Other People

It is summer in small town Havenport. Protected from the world by her devoted mother, fifteen-year-old June is content and completely self-absorbed. Her biggest concern is where she will be holidaying this year. When June's father reappears after twelve years in Australia, she is thrust abruptly into a different life: new house, town, school. She soon suspects that she does not know the full story about her father, and when she meets Tony Townsend, he and his London life suddenly promise a glamorous and alluring alternative . . . Other People is a compelling coming-of-age novel, told with Dale's trademark wit, observation and canny dissection of relationships.

Celia Dale was born in 1912 and was once a secretary to Rumer Godden, and also worked as a publisher's advisor and a book reviewer. Her first novel, The Least of These, was published in 1943, and she went on to write twelve others, among them A Helping Hand, Sheep's Clothing and A Spring of Love. She won the 1986 Crime Writers' Association Veuve Cliquot Short Story Award for 'Lines of Communication', which appears in her only short story collection, A Personal Call and Other Stories. She died in 2011.