Showing results by publisher "Tinder Press" in Literature & Fiction

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.

On a small isolated island, there's a community that lives by its own rules. Boys grow up knowing they will one day reign inside and outside the home while girls know they will be married and pregnant within moments of hitting womanhood. But before that time comes, there is an island ritual that offers children an exhilarating reprieve. Every summer they are turned out onto their doorsteps to roam wild: they run, they fight, they sleep on the beach and build camps in trees. They are free.

Ellen Lark is on the verge of marriage when she and her fiancé receive an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell. While her fiancé is eager to make a potentially lucrative acquaintance, Ellen knows what Bell really wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell's student in a technique called Visible Speech. As he instructed her in speaking, Bell also confided in her about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone.

For generations, Rich Gundersen's family has made a living felling giant redwoods on California's rugged coast. It's treacherous work, and though his son, Chub, wants nothing more than to step into his father's boots, Rich longs for a bigger future for him. Colleen just wants a brother or sister for Chub, but she's losing hope. There is so much that she and Rich don't talk about these days ­- including her suspicions that there is something very wrong at the heart of the forest on which their community is built.

It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise, they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown. Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how.

Sarah Gilchrist has fled from London to Edinburgh in disgrace and is determined to become a doctor, despite the misgivings of her family and society. As part of the University of Edinburgh's first intake of female medical students, Sarah comes up against resistance from lecturers, her male contemporaries, and - perhaps worst of all - her fellow women, who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman....

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.

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.

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.

First, there were the flamingos. And then there were two families. Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline - and Eve and her son, Daniel. Sherry loves her husband, Leslie. She also loves Eve. It couldn't have been a happier summer. But then Eve left, and everything went grey. Now Daniel is all grown up and broken. And when he turns up at Sherry's door, it's almost as if they've all come home again. But there's still one missing. Where is Eve? And what, exactly, is her story?

Set in London in 1837, Anna Mazzola's The Unseeing is the story of Sarah Gale, a seamstress and mother sentenced to hang for her role in the murder of Hannah Brown on the eve of her wedding. Perfect for any fan of Sarah Waters or Antonia Hodgson. After Sarah petitions for mercy, Edmund Fleetwood is appointed to investigate and consider whether justice has been done. Idealistic but struggling with his own demons, Edmund is determined to seek out the truth.

In Baxter's Beach, Barbados, Lala's grandmother, Wilma, tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers. For Wilma, it's the story of a wilful adventurer, who ignores the warnings of those around her, and suffers as a result. When Lala grows up, she sees it offers hope - of life after losing a baby in the most terrible of circumstances and marrying the wrong man. 

32-year-old Iris is adrift: newly single, living at home with her mother and working a dead-end job. Her life changes when she meets the mysterious and beguiling Hazel, who lives at a women's commune on a remote farm hidden in the Kent Downs. At the farm, the women can be loud and dirty, live and eat abundantly, under the leadership of the gargantuan Blythe. Drawn to Hazel and the possibility of a new start away from a world of men who have only let her down, Iris throws herself into this alternative way of life, seizing on new experiences and hidden desires.

Leah, a young woman who has found herself 'ambitioned' out of London, is now aimlessly adrift in Paris. Tired of odd jobs in cafés and teaching English to unresponsive social media influencers, her heart skips a beat when she spots an advert for a writer seeking an assistant. Michael was once the bright young star of the London literary scene, now a washed-up author with writer's block. He doesn't place much hope in the advert, but after meeting Leah is filled with an inspiration he hasn't felt in years. 

Sarah Gilchrist has no intention of marrying her dull fiancé, Miles, the man her family hope will restore her reputation and put an end to her dreams of becoming a doctor, but when he is arrested for a murder she is sure he didn't commit she finds herself his reluctant ally. Beneath the genteel façade of upper class Edinburgh lurks blackmail, adultery, poison and madness, and Sarah must return to Edinburgh's slums, back alleys and asylums as she discovers the dark past about a family where no one is what they seem, even Miles himself. 

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.

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.

Catherine House is an American college with a difference. Only the most brilliant minds enter, and its graduates earn prestige, wealth and honour. But over the three years they attend the school, they remain within its black gates; they have no contact with their loved ones; no association with the outside world. Those who break these rules will find themselves facing time in the school's infamous tower. 

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.

Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize nominated artist who was a Bright Young Thing. Now, aged 55, his wife has left him, the reviews have dried up and his gallery wants to stop selling his paintings, saying they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he moves into his painting studio in the back garden and rents out the house, soon reaching status as a Super Host on AirBed.