Edward St. Aubyn

"A dramatic and powerful novel reflecting on nature, nurture, inquiry, perception, and the myriad ways we try to understand what it means to be alive"--

Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he hands over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan, but as relations sour he starts to doubt the wisdom of past decisions. Now imprisoned in Meadowmeade, an upscale sanatorium in rural England, with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills,...

Follows the life of Patrick Melrose, a member of an upper class English family, through his traumatic childhood with an abusive father, drug addiction, fatherhood, and the possible loss of his family home.

For Patrick Melrose, 'family' is more than a double-edged sword. As friends, relations and foes trickle in to pay final respects to his mother, Eleanor an heiress who forsook the grandeur of her upbringing for 'good works', freely bestowed upon everyone but her own child Patrick finds that his transition to orphanhood isn't necessarily the liberation he had so long imagined. Yet as the service ends and the family gather for a final party, as conversations...

"Sabine is the most mercurial woman Peter Thorpe has ever known. Such is his desire for her that he overturns his whole life--his disillusioned merchant-banker's life--and leaves everything behind, not caring that his lover is of no fixed address, nor that his search for her will take him to the beating heart of New Ageism in northern California. Each of his fellow seekers is in hot pursuit of that elusive something (happiness?), and in their eccentric...

Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he hands over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan, but as relations sour he starts to doubt the wisdom of past decisions. Now imprisoned in Meadowmeade, an upscale sanatorium in rural England, with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills,...