Invitation to the Waltz

Author	Rebecca West
ISBN	0812971221

"I heard, amazed, his step ring strong upon the stone, for I had felt his absence as a kind of death from which he would emerge ghostlike, impalpable."

Two women await the return of a soldier, Chris, from World War I. His wife, Kitty, is an upper-class woman, still mourning the death of their child....

Author	Elizabeth Taylor
ISBN	1844083071

Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House . . .

After reading The...

Author	Elizabeth Jenkins
ISBN	0860682722

The magnetic Evelyn Gresham, 52, is a barrister of considerable distinction. He has everything life could offer -- a gracious riverside house in Berkshire, a beautiful young wife, Imogen, who is devoted to him, and their 11-year-old son, a replica of his father.

Their nearest neighbor is...

Author

Mollie Panter-Downes

It's a summer's day in 1946. The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of barbed wire are a reminder that something, some quality of life, has evaporated. Together again after years of separation, Laura and Stephen Marshall and their daughter Victoria...

Author	Antonia White
ISBN	0860680495

4.5 stars
This is an autobiographical novel about life in a Catholic Girls school, quite closely based on White’s own life. Like the protagonist of the novel, Nanda, White was a Catholic convert at the age of nine and was sent to a school very like the one in the book. Nanda wants to be a good Catholic...

Author	Elizabeth Taylor
ISBN	1844083209

In a Summer Season is one of Elizabeth Taylor's finest novels in which, in a moving and powerful climax, she reveals love to be the thing it is: beautiful, often funny, and sometimes tragic.

'You taste of rain', he said, kissing her. 'People say I married her for her money', he thought contentedly,...

Author	Elizabeth Taylor
ISBN	1844083225

In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Beautiful divorcee Tory is painfully involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory's best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates...

Author	Anita Brookner
ISBN	0140147454

Riveting. Even when a frivolous person and so-called friend, Alix, decides to betray our narrator, Frances, the latter is constitutionally incapable of perceiving the underhandedness. Frances hasn’t been prepared for duplicity and dissembling in life, of which Alix is the keenest exemplar....

Author	Julia Strachey
ISBN	1903155274

This was absolute rubbish. Wicked too. The story was that although her wedding was but a few hours off, the bride couldn't make up her mind whether she should get married or run off with a previous lover, a dithering sort of person whose job took him on great adventures abroad. He had just turned up again...

Author	Elizabeth von Arnim
ISBN	0860684237

"Elizabeth and Her German Garden," a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, was popular and frequently reprinted during the early years of the 20th century. "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" is a year's diary written by Elizabeth about her experiences learning gardening and interacting with her friends....