"A wonderful novel. . . Tim Pears combines a down-to-earth rendering of the realities of rural life with a magical sense of another world beyond our everyday experience."--Wall Street JournalFrom acclaimed author Tim Pears, the first novel in a sweeping historical trilogy, beginning in rural, pre-WWI England.Somerset, 1911. The forces of war are building across Europe, but this pocket of England, where the rhythms of lives are dict...

'A beautiful love story with an incredible sense of place' - The Times'Compact and engrossing . . . a pleasure of a novel' - Daily MailBritain, AD 72. Quintus, a slave long exiled from his people, has travelled to far-flung places under the command of a powerful Roman. Though a citizen of nowhere, he is a man of reason, fluent in many languages. Olwen, a volatile warrior, is rooted in her native land.Given away by ...

The beautiful, questing second novel in Tim Pears' acclaimed West Country trilogy. Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in pre-First World War Devon and CornwallLeo is on a journey. Aged thirteen and banished from the secluded farm of his childhood, he travels through Devon, grazing on berries and sleeping in copses. Behind him lies the past, and before him the West Country, spread out like a tapestry. But a wand...

This overwhelmingly hot summer everything seems to be slowing down in the tiny Devon village where Alison lives, as if the sun is pouring hot glue over it. 'This idn't nothin',' says Alison's grandmother, recalling a drought when the earth swallowed lambs, and the summer after the war when people got electric shocks off each other. But Alison knows her grandmother's memory is lying: this is far worse. She feels that time has stopped just as she wants to enter the real world of adulthood. I...

The collected trilogy of Tim Pears's spellbinding chronicle of love, exile and belonging in a world on the brink of changeTHE HORSEMANA beautiful, hypnotic pastoral novel reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911'A novel that is as moving and profound as it is evocative of the landscape and period' Observer

From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a beautiful, hypnotic pastoral novel reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911In a forgotten valley on the Devon–Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, Leo dreams of a ...

Brought up in the Anglo-Welsh borders by an affectionate but alcoholic and feckless mother, Owen Ithell's sense of self is rooted in his long, vivid visits to his grandparents' small farm in the hills.As an adult he moves to an English city where he builds a new life, working as a gardener. He meets Mel, they have children. He believes he has found happiness - and love - of a sort.But a tragic accident changes the course of his life and the lives of those he loves is change...

'As good as any modern fiction you will read this year' Sunday Times, Best new short story collectionsA wife compulsively digs in her garden. Two brothers, long estranged, reunite for a terse, heady summer. A woman flies to Krakow to see her adult son. At dusk, a teenage girl pushes her dying mother out into the sea. A small boy sits on his own in the cinema, entranced by the cowboys who light up the screen.With these short stories, Tim Pears illum...

May 1944: High above the mountains of occupied Slovenia an aeroplane drops three British parachutists – brash MP Major Jack Farwell, radio operator Sid Dixon, and young academic Lieutenant Tom Freedman.Greeted upon arrival by a group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. Despite the distant crackle of gunfire, the war feels a long way off for Tom. The Partisans, too, are not what he was expecting – courageous, kind, and alluring, especially Jovan, their commander,...

In a small town in the middle of England, the aftermath of the Second World War brings change. For ambitious industrialist Charles Freeman, it offers new opportunities and marriage toMary. He buys the big house on the hill and nails his aspirations to the future.In quick succession, three sons and a daughter bring life to the big house and, with it, the seeds of family joy and tragedy. As the children grow and struggle with the hazards of adulthood, Charles' business expands in dir...

It begins at the stroke of midnight on the first day of 1997. As the year turns, a group of disparate individuals from different backgrounds, from all corners of the country, are about to embark on separate journeys which will converge over the course of the next twelve months: among them, Rebecca - mother-to-be, Sam - amnesiac, Roderick - Conservative MP, Jack - lorry driver, Martha - cat burglar, Ben - paraplegic child, Solo - his abandoned father.At the end of that year, their l...

Leonard and Rosemary Cannon summon their middle-aged offspring, along with partners and children, to the family home in the Welsh Marches for the Christmas holiday. As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings - Rodney, Jonny and Gwen - are surprised when they are invited to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents.Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary's thirtee...