Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city--and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But as Rachel sings and jokes the days away, her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far.In Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar finds humor and horror in the shifting region between elation and mania. His heroine could be the next-door neighbor of the Beales of Grey Gardens or a sister to Jane Gardam's oddball protagonists, but she has an ebullient charm all her own.

    But when old Smiler takes a seat beside him, sucking in pint after pint through his gingery whiskers, a whole new world of battles and bones opens up before him…H. E. Bates – a prolific English novelist and short story writer – wrote 'Castle in the Air' for The Evening News in 1957, but the story was never re-printed in any of his later collections. In fact, its existence was forgotten until 2013 when it was spotted accidentally during a rummage through a newspaper archive. On re-discovering this charming and humorous short story – which exemplifies H.E. Bates's great skill of drawing vivid characters and his ability to create an almost tangible sense of a place – Bates's descendants felt it had to be shared with a wider audience.Bloomsbury Reader is delighted to be re-publishing 'Castle in the Air' alongside the whole body of H. E. Bates's short fiction and novellas, and here we offer it as a free taste of Bates's irresistible writing.

    Overhearing a conversation at his club one day, he becomes interested in a discussion regarding a man named Gastrell. Gastrell is somewhat of a mystery to the club members in spite of his renting a house from one of them. Berrington’s interest in Gastrell intensifies as his fiancé, Dulcie Challoner, befriends a wealthy widow, Mrs. Connie Stapleton who evidently has some type of relationship with Gastrell. As the plot progresses, Berrington finds himself involved with sensational robberies, brutal murders, coded messages, and even mind control! As in many Le Queux books, there are twists and turns as new characters and locations are introduced. When you are sure you know the ending, something new occurs and you wonder how it will affect the conclusion of the book.Excerpt:"I confess I'd like to know somethin' more about him." "Where did you run across him first?" "I didn't run across him; he ran across me, and in rather a curious way. We live in Linden Gardens now, you know. Several of the houses there are almost exactly alike, and about a month ago, at a dinner party we were givin', a young man was shown in. His name was unknown to me, so I supposed that he must be some friend of my wife's. Then I saw that he was a stranger to her too, and then all at once he became very confused, inquired if he were in Sir Harry Dawson's house - Sir Harry lives in the house next to ours - and, findin' he was not, apologized profusely for his mistake, and left hurriedly."

    In between, Moore’s stories have been shortlisted for more than a dozen different awards including the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Lightship Flash Fiction Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize and the Nottingham Short Story Competition. The title story won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes.

    I was often here alone in the blitz, and I was so frightened of the bombs that I quite stopped being frightened of burglars.” World War II has ended, residents are flooding back to London, and the housing shortage creates strange bedfellows. Elinor MacFarren—middle-aged spinster, botanical writer, and collector of prints and objets d’art—decides to rent part of her house to Antonia Bankes, whose American husband is with the Occupation Forces in Europe. While Miss MacFarren prefers to live alone, Mrs Bankes seems a perfect tenant. She admires Miss MacFarren’s beautiful things (“It’s the prettiest room I’ve ever seen in my life!”), promises quiet and care (“You’ll find me madly careful”), and seems an ideal homemaker (“I like housework. I’ve got quite a ‘thing’ about it.”).Inevitably, however, it’s not so easy. Mrs Bankes proves to be exasperating and helpless, skilled only in charm, manipulation, and blithely promising anything to get her way. What follows is an intricately plotted, gloriously entertaining saga of domestic warfare, as Miss MacFarren tries to cope, tries to cajole, and finally tries to rid herself of her meddlesome tenant, all while taking up whiskey—and all with unpredictable and delightful results. This new edition includes an introduction by Sir Roy Strong.

    Copperfield at a party. Two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves, they go in search of salvation: Mrs. Copperfield visits Panama with her husband, where she finds solace among the women who live and work in its brothels; while Miss Goering becomes involved with various men. At the end the two women meet again, each changed by her experience. Mysterious, profound, anarchic and very funny, 'Two Serious Ladies' is a daring, original work that defies analysis.

    'The Long View', a revealing portrait of a marriage, is the ingenious construction of a couple's story that offers a remarkable and very real view of the shifting relationship between two people from 1950 to 1926.(The author, Elizabeth Jane Howard, rose to international stardom with her magnificent Cazalet family saga.)

    His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. But even so, nothing can sate his nagging hunger for experience. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever.…Marked by countless similarities to Maugham’s own life, his masterpiece is “not an autobiography,” as the author himself once contended, “but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inexorably mingled; the emotions are my own.”

    Written when he was only 22 years old, the tale also features some of Rudyard Kipling’s most crystalline prose, and one of the most beautifully rendered, spectacularly exotic settings he ever used. Best of all, it features two of his most unforgettable characters, the ultra-vivid Cockneys Peachy Carnahan and Daniel Dravot, who impart to the story its ultimate, astonishing twist: it is both a tragedy and a triumph.

    His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul. Taking its title from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Evelyn Waugh's first, funniest novel immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingénu abroad in the decadent confusion of 1920s high society.

    He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store…From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures.His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.This gentle comedy trilogy was a runaway bestseller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today. It has been dramatized twice for BBC Radio, with the 1990 series regularly repeated. What people are saying about the Mr Finchley series: ‘Wonderful character from a kinder slower England between the wars.’‘An overlooked gem. An innocent picaresque novel set in an arcadian version of mid 20th century England. The literary equivalent of naive painting, it narrates the adventures of a respectable upper middle-aged man who takes retirement.’‘An antidote to the rush of the early 21st century.’‘A thoroughly enjoyable stroll through a vanished England with some lovable characters. Don't expect modern, fashionable agonisings, here there is good, evil, and understanding. A lovely reminiscent wallow of a read.’‘Gentle well told simple story, full of pleasant surprises, and a mild mannered believable hero. Loved it to bits.’‘So gentle, it hurts.’‘There is a freshness about the writing which is charming and that disarms criticism. Don't expect any great profundities, a gripping plot or inter-character tensions - these books are of the world of Billy Bunter and William Brown - but do expect a very well-written and enjoyable romp through early twentieth-century England in the company of an engaging protagonist.’‘A delightful story of a man who finds himself jolted out of his comfort zone and taken on a journey beyond his wildest imaginings.’‘Another lovely book detailing the adventures of Mr Finchley in altogether far too short a series. Full of humour and a book I was sorry to finish as I wanted it to go on and on.’‘Highly recommended for anyone seeking an entertaining amusing read.’‘A delight to be transported to an England I never knew despite growing up in the 1950s and to experience the countryside through the sharp eyes of the author who obviously had a great love of all things rural.’ Editorial reviews: ‘Quite delightful, with an atmosphere of quiet contentment and humour that cannot fail to charm … The longer we travel with Mr Finchley, the better we come to love him. He makes us share his bread and cheese, and beer and pipe. His delight at the beauties of the countryside and his mild astonishment at the strange ways of men are infectious.’ Daily Telegraph‘His gift of story-telling is obviously innate. Rarely does one come on so satisfying an amalgam of plot, characterisation and good writing.

    Gordon Comstock has declared war on the money god; and Gordon is losing the war. Nearly 30 and "rather moth-eaten already," a poet whose one small book of verse has fallen "flatter than any pancake," Gordon has given up a "good" job and gone to work in a bookshop at half his former salary. Always broke, but too proud to accept charity, he rarely sees his few friends and cannot get the virginal Rosemary to bed because (or so he believes), "If you have no money ... women won't love you." On the windowsill of Gordon's shabby rooming-house room is a sickly but unkillable aspidistra--a plant he abhors as the banner of the sort of "mingy, lower-middle-class decency" he is fleeing in his downward flight.In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell has created a darkly compassionate satire to which anyone who has ever been oppressed by the lack of brass, or by the need to make it, will all too easily relate. He etches the ugly insanity of what Gordon calls "the money-world" in unflinching detail, but the satire has a second edge, too, and Gordon himself is scarcely heroic. In the course of his misadventures, we become grindingly aware that his radical solution to the problem of the money-world is no solution at all--that in his desperate reaction against a monstrous system, he has become something of a monster himself. Orwell keeps both of his edges sharp to the very end--a "happy" ending that poses tough questions about just how happy it really is. That the book itself is not sour, but constantly fresh and frequently funny, is the result of Orwell's steady, unsentimental attention to the telling detail; his dry, quiet humor; his fascination with both the follies and the excellences of his characters; and his courageous refusal to embrace the comforts of any easy answer.

    He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time.

    When her employment agency sends her to the wrong address, her life takes an unexpected turn. The alluring nightclub singer, Delysia LaFosse, becomes her new employer, and Miss Pettigrew encounters a kind of glamour that she had only met before at the movies. Over the course of a single day, both women are changed forever.

    1, was conceived by Cicely Hamilton as a suffrage novel but then became a book about the First World War. Constance Maud knew Cicely Hamilton because both were members of the 400-strong Women Writers Suffrage League; she published No Surrender in November 1911 when the struggle for the vote was at its height.The narrative is faithful to real facts and incidents, with some of the main characters drawing on leading suffrage figures. One is based on Lady Constance Lytton and another, the heroine Jenny Clegg, is a Lancashire mill girl – thus putting paid to the myth that the suffrage movement was mainly middle-class: the main focus of the novel is on the strong support for women’s suffrage by women workers in the textile mills and on the prejudice against votes for women on the part of many of the men in the labour movement.When Emily Wilding Davison, who was to die in 1913 under the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby, reviewed No Surrender, she wrote: ‘There is scarcely a notable incident of the militant campaign which is left untouched. As we devour its pages, we once more review such unforgettable events as the Pantechnicon incident, the protest of the Grille, the Suffragette Fire-Engine, the sending of women by Express Post to the Prime Minister, and the final word-picture of the procession of 1910. But for vivid realism, the pictures of prison life, of the Hunger Strike and Forcible Feeding, are difficult to beat. It is a book which breathes the very spirit of the Women’s Movement.As Lydia Fellgett writes in her Persephone Preface: ‘A political novel cannot be successful without well-written characters: it is therefore also a love story between Jenny Clegg and the Independent Labour Party member Joe Hopton. And it is about powerful female friendship fostered through a common cause. But like most of the (surprisingly few) novels that emerged from the women’s suffrage movement, No Surrender’s importance comes from its documentation of social history; it is polemical but not without complexity; it accurately portrays the arguments of the anti-Suffragists alongside those of the heroines, and it is a passionate account, full of enthralling detail and political fervour.’