Tim Pears

Ezra and Sheena Pepin live in Blenheim Orchard in North Oxford with their three children: fourteen-year-old Blaise, entering the storm-world of adolescence. Hector, eleven and precociously clever, and sweet Louie, three years old and the family tyrant. Ezra, a disaffected employee at Isis Water, has abandoned his calling as an anthropologist; Sheena has inadvertently found hers running a travel company. They are like everyone else: over-worked, worried about the children, trying to steer their marriage on an even keel. But change comes knocking at the Pepins' door - and the family will never be quite the same again.

"For John, a potato isn't just a staple food, it's wondrous, the secret of his success and key to the future. With his brother, Greg, he has turned their father's greengrocery business into Spudnik, Britain's largest dealer in potatoes. Now he wants to change the world by introducing, through potatoes, edible vaccines; plants genetically modified to provide an edible alternative to injections."--Jacket.

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 to Mary. 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 direct proportion to his girth and becomes a symbol of the town's fortunes as Britain claws its way back from the grey austerity of wartime Britain. As times change, so do the family's fortunes. Their stories create a generous epic, an extraordinarily rich and plangent hymn to the transformation of middle England over the past fifty years. At its heart is a diverse and persuasive cast of lovable and odious characters attempting to contend with the restrictions of their generation.

The young Theo Cannon and his parents journey through the Cotswolds to spend Christmas at his grandparents home. Upon arriving, Theo's shyness gives way to the strength of his beloved grandparents and the rich characters that make up the rest of his family.

19th Century American West.Dillon Hennessey was a man like no other... Strong yet caring, determined yet kind. But he was still a man, Katelyn Green reminded herself, and therefore not to be trusted. Hadn’t her own husband abandoned her in her hour of need? And yet the whispers in her soul promised happiness with this man who’d gentled horses...and her heart! Katelyn Green had lost a child, and Dillon knew it ate away at her very core. He would help her if he could, if he had the words and ways. But would his tenderness be enough to win a woman who’d been robbed of her faith in love?

The Wanderers is a loosely plotted, autobiographical novel, in which author Ezekiel Mphahlele, through the protagonist Timi Tabane, continues the story of his life from the point at which his autobiography Down Second Avenue (1959) ends. Down Second Avenue describes Mphahlele{u2019}s years in the black townships and urban ghettos of South Africa, but The Wanderers concentrates on the period of exile in Nigeria and Kenya that followed his escape from South Africa in 1957. --www.enotes.com.

The powerful and richly evocative new novel from acclaimed prize-winning author Tim Pears.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. There he is deeply impressed by his grandfather's primitive, cruel relationship with his animals and the land. As an adult he moves away from the country of his childhood 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 following a car accident, in which his daughter is killed and he loses a hand, the course of his life and the lives of those he loves is changed forever. Owen, unable to work, alienated and eventually legally separated from his family, is haunted by suicidal thoughts. In his despair, he resolves to reconnect with both his past and the natural world. Abducting his children, he embarks on a long, fateful journey, walking to the Welsh borders of his childhood. In his confusion his journey is a grasping at some kind of an understanding of his loss. Powerful, richly evocative and perfectly poised between the hope of redemption and the threat of irrevocable tragedy, Landedis Tim Pears' most assured and beguiling novel to date.