Books by a l barker

'It is an extraordinary achievement' - A. S. Byatt. Marise Tomelty is a child-wife who dislikes sex and is terrified of open spaces. Ralph Shilling, ... More

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Edith Trembath's charming inability to cope with problems of everyday life is a constant source of embarrassment to her friends and family. ... More

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As a child, Ellie compulsively lies her way into trouble. How else can she escape the reality of being a railway clerk's daughter in a Crystal Palace ... More

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Set in 'old forest country' on the tip of Cornwall, The Belle Chasse is a seedy, dishevelled and decaying hotel, but like the forest itself, with the ... More

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First published in 1987, "The Gooseboy" is a tale that is both elegant and grotesque, funny and appalling. Doug and Dulcie Bysshe are twins. Doug - ... More

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A book in which the narrator is a professional storyteller who is being interviewed by a young journalist about her life and work. It combines the ... More

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The "Joy-Ride and After" presents three novellas linked together by certain characters who reappear throughout the volume, and by their variation on ... More

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In a parish of wealthy women, Rose Antrobus forms a committee to decide who should benefit from a small bequest left to charity. Secretly she hopes ... More

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A man who can evoke no feeling over his wife's desertion is finally moved to tears of grief over a dying fox; a young boy is uncannily drawn in a ... More

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'Our young eponymous heroine, Zepherine Pollack has always considered it her destiny to be a writer, and in the first sentence of the book announces ... More

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'She is formidable, and from a bare corner of human relations gathers a rich harvest' - Adam Mars-Jones. First published in 1981, "Life Stories" ... More

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'You start alone, you finish alone,' she says: 'It's fine to be alone, it's a revelation, truth at last.' This is the story of Almayer Jenkin's ... More

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An awkward and solitary boy at school, James Jessel is surprised to find himself befriended by the impetuous, self-assured Waldo Klein, and bemused ... More

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The author won the first Somerset Maugham Award in 1947 with her first book, "Innocents". Since then she has published six further books of stories, ... More

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Charles Candy is cantankerous, old fashioned, set in his ways; settled with his wife in a beautiful house in Cornwall, he's also quite content. But ... More

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This is A.L. Barker's debut short story collection, and winner of the first Somerset Maugham Prize. This fascinating and highly acclaimed debut ... More

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A.L. Barker dissects the unnerving emotions of everyday life with the sly humour and exquisite feel for language that prompted Auberon Waugh to ... More

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A. L. Barker's 1964 collection of short stories casts a glint of the most revealing light on the characters within - and makes them more real than ... More

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A L Barker's first selection of short stories, "Innocents", won the Somerset Maugham award in 1947. Of her short stories, Robert Nye has written, ... More

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A collection of ghost stories which cast doubt on the differences dividing life and death, good and evil, animate and inanimate, as the uncanny ... More

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This book is intended for use towards the end of a chemistry course leading to a GCSE examination. Its purpose is to help students with their ... More

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This collection of nine short stories contains some of A. L. Barker's most powerful and disquieting fiction. "Noon", about a middle-aged man's ... More

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