary Supplement A Perfectly Good Man: Barnaby Johnson is a good man, a priest in a West Cornwall parish, beloved and trusted by his community. But when twenty-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralyzed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in his presence, the reverberations shake Barnaby, his family, and his neighbors to the core. Those around him then invite Barnaby&rsquo;s morally repellent nemesis to attempt to bring about his downfall. With several narrators, this &ldquo;warm and humane . . . beautifully written&rdquo; novel confronts profound questions of morality, faith, and consequences (The Times, London). &ldquo;A moving account of a man&rsquo;s struggle with faith, marriage, and morality.&rdquo; &mdash;The Sunday Times</div>

The Collected Novels Volume One

<div>Three keenly observant and profoundly moving novels from an international bestselling British writer &ldquo;with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit&rdquo; (The Observer). &ldquo;Patrick Gale writes with the understated fluency that is the hallmark of contemporary British fiction, and with the irony that usually accompanies it.&rdquo; In the three novels collected here, the author of the international bestseller Notes from an Exhibition explores the complexities and ironies of men who have removed themselves from society and painful situations, only to find there&rsquo;s no escaping their inner turmoil as they follow individual journeys of growth (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post). Little Bits of Baby: Robin retreated to a remote island monastery after his childhood playmate, Candida, became engaged to Jake, their irresistibly sexy mutual friend. Now Candida is a mother, and she wants her long-lost friend to be the child&rsquo;s godfather. When he returns to London after his five-year exile, Robin finds the city overwhelming and unfamiliar, but he must fight through his feelings if he is to conclude the unfinished business that originally caused him to flee, and take his place in the world once again. &ldquo;[A] blithe, original, engaging satire.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Facing the Tank: For American academic Evan Kirby, the English city of Barrowcester&mdash;pronounced &ldquo;Brewster&rdquo;&mdash;is a welcome escape from the US and his brutal divorce. A historian of angels and demons, he has come to explore the cathedral library, but he will find there are no angels in this peculiar little village. From the agnostic bishop and his cannabis cookie&ndash;addicted mother to the sex-mad cardinal and the schoolboy with a very unusual relationship with his spaniel, every Barrower has a secret, each more shocking than the last. &ldquo;[A] ridiculously crazy tour de force . . . If E. F. Benson, Iris Murdoch and Fay Weldon were to produce a story in some mad collusion, the result might be something like this.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly Tree Surgery for Beginners: Armistead Maupin has said of Patrick Gale: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s really no one he can&rsquo;t inhabit, understand, and forgive.&rdquo; That certainly applies to the arborist Lawrence Frost in this epic redemptive novel, who is forced into a journey of self-searching after being accused of killing his wife. Following Frost&rsquo;s pilgrimage to the Caribbean and eventually to the redwoods of northern California, Gale compassionately chronicles the healing of &ldquo;a man whose work as a tree surgeon is a metaphor for the growth of his soul and family&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). &ldquo;Playful and wise. In prose of sparkling precision, Gale serves up misadventures&mdash;satirical, farcical and tragic.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times</div>

The Collected Novels Volume Four

<div>Three irreverent comic novels from an international bestselling British writer &ldquo;with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit&rdquo; (The Observer). &ldquo;A clever, original writer with a sharp eye for social comedy and an equally sharp ear for dialogue,&rdquo; Patrick Gale is able to find the comic irony as well as the all-too-human drama in our foibles. In his first three novels, collected here, he mines a rich vein of comedy in characters such as a playwright who reinvents herself, a teenage violin prodigy eager to meet the man of his dreams, a lesbian police inspector rediscovering her libido, and a teacher who surprises himself with an irrepressible paternal instinct (The Washington Post). Ease: An award-winning but world-weary playwright, Domina Tey takes on a fake name and a bedsit in Bayswater, then one of London&rsquo;s seedier districts, to find her muse again. Soon she finds herself getting involved with her fellow tenants: a wannabe actress, a gay Frenchman, and a devout member of the local Greek Orthodox Church. They show Domina a side of life she&rsquo;s never seen before, and she learns that before she can start writing again, she will have to live. &ldquo;Captivating . . . a novel that pleads to be read at a single sitting.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly The Aerodynamics of Pork: Gale&rsquo;s &ldquo;sad, funny, deeply searching&rdquo; debut novel follows two parallel love stories that ultimately intersect in a surprising way: Fifteen-year-old violin prodigy Seth Peake is secretly attracted to men and looking for romance at a summer music festival in Cornwall, and closeted lesbian police inspector Maude Faithe is trying to solve a mysterious series of burglaries that target astrologists in London, even as she engages in her own star-crossed infatuation (Publishers Weekly). &ldquo;Gale&rsquo;s concoction is irresistible: modern relationships with period charm. I couldn&rsquo;t have liked it more.&rdquo; &mdash;Armistead Maupin Kansas in August: Stood up by his lover, Rufus, on his birthday, unhappy English teacher Hilary Metcalfe discovers a frightened, abandoned baby boy in a London tube station. Drunk and lonely, Hilary brings the baby home to his Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush flat, and soon finds he cannot live without the child. As Rufus falls into a romantic encounter with, of all people, Hilary&rsquo;s sister, the three are caught in a bizarre love triangle&mdash;with a baby in the middle. &ldquo;The bawdy narrative strands are cleverly woven together with witty and urbane dialogue and piquant characterization, so that the reader is thoroughly absorbed in this irreverent tour de force.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

The Collected Novels Volume Three

<div>Two family novels from an international bestselling British writer &ldquo;with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit&rdquo; (The Observer). Armistead Maupin says of Patrick Gale: &ldquo;Few writers have grasped the twisted dynamics of family the way Gale has. There&rsquo;s really no one he can&rsquo;t inhabit, understand, and forgive.&rdquo; In both novels presented in this collection, Gale explores the complex dynamics of family with dead-on observation and generous compassion. A Sweet Obscurity: Dido, a nine-year-old orphan, lives with her aunt Eliza, who adopted the girl after her mother died. A depressed musicologist unable to balance her brilliant academic career with motherhood, Eliza ruined her marriage with an affair. Her estranged husband, Giles, is an opera singer whose girlfriend, Julia, uncovers a shocking secret while concealing one of her own. As Dido shuttles between Eliza&rsquo;s squalid flat and Giles&rsquo;s elegant townhouse, she acts as both tactful diplomat and insightful analyst to the adults who act like children. Until something happens that powerfully impacts her young life. &ldquo;This is arguably Gale&rsquo;s most questioning, troublesome work. It amuses, startles and occasionally bewilders. A Sweet Obscurity is worth every minute of your time.&rdquo; &mdash;The Independent The Cat Sanctuary: Deborah Curtis&rsquo;s husband, a diplomat in an African principality, was killed by a car bomb, and months later she is still recovering from the assassination. Her estranged sister Judith, an author who lives with her American lover, Joanna, in Cornwall, insists Deborah come to her farmhouse to grieve in peace. But unresolved wounds between the sisters bleed into the present, and a history of abuse comes to light. Forced to confront painful memories, the women&rsquo;s secrets and lies collide in a shattering climax. &ldquo;A dark tale of loss, sex and mistrust . . . A sensitive, thoughtful novel with a conclusion that is both unsettling and consistent.&rdquo; &mdash;Time Out London</div>

Patrick Gale
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Books By Patrick Gale (20 Books)