Bethan Roberts – författare

**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING HARRY STYLES**This love is all-consumingIt is in 1950s' Brighton that Marion first catches sight of the handsome and enigmatic Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier and Marion is smitten - determined her love will be enough for them both.A few years later in Brighton Museum Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world.Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.'A sensitive, sweeping novel' VOGUE'Tense, romantic, smart...I loved it. Devoured it!' RUSSELL T. DAVIES'A powerful story of forbidden love, regret, and living as your true self' VANITY FAIR'A moving story of longing and frustration' OBSERVER

This is the story of two women, Nula and Maggie, joined by old family history and love for the same little boy.Nula, struggling with her new baby and feeling alone in her marriage, employs her cousin Maggie as a nanny when she returns to work. But it's not long before Nula finds herself theatened by Maggie's close bond with her son, Samuel. Nula's outwardly perfect house crackles with unspoken jealousies and rivalry until Maggie's intense love for Samuel tips into obsession and she decides her only option is to abduct the child. As Maggie makes her desperate bid for safety, the women's shared past of trauma and loss comes to the fore once more. WINNER OF THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2015.

They thought they could share him. They were wrong.A sweeping, addictive story about forbidden love and impossible compromise, for readers of Call Me By Your Name, The Line of Beauty and Tin Man.*Now a major film starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin*Marion first sees Tom on a Brighton beach and falls instantly, irrevocably in love. But Tom has another side to him that she will soon discover when she meets Patrick, a museum curator – and Tom’s other lover.In 1950s Britain, it is safer for a policeman to marry a schoolteacher than to pursue a gay romance. And so Marion becomes Tom’s wife, while Patrick becomes his secret.What follows is a devastating triangle of longing and betrayal, unfolding across decades.'A sensitive, sweeping novel' VOGUE'Tense, romantic, smart' RUSSELL T. DAVIES'A moving story of longing and frustration' OBSERVER

This is the story of two women, Nula and Maggie, joined by old family history and love for the same little boy.Nula, struggling with her new baby and feeling alone in her marriage, employs her cousin Maggie as a nanny when she returns to work. But it's not long before Nula finds herself theatened by Maggie's close bond with her son, Samuel. Nula's outwardly perfect house crackles with unspoken jealousies and rivalry until Maggie's intense love for Samuel tips into obsession and she decides her only option is to abduct the child. As Maggie makes her desperate bid for safety, the women's shared past of trauma and loss comes to the fore once more. WINNER OF THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2015.

What if your son was the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll?From the moment she first holds him, Gladys Presley loves her son Elvis ferociously. She is the one by his side when his father is in the jailhouse; as they move from place to place skirting poverty; as Elvis’s obsession with music grows and he begins his whirlwind rise to never-before-seen success. But while he brings audiences across the land to their knees and achieves unimagined wealth and fame, there is another story – of drinking and diet pills, loneliness and loss – and at the height of his power Elvis finds that even kings must go on alone.‘Roberts is an exceptionally tender and empathetic writer, and the story of Elvis Presley and his relationship with his mother is one ripe for her skills… both epic and intimate’ Grazia

**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING HARRY STYLES**This love is all-consumingIt is in 1950s' Brighton that Marion first catches sight of the handsome and enigmatic Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier and Marion is smitten - determined her love will be enough for them both.A few years later in Brighton Museum Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world.Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.'A sensitive, sweeping novel' VOGUE'Tense, romantic, smart...I loved it. Devoured it!' RUSSELL T. DAVIES'A powerful story of forbidden love, regret, and living as your true self' VANITY FAIR'A moving story of longing and frustration' OBSERVER

'A beautiful, moving read' Prima'A tangled tale of maternal inheritance... A must' PATRICK GALE, author of Notes from an ExhibitionA tender story of mothers, daughters and breaking family patternsWhen Winnie is happy, Lillian is happy, too. It’s the mid-1960s and Lillian Wells is a clever teenager with a daring pixie cut, tangerine mini-dress and new boyfriend, Jim, who works at the brewery. Even better, he lives across the road, so she’s never far from her bee-hived, high-heeled single mother Winnie, who is prone to attacks of the nerves. But Lillian harbours secret dreams of going to art school in London. When she gets in, how will she tell her mother – and Jim – that she’s leaving Abingdon – and them?Forty years later, Lillian’s own daughter Rachel is heading off to university, but Lillian is not sure either of them are ready. She sees herself and Winnie in Rachel, who is ambitious and intelligent, but also prone to nervous habits. As Lillian tries to bite her tongue about Rachel’s symptoms, she is reminded of what everyone in Abingdon used to say: It’s a short road to Longbrook… the local institution for the mentally ill. Lillian knows this is all too true, but in a family where secrets run through generations like the rushing waters of the local river, can she bring herself to break the cycle and tell Rachel the truth about her past?‘Roberts is an exceptionally tender and empathetic writer’ GRAZIA'Profoundly moving and utterly comepelling' JAKE ARNOTT, author of The Long Firm

What if your son was the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll?From the moment she first holds him, Gladys Presley loves her son Elvis ferociously. She is the one by his side when his father is in the jailhouse; as they move from place to place skirting poverty; as Elvis’s obsession with music grows and he begins his whirlwind rise to never-before-seen success. But while he brings audiences across the land to their knees and achieves unimagined wealth and fame, there is another story – of drinking and diet pills, loneliness and loss – and at the height of his power Elvis finds that even kings must go on alone.‘Roberts is an exceptionally tender and empathetic writer, and the story of Elvis Presley and his relationship with his mother is one ripe for her skills… both epic and intimate’ Grazia

'A beautiful, moving read' Prima'A tangled tale of maternal inheritance... A must' PATRICK GALE, author of Notes from an ExhibitionA tender story of mothers, daughters and breaking family patternsWhen Winnie is happy, Lillian is happy, too. It’s the mid-1960s and Lillian Wells is a clever teenager with a daring pixie cut, tangerine mini-dress and new boyfriend, Jim, who works at the brewery. Even better, he lives across the road, so she’s never far from her bee-hived, high-heeled single mother Winnie, who is prone to attacks of the nerves. But Lillian harbours secret dreams of going to art school in London. When she gets in, how will she tell her mother – and Jim – that she’s leaving Abingdon – and them?Forty years later, Lillian’s own daughter Rachel is heading off to university, but Lillian is not sure either of them are ready. She sees herself and Winnie in Rachel, who is ambitious and intelligent, but also prone to nervous habits. As Lillian tries to bite her tongue about Rachel’s symptoms, she is reminded of what everyone in Abingdon used to say: It’s a short road to Longbrook… the local institution for the mentally ill. Lillian knows this is all too true, but in a family where secrets run through generations like the rushing waters of the local river, can she bring herself to break the cycle and tell Rachel the truth about her past?‘Roberts is an exceptionally tender and empathetic writer’ GRAZIA'Profoundly moving and utterly comepelling' JAKE ARNOTT, author of The Long Firm

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.This book offers the first full-length study of Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets and clarifies its ‘place’ – in multiple ways – in literary history as a work celebrated for ‘making it new’, yet deeply engaged with the literary past. It argues that Smith’s sonnets are constituted by three intertwined concerns: with tradition, place and the sonnet form itself, whereby the subjects of Smith’s sonnets – across birds, rivers, the sea, plants and flowers – are bound up with the literary context in which she wrote. Charlotte Smith and the Sonnet shows that Smith’s verse engages more deeply with tradition than has hitherto been realised and revises our understanding not only of Smith’s career but also of the sonnet in eighteenth-century England. The book also illuminates Smith’s place in posterity, as a popular poet – influencing figures ranging from Wordsworth and Coleridge to Constable – who was subsequently obscured in literary history. It reveals the complex processes underpinning Smith’s reception and paradoxical position from the late eighteenth century to the present day, and shows that the appropriation of place itself was an important way in which aspects of literary tradition have been negotiated and understood by Smith, her predecessors, contemporaries and successors.

It''s summer 1936, and the world is on the cusp of change, but there''s little sign of this in rural Sussex. So when Kitty Allen answers an advert looking for ''a good plain cook'', she has no idea what she''s in for. For starters, her employer is an American called Ellen Steinberg who believes in having the staff call her by her first name and sunbathing in the nude. Then there''s Ellen''s eleven-year-old daughter, Geenie, a bright, unhappy little thing, and Mrs Steinberg''s gentleman friend, Mr Crane, who''s said to be a poet - even though he doesn''t have a beard and doesn''t actually write much poetry. Rich bohemians imagining themselves as communists, Steinberg and Crane see themselves as champions of ''the people'' - not that they know the first thing about how the people actually live. Kitty is in no position to criticise - after all she claimed to be a good plain cook, despite hardly knowing how to boil an egg. Utterly out of her depth, she is relieved to have the gardener, Arthur, to talk to. Otherwise she''d never last a summer in this madhouse. Ellen Steinberg wants life to run as smoothly as the love story she imagines her lover George Crane to be writing. But as Kitty arrives, the dream is on the edge of falling apart.

Middle England, mid-1980s. The kind of place where nothing ever happens. Except something has happened. A fifteen year old boy called Robert has been killed, down by the pools. And half a dozen lives will come unravelled.There''s Kathryn and Howard, Rob''s parents. Kath has been making the best of her second marriage after the love of her life died young. Howard has been clinging onto a family life he hardly expected to have. There''s Joanna, the teen queen of nowheresville. She''s been looking for a way out, escape from her parents'' broken marriage. She thought Rob might take her away from all this, but lately she?s started to think Rob might have other plans. And then there''s Shane, with the big hands and the fixation on Joanna.Bethan Roberts'' strikingly assured debut novel subtly reveals the tensions and terrors that underpin apparently ordinary lives, and can lead them to spiral suddenly out of control.

Marion ist hingerissen von Tom, einem unverschämt gutaussehenden jungen Mann. Da sind sie noch Teenager. Für sie ist er der Mann ihres Lebens, und alle Zeichen, dass Tom sich nicht für sie als Frau interessiert, übersieht sie. Als er ihr einen Heiratsantrag macht, ist sie glücklich. Aber für Tom ist die Ehe nur das sichere Versteck in einer Zeit, in der Homosexualität gesellschaftlich geächtet ist. Er liebt Patrick, den Kurator des Museums in Brighton, der ihn umwirbt und ihm eine völlig neue Welt eröffnet.Das kann nicht gutgehen. Das geht nicht gut.Jetzt als Film auf amazonprime mit HARRY STYLES, EMMA CORRIN und DAVID DAWSON