'Super-assured ... Wholly convincing' WILLIAM BOYD'Deeply satisfying' Guardian'O'Riordan imbues his narrative with an acutely modern awareness of power and capitalism' The Times__________________Manchester, the summer of 1890. A city humming with industry and gleaming with affluence.But for Charles, cloistered in his middle-class parents' suburban villa on holiday from university, the city's vibrancy holds no charms. Bored and a little listless, he spends the summer in pursuit of his little sisters' governess, Hettie. Before the summer's end, both must face the consequences of their affair - consequences they will live with for the rest of their lives.Charles's sisters come of age as women of the new century - and experience a very different Manchester from their brother and guardian. In the smog and glitter of the city, both sisters will discover the very different things...

A debut collection of stories by a poet with a "painter's eye for detail and pianist's touch for sounding the right notes" (Simon Armitage).Moving from remote, sun-scorched towns to the charged hum of Venice Beach, The Burning Ground is a collection of eight stories populated by men haunted by their past and by their dreams, set against the canvas of California, where beauty and bleakness go hand in hand. In "A Thunderstorm in Santa Monica," a man's unmoored lifestyle is reflected back at him after a long flight. In "Black Bear in the Snow," a divorced advertising executive tries to rekindle a relationship with his son. And in the title story, "The Burning Ground," a painter is haunted by memories of his former lover. The stories take familiar roles—the deadbeat dad, the drifting divorcé, the wayward man—and bring them new emotional depth, peeling back the layers to reveal interiors both unexpected and arresting in their complexity.Written with...