# Monday Rent Boy - Hardcover

by **Susan Doherty** (Author)

**By the author of the award-winning _The Ghost Garden_, a bravely imagined, deeply empathetic novel of two adolescent boys, bound by friendship and a terrible secret. With love and sex so deeply entwined with betrayal and abuse, how does a boy grow up?**

_Monday Rent Boy_ begins in Somerset, England, in the mid-1980s, with the winning and heart-warming story of two 13-year-old friends and fellow altar boys, Arthur Barnes and Ernie Castlefrank. Endearing outcasts, they try not to speak of the secret tie that binds them: both boys are routinely preyed on by The Zipper, their nickname for Father Ziperto, the local Catholic priest. Still, they find adventure and release in the mischief they get up to together, as each also tries to survive in other ways. Arthur, a great reader and denier of reality, finds an ally in town bookseller Marina Phillips. Ernie, a gifted mathematician and animal lover, is not so lucky. As he and Arthur age out of the abuse, Ernie notices younger and equally vulnerable boys being recruited. When he tries to blow the whistle, nobody believes him. At 16, he disappears, a loss that almost destroys his best friend but also confirms for Arthur that he was smart to stay silent.

Arthur eventually also turns his back on the mystery of Ernie's disappearance, but his bookselling mentor and friend Marina Phillips finds a way to follow Ernie where rage and betrayal has led him--into the darkest corners of the dark web--a search that ultimately helps Arthur reckon with what happened to them both. In the novel's stunning, deeply affecting conclusion, Doherty draws a line directly from the covered-up abuse of children by Catholic priests to the current proliferation of child pornography and predators online--miraculously revealing the true heart of darkness while managing to affirm the light.

### Author Biography

SUSAN DOHERTY's award-winning debut novel, _A Secret Music (_2015), was followed four years later by _The Ghost Garden_, the biography of a woman living with schizophrenia. She has worked on staff for _Maclean's_, and freelanced for the _International Herald Tribune_, _La Tribune de Genève_, and the _Independent_ in London; for eighteen years she ran her own advertising production company. She has served on the boards of the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Quebec Writers' Federation and Nazareth House, a home for those afflicted by addiction and homelessness. Since 2009, she has volunteered at the Douglas Institute, a psychiatric hospital, working with people living with severe mental illness. She is married to the educator Hal Hannaford.

**Number of Pages:** 360

**Dimensions:** 1.28 x 9.07 x 6.25 IN

**Publication Date:** March 19, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 26.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 26.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Monday Rent Boy - Hardcover

---

> Source: [Smart supply deals](https://smartsupplydeals.com/products/monday-rent-boy-hardcover)
> Updated: 2026-07-21