From the author of bestselling sensation Small Pleasures comes an extraordinary story of love, family and the joy of freedom.

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‘Clare Chambers is a genius’ INDIA KNIGHT

‘Just as good – if not better – than Small Pleasures‘ INDEPENDENT

‘As compelling as you want fiction to be’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘One of our most talented authors’ GUARDIAN

‘Extraordinary’ FINANCIAL TIMES

It all started the weekend the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park . . .

Croydon, 1964. Art therapist Helen Hansford is working in a psychiatric hospital, where she has been having passionate but precarious affair with her married colleague, the charismatic Dr Gil Rudden.

Helen’s structured life is upended when William Tapping – a silent, thirty-seven-year-old man with a beard down to his waist – arrives at the hospital. As Helen helps William express himself through art, she becomes increasingly entangled in his mysterious past.

Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.

‘Reading a Clare Chambers novel can feel like entering a modest bungalow and finding yourself in a cathedral’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A warm, multi-layered mystery brimming with all the same nostalgia, wit and tenderness as Small Pleasures‘ i PAPER

‘A lively, funny, forgiving novel’ PATRICK GALE

‘Chambers is such a humane writer and this novel is full of exquisite detail’ EVENING STANDARD

‘A beautiful story of unfolding secrets and unforeseen consequences’ HOLLY GRAMAZIO, author of THE HUSBANDS

*Small Pleasures was a Silver Award bestseller according to Nielsen BookScan UK, 10 November 2023

From the Women’s Prize longlisted, British Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Small Pleasures, a new novel about love, family and the joy of freedom.

‘I was worried this wouldn’t be as good as the brilliant Small Pleasures, but it might be even better. Clare Chambers is a genius’ INDIA KNIGHT

‘A tender, absorbing novel . . . And it’s just as good – if not better – than her last’ INDEPENDENT

‘A magnificent novel. I loved it to its bones’ EMMA STONEX

‘Shy Creatures confirms Clare Chambers as one of our most talented writers’ GUARDIAN

In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.

Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.

‘A lively, funny, forgiving novel’ PATRICK GALE

‘Completely absorbing’ LISSA EVANS

‘Wise, beautifully measured and as compelling as you want fiction to be’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A rich and tender story of kindness and compassion’ RUTH HOGAN

*Small Pleasures was a Silver Award bestseller according to Nielsen BookScan UK, 10 November 2023

‘Compassionate and challenging, warmly human and coolly rigorous. . . I am now thinking afresh about how I live in my own body, in a world where, as Clare Chambers argues, nobody’s body is ever allowed to be good enough, just as it is’ Timandra Harkness

What would it take for your body to be good enough?

The pressure to change our bodies is overwhelming. We strive to defy ageing, build our biceps, cure our disabilities, conceal our quirks. Surrounded by filtered photos and surgically-enhanced features, we must contort our physical selves to prejudiced standards of beauty. Perfection is impossible, and even an acceptable body seems out of reach.

In this mind-expanding book, Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers argues that the unmodified body is a key political principle. While defending our right to change our bodies, she argues that the social pressures to modify undermine equality. She shows how the connected ideas of the natural body, the normal body, and the whole body have been used both to disrupt and to maintain social hierarchies – sometimes oppressing, other times liberating. The body becomes a site of political importance: a place where hierarchies of sex, gender, race, disability, age, and class are reinforced.

Through a thought-provoking analysis of the power dynamics that structure our society, and with examples ranging widely from bodybuilding to breast implants, deafness to male circumcision, Intact stresses that we must break away from the oppressive forces that demand we alter our bodies. Instead, it offers a bold, transformative vision of the human body that is equal without expectation.

When aspiring novelist Christopher Flinders drops out of university to write his masterpiece (in between shifts as a fish delivery man and builder’s mate), his family is sceptical.

But when he is taken up by the London editor Owen Goddard and his charming wife Diana it seems success is just around the corner. Christopher’s life has so far been rather short of charm – growing up in an unlovely suburb, with unambitious parents and a semi-vagrant brother – and he is captivated by his generous and cultured mentors.

However, on the brink of realising his dream, Christopher makes a desperate misjudgement which results in disaster for all involved. Shattered, he withdraws from London and buries himself in rural Yorkshire, embracing a career and a private life marked by mediocrity.

Twenty years on, a young academic researching into Owen Goddard seeks him out, and Christopher is forced to exhume his past, setting him on a path to a life-changing discovery.

Praise for Clare Chambers:

‘Thoroughly enjoyable and very clever’ Sunday Express

‘Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind’ Lissa Evans on Small Pleasures

‘Beautifully observed and achingly funny’ Woman & Home

‘Chambers’ eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity’ Guardian on Small Pleasures

‘Reminds us of the rare pleasure that an intelligent tale with a happy ending brings’ The Sunday Times

Without even noticing, Esther Fairchild has become locked into routine.

Living with her adored brother, Christian, she divides her time between illustrating children’s books, nightly shifts as a waitress, weekly visits to her father and fortnightly meetings with her married lover.

Then one day she encounters a face in the crowd which jolts her out of her mundane existence and makes her question both her life and the past that has helped to shape it. Memories she had long chosen to forget begin to resurface. Memories of an eccentric childhood in a large and shabby house, where the children were left to fend for themselves within the loose boundaries of their parents’ unorthodox values. A chaotic existence peopled by a rich collection of feckless ‘guests’.

And into this shambolic world came Donovan – regularly deposited by his unreliable mother – and Penny, Christian’s girlfriend and Esther’s idol. Until tragedy struck and shattered their joint existence. But now, it seems, their lives are about to become intertwined once more . . .

Praise for Clare Chambers:

‘A wonderful novel. I loved it’ Nina Stibbe on Small Pleasures

‘Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind’ Lissa Evans on Small Pleasures

‘A captivating read’ Woman’s Own

‘An irresistible novel – wry, perceptive and quietly devastating’ Mail on Sunday on Small Pleasures

‘Shines with an old-fashioned moral certainty that is as subtle and refreshing as it is unexpected’ Independent on Sunday

‘An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish’ The Sunday Times on Small Pleasures

It only needed a discarded chip on a South London street to lay him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip naturally starts to write the story of his life.

But between the mundane catalogue of seaside holidays and bodged DIY, broken relationships and unspoken truths, more surprises are revealed, both comic and touching, than Philip or his family ever bargained for. Even, perhaps, a happy ending…

Praise for Clare Chambers:

‘Smart, astute, and very funny’ Daily Mail

‘Gorgeous… If you’re looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more’ Pandora Sykes on SMALL PLEASURES

‘Chambers’ eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity’ Guardian

‘A funny and moving story with a great deal of style’ Daily Express

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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.
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Praise for Clare Chambers:

‘A wonderful novel. I loved it’ Nina Stibbe on Small Pleasures

‘Gorgeous… If you’re looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more’ Pandora Sykes on Small Pleasures

‘An irresistible novel – wry, perceptive and quietly devastating’ Mail on Sunday on Small Pleasures

‘Chambers’ eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity’ Guardian on Small Pleasures

‘An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish’ Sunday Times on Small Pleasures

Abigail Jex never expected to see any of the Radley household again.

The Radley’s were extraordinary, captivating creatures transplanted from a bohemian corner of North London to outer suburbia, and the young Abigail found herself drawn into their magic circle: the eccentric Frances, her new best friend; Frances’ mother, the liberated, headstrong Lexi; and of course the brilliant, beautiful Rad.

Abigail thought she’d banished the ghost of her life with them and the catastrophe that ended it, but thirteen years later a chance encounter forces her to acknowledge that the spell is far from broken…

Praise for Clare Chambers:

‘Modern, intelligently observed and highly original’ Daily Mail

‘This delicious novel is a joy from beginning to end – a perfect novel’ Lisa Jewell

‘Charming – A funny and moving story with a great deal of style’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A spirited account of growing up and falling in love’ Good Housekeeping

‘An intelligent and escapist read – well written, and very funny’ Daily Express