Patrick McGrath est un romancier britannique dont l'œuvre est souvent classée dans la fiction gothique. Sa prose explore les recoins les plus sombres de la psyché humaine, abordant fréquemment les thèmes de l'obsession, de la culpabilité et des relations fracturées. McGrath excelle à créer suspense et atmosphère, entraînant les lecteurs dans des mondes empreints de mystère et d'ambiguïté morale. Son style distinctif est évocateur, examinant la fascination de l'humanité pour les aspects sombres de l'existence.
Stella Raphael est l'épouse du médecin-chef adjoint d'un hôpital psychiatrique. Cette beauté hiératique à l'intelligence aiguë ne se satisfait pas, dans ces ennuyeuses années cinquante, d'éduquer son fils de dix ans et de diriger sa maison. Négligée par son mari, oppressée par les conventions sociales, Stella s'ennuie. Contre toute logique, elle est fascinée par Edgar, un séduisant patient qui restaure le jardin d'hiver dont son mari s'est entiché. Irrésistiblement attirée par cet homme, Stella s'engage dans une aventure désespérée. L'histoire de cet amour destructeur et obsessionnel est racontée par un psychiatre de l'hôpital, Peter Cleave. Mais le point de vue de ce narrateur, ami de Stella, n'est pas exempt de perversité, et la frontière entre le médecin et " ses " malades devient floue. Soutenu par l'écriture de Patrick McGrath, à la fois retenue et passionnément engagée dans la description des extrêmes où conduit un désir irrépressible, le récit se fait trouble et falsificateur.
TOAD -- the Tool for Oracle Application Developers -- is an enormously popular interactive environment for Oracle development and administration. It allows developers to build, test, debug, and format their code via an easy-to-use graphical user interface, available in both freeware and commercial versions. TOAD makes developers far more productive; using TOAD, you'll find that program changes that once took hours can now be completed in minutes. In addition to its development features, TOAD also provides extensive facilities for Oracle database administration. Coauthored by the TOADman and TOAD team, and Patrick McGrath of Quest Software, Inc., this pocket reference is a helpful companion for Oracle developers and DBAs. It's packed with quick-reference material: TOAD feature and menu summaries, shortcut keys, suggested changes to TOAD defaults, productivity tips and tricks, and more. The book includes concise discussions of all the basic TOAD components: the SQL Editor, Procedure Editor, Text Editor, SQL Modeler, Schema Browser, and Debugger. It also provides helpful hints on using TOAD to perform database administration and SQL tuning. Whether you're a new or experienced TOAD user, you'll find this quick reference an indispensable companion to the product and its online help files. Book jacket.
It is 1975 and an old man, Francis McNulty, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, is beset with sightings in his garden of his old nemesis, General Franco. The general is in fact in Spain, on his deathbed, but Francis is deeply troubled, as is his daughter Gillian, who lives with him in Cleaver Square. Francis' account of his haunting is by turns witty, cantankerous and nostalgic. At times he drifts back to his days in Madrid, when he rescued a young girl from a burning building and brought her back to London with him. There are other, darker events from that time, involving an American surgeon called Doc Roscoe, and a brief, terrible act of betrayal. When Gillian announces her forthcoming marriage to a senior civil servant, Francis realizes he has to adapt to new circumstances and confront his past once and for all. Highly atmospheric, and powerfully dramatic, rich in pathos and humour, Last Days in Cleaver Square confirms a major storyteller at the height of his powers. '[W]onderfully sinister ... a delight ... you are in for a thrilling ride.' Spectator on The Wardrobe Mistress.
Set in the sinister monastery of The Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt. Inspired by German horror romanticism and the work of Ann Radcliffe, Lewis produced his masterpiece at the age of 19. It contains many typical Gothic elements - seduction in a monastery, lustful monks, evil Abbesses, bandits, and beautiful heroines. But, as the Introduction to this new edition shows, Lewis also played with convention, ranging from gruesome realism to social comedy, and even parodied the genre in which he was writing
What is wrong with Dr Edward Haggard? Is it a passionate love for the wife of the senior pathologist or is it something simpler? Is it a broken heart or is it Spike - the steel pin that holds his fractured hip together? By the author of Spider and The Grotesque.
Paralysed, mute and confined to a wheelchair, former palaeontologist Sir Hugo Coal recounts the events that led to his 'cerebral accident', as well as his suspicions of his butler Fledge, who he suspects is plotting to replace him as Lord of Crook Manor.
A dark tale of a man who probably killed his mother by mistake, but accuses his father. Writing his memoirs, Spider describes how his long-suffering mother discovered his father in the shed with a prostitute, and details the disturbing consequences.
From the war of Independence, via the turbulence of the nineteenth century to the aftermath of 9/11: three startling visions of New York combine in a book of extraordinary scope.
Master storyteller Patrick McGrath--author of the critically acclaimed novel Asylum and a finalist for England's prestigious Whitbread Prize for fiction--once again spins a hypnotic tale ofpsychological suspense and haunting beauty. Set among the teeming streets and desolate wharves of Hogarth's London, then shifting to the powder-keg colony of Massachusetts Bay, Martha Peake envelops thereader in a world on the brink of revolution, and introduces us to a flame-haired heroine who will live in the imagination long after the last page is turned. Settled with our narrator beside a cracklingfire, we hear of the poet and smuggler Harry Peake--how Harry lost his wife, Grace, in a tragic fire that left him horribly disfigured; how he made a living displaying his deformed spine in the alehouses ofeighteenth-century London; and how his only solace was his devoted daughter, Martha, who inherited all of his fire but none of his passion for cheap gin. As the drink eats away at Harry's soul, it opens ancient wounds;when he commits one final act of unspeakable brutality, Martha, fearing for her life, must flee for the American colonies. Once safely on America's shores, Martha immerses herself in the passions of smoldering rebellion.But even in this land of new beginnings, she is unable to escape the past. Caught up in a web of betrayals, she redeems herself with one final, unforgettable act of courage. Superbly plotted and whollyabsorbing, Martha Peake is an edge-of-your-seat shocker that is crafted with the psychological precision Patrick McGrath's fans have come to expect. A writer whose novels "The New York Times BookReview" has called both "mesmerizing" and "brilliant," McGrath applies his remarkable imaginative powers to a fresh and broad historical canvas. Martha Peakeis the poignant, often disturbing tale of a child fighting free of a father's twisted love, and of the colonists' struggle to free themselves from a smothering homeland. It is Patrick McGrath's finest novelyet. "From the Hardcover edition."
