Jan is independent and spirited, but leads a humdrum life, working in an office, and walks out with a very suitable young man. Juliana, at 17 years of age, is getting the upbringing of a young lady in the enormous family mansion, Chidleigh, and her life is devoid of excitement and event.The two heroines can see one another from time to time, momentarily, through some rent in the fabric of time, but never manage to meet and interact. Their lives converge as Juliana's world is turned upside down; her father dies and her notoriously wicked and mysterious brother, Lucian Clare, returns to take his position as head of the family.Lucian recognizes a supernatural power in Juliana, and uses this to reach out to Jan through the ages.

    . . wishing he looked more like Hugh Grant. Scarlett loves the movies. But does she love sensible fiancé David just as much? With a big white wedding on the horizon, Scarlett really should have decided by now . . . When she has the chance to house-sit in Notting Hill - the setting of one of her favourite movies - Scarlett jumps at the chance. But living life like a movie is trickier than it seems, especially when her new neighbour Sean is so irritating. And so irritatingly handsome, too. Scarlett soon finds herself starring in a romantic comedy of her very own: but who will end up as the leading man?

    At the beginning of the novel she's returned after a long absence to the fictional town of Radstowe (which is a thinly disguised portrait of Bristol). Miss Mole is not getting along well with her current employer and after a few days in a boarding house, gets a new job via her cousin Lilla, who is from the wealthier side of the family and has some good contacts. Without revealing the family connection, Lilla recommends her for a job as a housekeeper of sorts for a rather stuffy, pompous minister named Robert Corder, whose wife has recently passed away. The household consists of Reverend Corder, a nonconformist; daughter Ethel, who's rather desperately looking for a man so she can escape the house; young Ruth, who is still in school and longing for a mother figure; and their sassy cousin Wilfred, who's attending medical school nearby. Wilfred's presence in the house is rather awkward and raises a few eyebrows, but his mother is wealthy and the Reverend can't risk offending her. A spinster housekeeper/chaperone is exactly what they need to keep the house respectable -- or so they think. Miss Mole moves in and simultaneously elevates their lives and yet turns things upside-down. She's comforting and yet slyly subversive, and Reverend Corder doesn't quite know if he should appreciate her or fear her, as Hannah is smarter than he is. Wilfred takes to her instantly, recognizing her sharp with, and Ruth grows to love her. Eventually, though, there are whispers about Miss Mole's background which much be addressed, and we learn the real reason for her long absence from her hometown.

    Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter. Overwhelmed by the terrors and rigors of the Blitz, middle-aged Miss Roach has retreated to the relative safety and stupefying boredom of the suburban town of Thames Lockdon, where she rents a room in a boarding house run by Mrs. Payne. There the savvy, sensible, decent, but all-too-meek Miss Roach endures the dinner-table interrogations of Mr. Thwaites and seeks to relieve her solitude by going out drinking and necking with a wayward American lieutenant. Life is almost bearable until Vicki Kugelmann, a seeming friend, moves into the adjacent room. That’s when Miss Roach’s troubles really start to begin.Recounting an epic battle of wills in the claustrophobic confines of the boarding house, Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude, with a delightfully improbable heroine, is one of the finest and funniest books ever written about the trials of a lonely heart.

    Growing up in a typically Victorian household, the Pargiter children must learn to find their footing in an alternative world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing-room to the air-raid shelter. A work of fluid and dazzling lucidity, The Years eschews a simple line of development in favour of a varied and constantly changing style, emphasises the radical discontinuity of personal experiences and historical events. Virginia Woolf's penultimate novel celebrates the resilience of the individual self and, in her dazzlingly fluid and distinctive voice, she confidently paints a broad canvas across time, generation and class.

    By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in the Mortmain household, not the least of which is that Cassandra is deeply, hopelessly, in love.

    For almost all of those years she has been the clandestine lover to Paul Sheringham, young heir of a neighboring house. The two now meet on an unseasonably warm March day—Mothering Sunday—a day that will change Jane's life forever. As the narrative moves back and forth from 1924 to the end of the century, what we know and understand about Jane—about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees, remembers—expands with every vividly captured moment. Her story is one of profound self-discovery, and through her, Graham Swift has created an emotionally soaring, deeply affecting work of fiction.

    Confused and unhappy, she discovers the wrecked and flowering wastes around St Paul's, where she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.

    Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder -- especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath.

    . . . Half a dozen V.A.D.s made a rush at me and treated my small abrasion as though my whole head had been blown off. From an impromptu wedding in the early days of World War II, to a bout with German measles in a hospital reminiscent of a medieval torture chamber, to becoming the first casualty for over-eager V.A.D.s, Verily Anderson’s war gets off to a bumpy start. And it doesn’t get easier.In this acclaimed memoir, we follow the inimitable Verily and her husband Donald through all the vicissitudes of war, including the unforgettable birth of Verily’s first child in the midst of a German bombing raid. By turns hilarious, poignant, and harrowing (and sometimes all three at once), Spam Tomorrow presents a rollicking view of home front life from the perspective of one strong, courageous, and very funny participant.

    Elizabeth Jenkins's artistry, however, transforms the bare facts of this case from the annals of Victorian England's Old Bailey into an absolutely spine-chilling exploration of the depths of human depravity.

    Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?Jane Austen once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work.

    Disinherited by law and brutally ousted from Combe-Raven, the idyllic country estate which has been their peaceful home since childhood, the two young women are left to fend for themselves. While the submissive Norah follows a path of duty and hardship as a governess, her high-spirited and rebellious younger sister has made other decisions. Determined to regain her rightful inheritance at any cost, Magdalen uses her unconventional beauty and dramatic talent in recklessly pursuing her revenge. Aided by the audacious swindler Captain Wragge, she braves a series of trials leading up to the climactic test: can she trade herself in marriage to the man she loathes?Written in the early 1860s, between The Woman in White and The Moonstone, No Name was rejected as immoral by critics of its time, but is today regarded as a novel of outstanding social insight, showing Collins at the height of his powers.

    Now one of her most endearing classics is being reissued for a new generation of readers. China Court is the story of the hours and days of a country house in Wales and five generations of the family who inhabited it.

    His first post? St. Jude’s parish, a corner of London with a raucous congregation full of Irish immigrants. The flock is an odd pairing with the gentle Father Boyd, but he just might be both mad enough and tender enough to get through to them.   Later adapted into a beloved British sitcom, Bless Me, Father is a humorous and sweet-natured look at Catholicism in the 1950s. Joining Boyd is the cantankerous, scheming, and brilliant Father Duddleswell, a man who is willing to do anything to make sure the Lord’s will be done, and Mrs. Pring, the sharp-tongued housekeeper who both coddles and cajoles her priestly family of two. If the church needs money, Duddleswell will place a bet to get it. If a Catholic wants to marry a Protestant . . . well, maybe he won’t go that far.   Father Neil’s adventures with his parishioners are sure to delight readers of all creeds.