Books and Other Writing by Paul House
Title: Poetry
Author: Paul House
Title: A Little Folding of the Hands to Sleep
Author: Paul House
Pages: 320
A novel about post-war Spain and the transition of the 1970's. It is a novel about love, revenge and obsession. Angel is on his way to meet his exiled Uncle who is coming back to Spain as a result of the amnesty granted by the first free government. On the way he meets an old itinerant farmer. Their conversations and memories lead to a surprising change in the young man's plans.
If age, which is certainly
Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser,
It is only that youth is still able to believe
It will get away with anything, while age
Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
W.H.Auden (The Sea and the Mirror)
Tengo mucho miedo
De las hojas muertas,
Miedo de los prados
Llenos de rocio.
Yo voy a dormirme;
Si no me despiertas,
Dejaré a tu lado mi corazón frío.
¿Qué es eso que suena
Muy lejos,
Amor? El viento en las vidrieras,
¡Amor mío!
Federico García Lorca (Aire Nocturno)
Voy a dormir, nodriza mía, acuéstame.
Ponme una lámpara a la cabecera:
una constelación; la que te guste;
todas son buenas; bájala un poquito.
Déjame sola; oyes romper los brotes ...
te acuna un pie celeste desde arriba
y un pájaro te traza unos compases
para que olvides ... Gracias. Ah, un encargo;
si él llama nuevamente por teléfono
le dices que no insista, que he salido ...
Alfonsina Storni (Voy a Dormir)
Title: And They Pluck Out Your Eyes
Author: Paul House
Pages: 435
Format: None
Format: None
A novel set against the failed coup d'etat in Spain of 1981. It follows the lives of a cross section of society in the three months leading up to the coup, and the week following.
Title: Sooner than Gold
Author: Paul House
Pages: 650
A novel based loosely on Eliza Lynch, who, in 1848, at the age of 13, left Ireland to escape the Great Famine; who at 18 was the most expensive and sought after courtesan in Paris; who, as mistress of the dictator, Francisco Solano López, became Regent of Paraguay and the richest woman in the world. Together with López she involved the country in a bloody war, the result of which was total disaster.
Title: Dust before the Wind
Author: Paul House
Pages: 300
A mutilated body is found on a deserted road. It is at first thought to be the body of a whore. The Mother Superior in a local convent disappears. The Vatican's representative is called in to investigate the latter, the local police the former. Inevitably their paths cross and they are seen to be investigating the same case. The novel shows the ruthless struggle for power in the convent that led to the murder of the nun.
Title: Trivial Pursuit
Author: Paul House
Pages: 326
Beef Tea (67) and Marlowe Philips (40) are private detectives who are on a case that takes them through the USA, Mexico and finally to Spain.
Beef Tea (67) and Marlowe Philips (40) are private detectives who are on a case that takes them through the USA, Mexico and finally to Spain. They are following the dangerous criminals Wilma and Lance, who are, in turn, trying to kill them. Wilma and Lance meet up with various other criminals, including the evil Small Boy Called Elgar. As they endeavour to catch up with their prey, Beef Tea and Marlowe Philips, Wilma and Lance run across some strange characters, like Boll Weevil, the Texan peanut farmer, Fat Al, the Mexican drugs baron, or Tobias Jugg, the captain of a tramp steamer, and several celebrities, like Bob Dylan, Edgar Broughton and Captain Beefheart, together with a weird menagerie of animals. As they journey on they reminisce, talking about and criticising or praising such things as varied as cricket averages, Play-doh, Marcel Proust and Roger Whittaker. Various sections are written in the styles of Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway and Thackeray, to name but a few. The mystery ends with a modern enactment of the last scenes of Hamlet.
Title: Common Places
Author: Paul House
Pages: 216
Publisher: Diiarts
Format: Hardback
Publication Date: June 2010
ISBN: 978-1-907386-21-3
Price: £10.99
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: June 2010
ISBN: 978-1-907386-20-6
Price: £7.99
“Was Harry’s lie any worse than my own? At least he had lived. I, on the other hand, had committed perhaps the worst crime of all. I had done nothing.” When Leah Elisabeth Browne accompanies her mother to southern France to visit her brother, Harry, she is unaware that the events and people she encounters there will puncture forever the facade of her staid suburban existence and the expose the many tragic follies hidden behind the prim respectability she has always known. Returning home to England, Leah enters upon a love affair in letters, thus beginning a journey which will lead her to strip away all artifice and teach her to examine what lies beneath the surface of those with whom she has always lived. Her unsentimental yet compassionate honesty revolutionises both her view of her surroundings and her understanding of her own character and capacity. At once a mystery, a love story and a reflection on identity and the folly of judging at face value, Common Places is a novel which
defies labels. In prose which echoes with cadences of John Donne, Paul House unfolds a luminous tale of transcendent, intellectual love amidst the frayed world of stifling convention in post-war Britain.
Title: Harbour
Author: Paul House
Pages: 388
Publisher: Diiarts
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: 14 November 2009
ISBN: 978-1-907386-02-2
Price: £11.99
Buy this Paperback
Format: Hardback
Publication Date: 14 November 2009
ISBN: 978-1-907386-05-3
Price: £15.99
Buy this Hardback
Three cultures collide—the end of an Empire.
Half a world away from the Nazi menace, Hong Kong stands at the crossroads of East and West – proud colony of the Tai-Pan and the triad, of Tao-ism and traders, of the outsider and the half-caste.
But just as Britain and Europe are threatened by Hitler, so Japan is advancing relentlessly on Hong Kong. As war is declared and hostilities gather pace, this flawed, glittering society, forgotten and abandoned by its colonial masters, is turned upside down. Privilege and power, honour and chicanery, self-interest, fatalism and opportunism all collide.
As these worlds fragment, a love story emerges to defy convention and culture.