The Story Of Lucy Gault

“Dear Readers and Booksellers: If you have not yet experienced the great pleasure of a story by William Trevor, I urge you to read this new novel, and to set it in pride of place in your stores. Because the haunting story of Lucy Gault will not fail to capture you with its mystery, its compassion, and the beauty of its writing.” -- Louise Dennys, Executive Publisher, Knopf Canada William Trevor is beloved around the world as one of the finest writers today -- and with just cause: his new novel is a masterpiece of love and loss, and lives suspended in time. Lucy Gault is nine when her parents are faced with the agonizing decision to flee Ireland to be safe from the violence that privilege and Lucy’s English mother have brought upon them -- or to stay in their home and risk losing it to the threat of arson. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane’s beautiful pastureland, the seashore below pale clay cliffs, and the nameless dog that has become her companion. So she runs away into the nearby woods to convince her parents to stay. Instead, her actions begin the unravelling of her family when they find two bits of her clothing and conclude she has thrown herself into the sea. Now desperate to be rid of the place where their much-loved daughter has died, Captain and Heloise Gault set off to wander restlessly across Europe. In the Lahardane woods, two weeks after the Gaults have gone, the groundskeeper finds the child lying lame and half-dead. He and his wife become Lucy’s life companions as she keeps a 30-year vigil of love and guilt waiting for her parents’ return.

The Old Boys by William Trevor - a novel of power, revenge, love and the failure of love from one of the world's best writers A group of septuagenarians revive schoolboy conflicts in the election of the President of the Old Boys Association. Jaraby expects to get the job, but he reckons without the bitterness of Nox, who still remembers the humiliations of his school years. And when Jaraby's son gets into trouble with the law, Nox has the perfect stick with which to beat him. Their powers may be failing but the old boys possess a fierce understanding of the things in life that matter - power, revenge, hatred, love, and the failure of love. The Old Boys was William Trevor's acclaimed first novel. It will be enjoyed by fans of The Story of Lucy Gault and Felicia's Journey, as well as readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd. 'Uncommonly well-written, gruesome , funny and original' Evelyn Waugh 'Immaculately witty and inventive writing' Daily Telegraph William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lived in England for many years. The author of numerous acclaimed collections of short stories and novels, he has won many awards including the Whitbread Book of the Year, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. He has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize: in 1976 with his novel The Children of Dynmouth, in 1991 with Reading Turgenev and in 2002 with The Story of Lucy Gault. He recently received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement.

Deep in the heart of Australia’s high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly’s children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection – but it can be harder when Joe’s around. At just twelve years of age Molly’s eldest son Danny is the true man of the house, determined to see his mother and siblings safe – from raging floodwaters, hunger and intruders, man and reptile. Danny is mature beyond his years, but there are some things no child should see. He knows more than most just what it takes to be a drover’s wife. One night under the moon’s watch, Molly has a visitor of a different kind – a black ‘story keeper’, Yadaka. He’s on the run from authorities in the nearby town, and exchanges kindness for shelter. Both know that justice in this nation caught between two worlds can be as brutal as its landscape. But in their short time together, Yadaka shows Molly a secret truth, and the strength to imagine a different path. Full of fury and power, Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson is a brave reimagining of the Henry Lawson short story that has become an Australian classic. Brilliantly plotted, it is a compelling thriller of our pioneering past that confronts head-on issues of today: race, gender, violence and inheritance.

Two Lives: Reading Turgenev & My House in Umbria - two novels by William Trevor 'Evocative and haunting. Trevor writes like an angel, but is determined to wring your heart' Daily Mail 'Marvellous, superb. As rich and moving as anything I have read in years. When I reach the end . . . I wanted to start right again at the beginning' Guardian In Reading Turgenev an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man, but finds release through secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels. My House in Umbria tells of Emily Delahunty, a writer of romantic novels, who helps the survivors of a bomb attack on a train to convalesce, inventing colourful pasts for her patients. Two novels, two women who retreat further into the realm of the imagination until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred . . . 'One of the most beautiful and memorable things Trevor has written' Independent on Sunday Reading Turgenev was shortlisted for the Booker Prize Readers of Love and Summer and Felicia's Journey will adore Two Lives. It will also be cherished by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd. William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia's Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.

Here is a new collection of twelve absorbing, deeply compassionate tales that reveal the subtle revenges of love and indifference, the deep wells of affection, and the strange, breathtaking tricks of chance that make up the texture of our lives. In the rain-washed Italian hills, a forgotten artist's Annunciation brings light to a heartbroken woman; insidiously, in her struggle for love, the second wife of a blind piano tuner distorts his memories of the first; two children, survivors of divorce, mimic their parents' dramas and passions; a mother, tied through love and fear to her son, watches with helpless dread as she realizes the monster he has become.

It?s summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn?t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs. Connulty?s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn?t know that the Connultys are said to own half the town: he has only come to Rathmoye to photograph the scorched remains of its burnt- out cinema. A few miles out in the country, Dillahan, a farmer and a decent man, has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. Ellie leads a quiet, routine life, often alone while Dillahan runs the farm. Florian is planning to leave Ireland and start over. Ellie is settled in her new role as Dillahan?s wife. But Florian?s visit to Rathmoye introduces him to Ellie, and a dangerously reckless attachment begins. In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.

From the winner of the 1999 David Cohen British Literature Prize — the richest literary award in the UK — comes an unforgettably chilling novel, written with the compassion and artistry that define Trevor's fiction. There were three deaths that summer. The first was Letitia's, shocking and sudden, leaving her husband haunted by the details of their last afternoon. No one expected that drizzling Thursday in June to signal the approach of two more tragedies — deaths that shook both the apparently blessed and the obviously afflicted. William Trevor gives us an unputdownable novel, beautifully written and wonderfully sympathetic.