An intense and thrilling teen mystery set on a tranquil island where all seems perfect…Daniel has dark secrets and a troubled past. So when his family move to the island of Wragge, a gentle backwater where local life remains undisturbed he feels he’s escaped.But outsiders aren’t always welcome and the more Daniel tries to conceal, the more he reveals about sinister goings on. Does this picture perfect community have something even greater to hide?An explosive thriller that tingles with brooding menace and ignites as the clues fall into place…

Burning Secrets

Teen & Young Adult

Chambers, Clare

Literature & Fiction

HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks

In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. 
"With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York Times 
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 
1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape. 
That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life. 
Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences. 
Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.

Small Pleasures: A Novel

Literary

Mariner Books

Product Description 
In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. 
"With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York Times 
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 
1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape. 
That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life. 
Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences. 
Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable. 
 Review 
"With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details." -- 
New York Times\n“I've had about five people recommend this to me, which is quite rare... It's a novel about the last throw of the dice, the last chance perhaps of finding a life of happiness when you've had a struggle. The writing is beautiful. This is also the first novel Chambers has written for 10 years, which I find really inspiring--she's come back with this absolute humdinger. It's just so nice to read a book by someone who's so confident with their talent.” -- 
Jessie Burton, bestselling author of The Miniaturist \n“ 
Small Pleasures is a tender and heart-rending tale that will draw you in from the first page and keep you gripped until the very end. Exquisitely compelling!” -- 
Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things\n“A very fine book... It's witty and sharp and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche." 
 -- 
David Nicholls, bestselling author of One Day \n"An irresistible novel—wry, perceptive and quietly devastating." -- 
Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday\n“ 
Small Pleasures is an almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish. Written in prose that is clipped as closely as suburban hedges, this is a book about seemingly mild people concealing turbulent feelings….” -- 
Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Sunday Times\n“A brilliant book… A love story between people who are not usually the leading players in love story… I found it incredibly absorbing." -- 
Kathleen MacMahon, The Irish Times\n"Gripping...penetrates the secret hopes and passionate inner lives of ordinary working people. The characters provoke so much empathy, readers may have trouble remembering that they’re fictional. -- 
Booklist

"A beautiful story of unfolding secrets and unforeseen consequences, filled with moments that are somehow restrained and astute and gorgeously written all at the same time." --Holly Gramazio, bestselling author of The Husbands An alluring literary mystery full of secrets and lies, when an art teacher at a psychiatric hospital in 1960s England finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious patient who has spent decades living in complete isolation with his elderly aunts in a decrepit Victorian house. Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver, and Tessa Hadley. In all failed relationships there is a tipping point. It goes unnoticed at the time but can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park... The London suburb of Croydon,1964: Helen Hansford is unmarried and in her thirties. Something of a disappointment to her middle-class parents, she's an art therapist at the Westbury Park psychiatric hospital, where she has been having a rebellious love affair with her colleague Gil, a dashing but married doctor. One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance at a derelict, vine-covered Victorian house a few miles up the road. There the police find a mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, his hair and beard down to his waist. It appears he lives in the old house with his elderly, frail aunt, who expires as soon as she's admitted to the hospital. No one knows why William has been shut away for decades, unseen by neighbors, with only his two now-deceased aunts for company. Westbury Park becomes his refuge. When it emerges that William is not only sane but a talented artist, Helen comes to see him as something of a personal project. But as she tries to solve the puzzle of the Hidden Man's past, Helen's own carefully constructed life of secrets begins to unravel... A gorgeously written and life-affirming novel about life's delicate layers of experience and connection,&nbsp;Shy Creatures&nbsp;reveals all the different ways we can be confined...and liberated.

Shy Creatures: A Novel: An Art Therapist's Life Is Turned Upside Down by a Mysterious Patient in this Beautifully Written Literary Mystery Set in 1960s England.

In 1976 four students took a trip to the desert. Now the repercussions of that fateful summer are coming back to haunt them... And repercussions are just what Guy doesn't need: his wife, Jane, is moving swiftly from slightly eccentric to downright peculiar, their three-year-old daughter seems set on destroying Jane's sanity, and now even God's gone quiet on him. As for Nina, she's having enough trouble with her son, James. He's got exams looming, a new girlfriend with pneumatic breasts and now, it seems, he's on drugs. Nina certainly won't welcome any ghosts from the past.Life isn't going smoothly for anyone. But when Hugo, long-forgotten agent of misfortune, threatens to pay them all a visit, disaster seems unavoidable.

A Dry Spell

Contemporary

Arrow

In a Good Light

A face in the crowd jolts Esther out of her mundane existence and back to memories of an eccentric childhood, a chaotic existence peopled by a rich collection of feckless “guests,” and memories of a tragedy that shattered all their lives.

The Editor's Wife

On the brink of success, aspiring novelist Christopher Flinders makes a desperate misjudgment that results in disaster for all involved. Twenty years later Christopher is forced to exhume his past, setting him on a path to a life-altering discovery.\nFrom the Hardcover edition.

Should the state recognise gender? Can a liberal state discourage traditional family structures? Is women's sport compatible with equality of opportunity? Should feminists defend women's freedom to choose cosmetic surgery? Is genital cutting always wrong, or is it only wrong for girls? Freedom and Equality investigates the contours of feminist liberalism: a philosophical approach that is appealing but elusive. Its hallmark is a liberalism that prioritises equality and individual autonomy, while offering a rigorous critique of using individuals' choices as the measure of justice. Liberalism without feminism prioritises individual choice, a strategy that has played a crucial role in the liberal defence of freedom against authoritarianism and conformity. However, as feminism shows, relying on individual choice is insufficient to render an outcome just, because people often choose things that harm or disadvantage themselves. From beauty norms to the gendered division of labour, from marriage to religion, women and men choose to arrange their lives in ways that perpetuate inequality. Often, these choices are made in response to social norms, including unjust, unequal, or harmful norms. It follows that relying on individual choice as a measure of justice actually leaves unjust social structures intact. Any defender of autonomy and equality must be prepared to criticise individuals' choices while prioritising individual choosers. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of issues fundamental to liberalism, to feminism, and to their intersection. They explore the foundational philosophical concepts of choice, equality of opportunity, ideology, and the state, and they engage directly with key political controversies, including women's sport, the state recognition of gender, the regulation of cosmetic and cultural surgeries, and state action to secure equality in the family. Clare Chambers argues that feminist liberalism is both possible and necessary. It is possible because the two doctrines of feminism and liberalism are compatible, their fundamental values of freedom and equality aligned. But feminism is necessary because liberalism has shown that it is simply not up to the task of securing gender equality and women's liberation alone.

Freedom and Equality: Essays on Liberalism and Feminism

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Against Marriage argues that marriage violates both equality and liberty and should not be recognized by the state. Clare Chambers shows how feminist and liberal principles require creation of a marriage-free state: one in which private marriages, whether religious or secular, would have no legal status. Part One makes the case against marriage. Chambers investigates the critique of marriage that has developed within feminist and liberal theory. Feminists have long argued that state-recognised marriage is a violation of equality. Chambers endorses the feminist view and argues, in contrast to recent egalitarian pro-marriage movements, that same-sex marriage is not enough to make marriage equal. The egalitarian case against marriage is the most fundamental argument of Against Marriage. But Chambers also argues that state-recognised marriage violates liberty, including the political liberal version of liberty that is based on neutrality between conceptions of the good. Part Two sets out the case for the marriage-free state. Chambers criticizes recent arguments that traditional marriage should be replaced with either a reformed version of marriage, such as civil partnership, or a purely contractual model of relationship regulation. She then sets out a new model for the legal regulation of personal relationships. Instead of regulating by status, the state should regulate relationships according to the practices they involve. Instead of regulating relationships holistically, assuming that relationship practices are bundled together in one significant relationship, the marriage-free state regulates practices on a piecemeal basis. The marriage-free state thus employs piecemeal, practice-based regulation. It may regulate private marriages, including religious marriages, so as to protect equality. But it takes no interest in defining or protecting the meaning of marriage.

Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defense of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford Political Theory)

Self-Help

Relationships

Biographies & Memoirs

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chambers, Clare. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Chambers, Clare

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chambers, Clare. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Burning Secrets

Small Pleasures: A Novel

Small Pleasures: A Novel

Shy Creatures: A Novel: An Art Therapist's Life Is Turned Upside Down by a Mysterious Patient in this Beautifully Written Literary Mystery Set in 1960s England.

A Dry Spell

In a Good Light

The Editor's Wife

Freedom and Equality: Essays on Liberalism and Feminism

Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defense of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford Political Theory)

Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defense of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford Political Theory)