| International Standard Book Number |
9780063258228 (hardcover)
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| International Standard Book Number |
0063258226 (hardcover)
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| International Standard Book Number |
9780063423145 (international edition)
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| International Standard Book Number |
0063423146 (international edition)
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| Personal Name |
Chambers, Clare, author.
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| Title Statement |
Shy creatures : a novel / Clare Chambers.
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| Edition Statement |
First US edition.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York : Mariner Books, 2024.
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| Physical Description |
391 pages ; 24 cm.
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| General Note |
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2024 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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| Bibliography, Etc. Note |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-388).
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| Summary, Etc. |
"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..."-- Provided by publisher.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Man-woman relationships Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Secrecy Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Psychiatric hospitals Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Artists Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Adultery Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Psychiatric hospital patients Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Nineteen sixties Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Social isolation Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Art teachers Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
England Social life and customs 20th century Fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Detective and mystery fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Historical fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Bildungsromans.
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