Tim Pears

Somerset, 1911. The forces of war are building across Europe, but this pocket of England, where the rhythms of lives are dictated by the seasons and the land, remains untouched. Albert Sercombe is a farmer on Lord Prideaux's estate and his eldest son, Sid, is underkeeper to the head gamekeeper. His son, Leo, a talented rider, grows up alongside the master's spirited daughter, Charlotte--a girl who shoots and rides, much to the surprise of the locals. In beautiful, pastoral writing, The Horseman tells the story of a family, a community, and the landscape they come from. The Horseman is a return to the world invoked in Pears' first award-winning, extravagantly praised novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves. It is the first book of a trilogy that will follow Leo away from the estate and into the First World War and beyond. Exquisitely, tenderly written, this is immersive, transporting historical fiction at its finest.

The Horseman

Landed

Devon, im Sommer 1984: Die 13jährige Alison wächst geborgen im Schoss einer weitverzweigten Familie auf. Während der langen heissen Sommerwochen beginnt sie, die Welt zu erkunden und nimmt allmählich Abschied von ihrer behüteten Kindheit.

Roman

Die Farben eines Sommers

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 Cornwall 1912. Leo 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 wanderer is never alone for long, try as he might - and soon Leo is taken in by gypsies, with their waggons, horses and vivid attire. Yet he knows he cannot linger, and must forge on to Penzance, towards the western horizon... Lottie is at home. Life on the estate continues as usual, yet nothing is as it was. Her father is distracted by the promise of new love and Lottie is increasingly absorbed in the natural world: the profusion of wild flowers in the meadow, the habits of predators, and the mysteries of anatomy. And of course, Leo is absent. How will the two young people ever find each other again? In The Wanderers, Tim Pears's writing, both transcendental and sharply focused, reaches new heights, revealing the beauty and brutality that coexist in nature. Timeless, searching, charged with raw energy and gentle humour, this is a delicately wrought tale of adolescence; of survival; of longing, loneliness and love.

The Wanderers

In 1952, Charles and Mary Freeman marry, take possession of a mansion high on a hill overlooking a small industrial town somewhere in the heart of England, and begin their family. This, Tim Pears' second novel, is the sweeping, rich, and astonishing tale of the first 30 years of their lives and the lives of their four children, Simon, James, Robert, and Alice. Compellingly drawn and infinitely resonant, the stories of these four children, stories of both joy and tragedy, create a generous epic of the life of a family, and of a country.

In a Land of Plenty

Stunning and memorable debut novel, published to rave reviews, about a hot summer in a Devon village where time seems to stand still

In the Place of Fallen Leaves

Selected by BOMC as a candidate for the Best First Fiction Award of 1995, this stunning novel has received wide acclaim. This captivating debut novel roams the dry valley or a rural English village during the summer drought of 1984, revealing lushness in simplicity and the awesome untapped power and wisdom of a girl on the verge of womanhood.--Kirkus Review.

A Novel

Both a war novel of the first order and a love story of devastating power, In the Light of Morning is a magnificent new work by one of Britain's finest writers, Tim Pears, the highly acclaimed author of Disputed Land and Landed. It is May 1944 and in Eastern Europe the Second World War is reaching a dramatic and bloody crescendo. 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 - sent to assist the resistance in their battle against the Axis forces. Greeted upon arrival by a rag-tag group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. It is early summer, and the mountains and forests teem with life and colour. 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, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija. Yet after a series of daring encounters, the enemy's net begins to tighten. They find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them through the wilderness. As the Partisans stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.

In the Light of Morning

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.

Ezra and Sheena Pepin live in Oxford with their three children. Ezra has abandoned his calling as an anthropologist; Sheena has found hers running a travel company. They are like everyone else: overworked, worried about their children, trying to preserve their marriage. But when change comes knocking at the Pepins' door, the family will never be quite the same again. Perceptive and funny, Blenheim Orchard is both human drama at its most powerful and an acute portrait of the times we live in.

Blenheim Orchard

'Dark social comedy and satire with an accompanying rich sauce of sex. He is a writer with purpose' - the Guardian

Wake Up

A love divided. A world torn in two. A return. A redemption. A stirring, exquisitely rendered tale of homecoming; the final instalment in Tim Pears's epic West Country TrilogyIt is 1916. Lottie Prideaux rides the winding lanes of her childhood on her motorcycle, defying the expectations of her class and sex as she trains to be a vet. Meanwhile young Leo Sercombe finds himself a long way from home, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary in the middle of the ocean. Here life is raw, bloody and vivid, with death never more than a heartbeat away.As Leo and Lottie wander in this strange and brave new world, and as war, loss, violence and betrayal conspire to tear asunder the ties that bind the past, present and future together, can even the most fated of returns - and redemptions - hope to come to pass?

The West Country Trilogy

The Redeemed

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. In fact, in the cruel heat of summer, time is creeping towards her, and closing in around the valley.

The final installment in Tim Pears's spellbinding chronicle of love, exile and belonging in a world on the brink of change. It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser-a universe of well-oiled steel, of smoke and spray and sweat, where death seems never more than a heartbeat away. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and gender as she covertly studies to be a vet. But the steady rhythms of Lottie's practice, her comings and goings between her neighbors and their animals, will be blown apart by a violent act of betrayal, and a devastating loss. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways of life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change? How can Leo, lost and wandering in the strange and brave new world, ever hope to find his way home? The final installment in Tim Pears's exquisite West Country Trilogy, The Redeemed is a timeless, stirring, and exquisitely wrought story of love, loss, and destiny fulfilled, and a bittersweet elegy to a lost world.

The powerful second novel in Tim Pears's acclaimed West Country trilogy. Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in England before World War I. 1912. Leo Sercombe 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 the woods. Behind him lies the past, and before him the West Country, spread out like a tapestry. But a wanderer is never alone for long, try as he might--and soon Leo is taken in by gypsies, with their wagons, horses, and vivid attire. Yet he knows he cannot linger, and must forge on toward the western horizon. Leo's love, Lottie, is at home. Life on the estate continues as usual, yet nothing is as it was. Her father is distracted by the promise of new love and Lottie is increasingly absorbed in the natural world: the profusion of wild flowers in the meadow, the habits of predators, and the mysteries of anatomy. And of course, Leo is absent. How will the two young people ever find each other again? In The Wanderers, Tim Pears's writing, both transcendent and sharply focused, reaches new heights, revealing the beauty and brutality that coexist in nature. Timeless, searching, charged with raw energy and gentle humor, this is a delicately wrought tale of adolescence; of survival; of longing, loneliness, and love.

"It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways of life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change. How can Leo, lost and wandering in the strange and brave new world, ever hope to find his way home?"--

A 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 illuminates a series of blazing moments in quiet lives – the tragic, strange, funny and beautiful fragments that make and unmake us – and shines a light into the gulfs that lie between us and those who should know us best.

Chemistry and Other Stories

The collected trilogy of Tim Pears's spellbinding chronicle of love, exile and belonging in a world on the brink of change THE HORSEMAN A 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 THE WANDERERS Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in pre-First World War Devon and Cornwall 'Goodness, Tim Pears writes beautifully ... The descriptions of rural life, executed with painterly exactness, are a constant delight. The prose really sings' Mail on Sunday THE REDEEMED A love divided. A world torn in two. A return. A redemption. 'Exemplary, a feat of perception and description that earns him a place among a pantheon that stretches from Thomas Hardy to Flora Thompson' Guardian

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, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija. As the enemy’s net begins to tighten, they find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them. As they stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.

Tim Pears

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