Every Eye concerns Hattie, a woman not really at home anywhere, least of all among her manipulative family, which has assigned her the role of shabby-genteel London spinster. She has understood little about her existence, and about her strange, aborted love affair with a much older man--the central mystery of her life. Now, while in Ibiza with her new young husband, the meaning of her past is becoming clear, its hidden patterns emerging from gray English shadows into the blazing Mediterranean sun."It is in Ibiza that the story breaks free from its resentments," said Anita Brookner in praise of this remarkable neglected novel, "a lucidly written account of various kinds of confusion ... and a valuable lesson in where to look for freedom."

    . . 'Yes. It's only - I'm very fond of Alfred, ' said Laura, taking the plunge and temporarily unaware that almost all wives begin conversations about almost all husbands in precisely the same way."Laura has been married for seven years. On those occasions when an after-dinner snooze behind The Times seems preferable to her riveting conversation about their two small sons, Laura dismisses the notion that Alfred does not understand her, reflecting instead that they are what is called happily married. At thirty-four, Laura wonders if she's ever been in love -- a ridiculous thing to ask oneself. Then Duke Ayland enters her life and that vexing question refuses to remain unanswered . . . With Laura, beset by perplexing decisions about the supper menu, the difficulties of appeasing Nurse, and the necessity of maintaining face within the small village of Quinnerton, E.M. Delafield created her first "Provincial Lady." And in the poignancy of Laura's doubts about her marriage, she presents a dilemma which many women will recognise.

    Then she meets Miles, fifteen years her junior, and falls passionately in love. But both lovers have strong personalities and passion does not equal happiness. Evelyn, deeply jealous and conventional is shocked at her lover's casual ways and his insistence on working all day. Miles’s love for Evelyn is real but he cannot devote himself wholly to her whims. Vita Sackville-West collides attitudes to work, sex and society in the changing world of the early 1930s.

    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.

    The story follows thirty-something Emily who lives alone, humbly and happily, in a tiny apartment and on a meager income. She is the one that everyone counts on but no one goes out of their way to accommodate. Her fortune changes, however, and the second half chronicles her adaptation to her new life and the dangers that arise from those who stand to lose most from her new circumstances.

    For a second, Meg felt disloyalty. It occurred to her of a sudden that Flora was always saying that, and that it was in the tone of one giving a lovely present. She was bestowing herself.'The soul of kindness is what Flora believes herself to be. Tall, blonde and beautiful, she appears to have everything under control -- her home, her baby, her husband Richard, her friend Meg, Kit, Meg's brother, who has always adored Flora, and Patrick the novelist and domestic pet. Only the bohemian painter Liz refuses to become a worshiper at the shrine. Flora entrances them all, dangling visions of happiness and success before their spellbound eyes. All are bewitched by this golden tyrant, all conspire to protect her from what she really is. All, that is, except the clear-eyed Liz: it is left to her to show them that Flora's kindness is the sweetest poison of them all.

    They have been brought up at quite some distance from the rest of the world. Living with their famous detective writer father, and their fragile mother, they have been one another’s friends – with hardly any experience of people outside their family.

    He is just a boy when his father is slain by the Doones, a lawless clan inhabiting wild Exmoor on the border of Somerset and Devon. Seized by curiosity and a sense of adventure, he makes his way to the valley of the Doones, where he is discovered by the beautiful Lorna. In time their childish fantasies blossom into mature love—a bond that will inspire John to rescue his beloved from the ravages of a stormy winter, rekindling a conflict with his archrival, Carver Doone, that climaxes in heartrending violence. Beloved for its portrait of star-crossed lovers and its surpassing descriptions of the English countryside, Lorna Doone is R. D. Blackmore’s enduring masterpiece.

    Within a week, she has moved into the magnetic architect’s echoing loft in East London. But nothing could have prepared Lily for what she finds there. The distinct presence of another woman lingers in the loft, one who seems to have disappeared in a hurry, leaving behind a single party dress, a puzzling mark on the wall, and the suffocating scent of jasmine. Lily’s unsettling curiosity soon turns to obsession as the spirit of this mysterious woman increasingly haunts her. With a nod to Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca, My Lover’s Lover is a sexy, modern gothic tale that will keep readers hooked until the very end.

    ‘So it was that it came out in the same year as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer and The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks had been published just a year or so earlier. As a needle on the historical compass of the previous decade, it quivers with the anticipation of change, poised at the very end of what had gone before.When the manuscript was first submitted to a publisher they complained that they couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to read about a funeral. But that is precisely this book’s appeal; people behave strangely and badly around death and a family funeral has a dark comic drama all of its own. The plot is simple; a wealthy family gathers at the family home (a 2,000 acre country estate in Derbyshire) in the aftermath of the patriarch’s death; to mourn him, bury him and read his will. Jane Hervey restricts herself to four chapters, corresponding to four days, and the weight of the novel lies in the relationships between the old man’s surviving wife and adult children as they begin to realise what his death will mean.Jane Hervey is brilliant on the power play within a family: who gets what and who does what in the vacuum left by a dead parent. She observes the struggle between husband and wife, child and parent, older and younger siblings, those with status and those without and how that status is achieved. Her novel is restless with these constantly shifting positions as the characters jostle and bicker for advantage."- Persephone

    While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry's mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is a lighthearted, yet unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.

    "Its directness, its uncompromising truths, its depth of feeling, and above all, its absence of any single superfluous word, make Reuben Sachs, in some sort, a classic." -- Oscar Wilde

    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.’

    Teresa's elderly, willful father drags her off to India to spare her from the clutches of her mother.

    He in turn beguiles her with stories of his nonexistent wife and children thereby weaning her from her self-absorption, but creating for himself a dreamlife with Lady Franklin at the heart of it. Half-hoping to make his dream come true, Leadbitter takes a bold step which costs him her company and brings the story to a dramatically unexpected end. "The Hireling" was made into a 1973 film starring Sarah Miles and Robert Shaw.