Kitty Aldridge

After the disappearance of their father and the sudden death of their mother, Lee Hart and his deaf brother, Ned, imagine all is lost until Lee lands a traineeship at their local funeral home and discovers there is life after death. Here, in the company of a crooning ex-publican, a closet pole vaulter, a terminally-ill hearse driver, and the dead of their local town, old wounds begin to heal and love arrives as a beautiful florist aboard a 'Fleurtations' delivery van. But death is closer than Lee Hart thinks. Somewhere among the quiet lanes and sleepy farms something else is waiting. And it is closing in. Don't bring your work home with you, that's what they say. Too late. Sometimes sad, often hilarious and ultimately tragic and deeply moving, A Trick I Learned from Dead Men is a pitch perfect small masterpiece from a writer described by Richard Ford as having 'a moral grasp upon life that is grave, knowing, melancholy, often extremely funny and ultimately optimistic'.

A Trick I Learned from Dead Men

During the heatwave of 1975, thirteen-year-old Maggie goes to live with her grandfather, Pop, in Sutton Coldfield. Pop's mission is to know everything: the annual Fox and Dogs pub quiz is looming. Maggie doesn't know everything, but she does know about the great comedians - Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Eric and Ernie - about country music, Shirley Bassey - and about how her mother died. .

Wisdom of Bones

In July 1934, Walter Brown went alone to the woodland pond. He saw his girl swimming there. He watched her floating and saw how white her skin was in the green water, her belly, her breasts, her pond-tangled hair. Then she turned over like an otter and dived down. She did not come up again. In July 1969, Sean Matthews finds himself in the very same woodland, where he witnesses an event he later cannot bear to remember. Two boys, growing up in the same village thirty-five years apart, have each seen something they shouldn't. Hailed by Salman Rushie on the publication of her first novel, Pop, Cryers Hill confirms Kitty Aldridge as a writer of immense talent, possessing the rare gift of enabling us to see the world anew.

Cryers Hill

Sean Matthews stands at the bottom of George's Hill, more or less the very centre of the housing estate, with his hands on his hips. When Sean Matthews unknowingly witnesses an event he cannot bear to remember, his life is changed forever.

'To find a creature part eel, part African lion, who steps the tightrope, plays the viola, frightens the ladies and sings like a nightingale. This is my task. I must conjure, procure and invent, as a novelty is only novel once and no success succeeds as surely as failure fails. ' London 1879 - In a gloomy room on Islington's backstreets showman Percy Unusual George dreams of the miracle that will change his fortunes and that of his troupe of performing Remarkables. This waking dream will lead him to an infamous French dwarf, an exiled Polish king, and a superstar of the Enlightenment... and alter the course of his life forever. France 1746-1764 - At the court of Lunéville, in the Alsace region of Lorraine, exiled Polish King Stanislas hosts grand parties for the French nobility and luminaries of the Enlightenment. While Voltaire dotes on his lover, Émilie du Châtelet, the Polish king presents his horrified queen with a gift of an infant dwarf from the Vosges Mountains. King Stanislas names the child Bébé, and watches indulgently as his protégé becomes the most notorious and celebrated dwarf in France, until an unexpected guest arrives and unforeseen tragedy follows. Two ambitious men. One hundred years apart. Kitty Aldridge entwines their stories to powerful effect in this astonishingly imaginative and daring novel. The Wisdom of Bones is a high-wire performance: a hypnotic tale of desire and ambition, a quest for celebrity, and the human ache to be loved and remembered. 'Time runs backwards and I see myself anew. Not a man but a child. Not English but French. Not here but there. And I am stranger than a sphinx.'

Kitty Aldridge

About

Books

Join the club