About What Remains
A disgraced headmaster. A fragile marriage. An old magic that never truly died.
Some pasts refuse to stay buried.
After a humiliating scandal destroys his career, Paul retreats into a life of ritual, superstition and quiet desperation. His wife keeps him at arm’s length. His daughter tries to forgive him. And the small coastal town where he grew up watches him with suspicion and thinly veiled disgust.
But the past has other plans.
When an old friend begs Paul to help find a missing girl, he reluctantly returns to the occult practices he abandoned decades ago—practices taught to him by two strange sisters who once opened his senses to the “Beyond World”. Their teachings brought him power. They also brought him danger.
What begins as a simple ritual spirals into something far darker.
Visions flare. Old debts stir. Long-buried secrets rise through the cracks.
And as flames spread through the landscape of Paul’s memories, someone—or something—seems determined to drag him back into a destiny he thought he had escaped.
Haunting, intimate and quietly brutal, What Remains is a novel about guilt, friendship, desire, and the thin line between magic and madness.
Perfect for readers of Andrew Michael Hurley, Sarah Waters, John Burnside and Tana French.
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Author Bio:
Philip Leslie, the author ‘The History of Us’, published by Legend and shortlisted for the 2009 East Anglian Book Awards, also writes as Fran Leslie (genre fiction) and Alan Leslie (experimental fiction). Philip was born in Gorleston, Norfolk and attended Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design 1980-81. From there he moved to South Wales to study for a degree in Fine Art, graduating in 1984. As for writing, that began in his early teens, along with a passion for composing music. He was able to write and compose to his heart’s content at Newport, where the writer in residence was Gillian Clarke. For ten years after college he attempted to write teen fantasy, encouraged by Diana Wynne Jones. In spite of much rewriting Philip’s books never found a sympathetic editor. He took a short break from writing and worked for a bank. He resumed writing fiction in 2000, for adults, and in 2001 won a consolation prize in a the short story section of the Bridport writing competition with ‘Brought to You by the Makers of Norris Toothbrushes’. (Philip spent the prize money on a snowy adventure by rail and on foot to Heptonstall graveyard.) The multi-character story was adapted for a one-man play that enjoyed twelve performances at the Edinburgh Fringe. Philip writes or edits his writing every day. His latest novel is tricky to summarise. In brief it takes place on two days, in 1981 and 1980, though mushrooming with school-based flashbacks and musings. The narrator, ostensibly the author himself, is as unreliable as they come and painfully ignorant of current attitudes towards race and gender. After three years the book is 340,000 words long, 10,000 of those having been added during editing. Philip’s love of music and composing continues to the present. At one time he had around 40 titles in print with several publishers, many of the pieces scored for double-reed instruments. The main influences on Philip’s writing include, in random order, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Lawrence Durrell, Vladimir Nabokov, William Golding, Muriel Spark, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, Leon Garfield… The novel he has read the most number of times, at least once a year since it was first published in the UK in 1985, is DWJ’s ‘Fire and Hemlock’, the perfect blend of fantasy and everyday life.