Dell and Elinor Glyn up a tree. Following the death of their grandfather - in whose enormous Warwickshire house they live - their mother relinquishes drink (to which she had taken in a big way) for the joys of frantic housework. Naturally the girls long to escape.Blanche trains as a mannequin at a dubious institution in London, and Vicky flees to Holland and a purgatorial life as an au pair to a lot of dogs. But this is only the beginning and other adventures await them, including the poverty and cabbage smells of one-room living, the charcoaled fingers of art school, drunkenness and cheap restaurants of Soho bohemia, and varying degrees of excitement with several husbands and lovers.First published in 1967, A Touch of Mistletoe shows Barbara Comyns' original voice at its best, mixing a characteristic simplicity with a quiet but cunning wit.

    The revelation of that primitive cruelty cements a friendship in which protection plays no small part. Years later, middle aged, they remain close friends and live on the same street. So when Daisy's husband dies suddenly, Ruth's discovery that the marriage was unhappy is the first stage in the unravelling of the certainties she has wrapped around her adult life. Friendship, love, marriage and, above all, the scorching effects of adultery, come under the microscope in this dextrous novel. Journeying from a terrifying suburban household to its unexpected conclusion in the Egyptian Pharaoh's tombs, The Ice House is startling, tragic and humorous by turns.

    The sense of paranoia, of persecution by a foe or force that is never given a name, evokes The Trial by Kafka, a writer with whom Kavan is often compared, although her deeply personal, restrained, and almost foreign  —accented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout—the protagonist's unhelpful "adviser," the friend and lover who abandons her at the clinic, and an assortment of deluded companions—are sketched without a trace of the rage, self-pity, or sentiment that have marked more recent accounts of mental instability.

    But Quintin, the seducer of one dove, is also the husband of another. And Petta, his once beautiful wife, is fighting back age as fiercely as Ellie is plunging into it.

    She should not speak of "being friends" with him -- a young man is either eligible or he is not-and never, but never, should she get herself talked about, for a young girl who does so is doomed. "Men may dance with her, or flirt with her, but they don't propose." It would be quite a coup for a girl to find a husband during her first season, but if, God forbid, three seasons pass without success, she must join the ranks of those sad women who are a great embarrassment to society and, above all, to their disappointed mothers . . . With such thoughts in mind, how can Monica fail to look forward to her first ball?

    Together they battle to preserve Mary's neglected inheritance, her beloved farm, Anderby Wold. This labour of love - and the benevolent tyranny of traditional Yorkshire ways - have made Mary old before her time. Then into her purposeful life comes David Rossitur, red-haired, charming, eloquent: how can she help but love him? But David is a young man from a different England, radical and committed to social change. As their confrontation and its consequences inevitably unfold, Mary's life and that of the calm village of Anderby are changed forever.

    Henrietta is the third daughter in a large Victorian family, the misfit girl without the beauty or the talent to be loved. Querulous, bad-tempered, her meaningless life passes aimlessly by. But Henrietta has one saving grace. She knows herself for what she is, and self-knowledge, however bitter, turns her life of defeat into a certain kind of victory.

    Narrated entirely from the viewpoint of a young insane woman, this novel provides a moving description of the horrific conditions in two New Zealand mental institutions.

    Amongst the characters in this collection of short stories are the upright Mrs Allen, who unwittingly provides an alibi for her slackly corseted home help, and Emily, who has written fluent, amusing letters to a distinguished novelist for 10 years but descends into small talk when they meet.

    At thirty-four she finds that her external life of dreary routine fails to match up to her lush, wistful and dreamy internal life. Norah, her energetic and chaotic friend, is equally settled in her own marriage to an irritable university professor.Then Hugh Miller and his sister Claire descend upon the quiet town. On all four, the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts an enchanting spell. And after their departure, life - having been violently disrupted - will never be quite the same again . . .

    I have always known...'Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.

    It is a place where, despite everything, Janie is happy. But when the Cruelty Man arrives, bringing with him the threat of the dreaded 'home' - the orphanage that is every child's nightmare - Janie's contented childhood seems to be at an end.

    The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she never met: Aunt Margaret, beautiful and speechless, and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the ruins of the pleasure garden. And brooding Uncle Philip loves only the life-sized wooden puppets he creates in his toyshops. The classic gothic novel established Angela Carter as one of our most imaginative writers and augurs the themes of her later creative works. "Beneath its contemporary surface, this novel shimmers with blurred echoes—from Lewis Carroll, from 'Giselle' and 'Coppelia,' Harlequin and Punch… It leave behind it a flavor, pungent and unsettling" —The New York Times Book Review

    This income only serves to highlight the emptiness of a life led by a woman deprived of the domestic trappings that have defined her.

    One day she walks out of her office, acquires a gaudy new outfit, adopts a girlier tone of voice, and heads to the airport to fly south. On the plane she takes a seat between two men. One is delighted with her company, the other is deeply perturbed. So begins an unnerving journey into the darker recesses of human nature.