The Village
10 best books like The Village (Marghanita Laski): Cranford, Miss Buncle's Book, A Game of Hide and Seek, Lolly Willowes, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Miss Ranskill Comes Home, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes, The Far Cry, There but for the, The Priory
| Author | Elizabeth Gaskell |
| ISBN | 0141439882 |
'It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor...I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!'
A portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters...
| Author | D.E. Stevenson |
| ISBN | 0708908349 |
Barbara Buncle is in a bind. Times are harsh, and Barbara's bank account has seen better days. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from fellow residents of her quaint English village, writing a revealing novel that features the townsfolk as characters. The smashing bestseller is published...
Harriet and Vesey meet when they are teenagers, and their love is as intense and instantaneous as it is innocent. But they are young. All life still lies ahead. Vesey heads off hopefully to pursue a career as an actor. Harriet marries and has a child, becoming a settled member of suburban society. And then...
| Author | Sylvia Townsend Warner |
| ISBN | 0940322161 |
This is a book about witches. But when I finally put this book down last night, I mostly just thought about my father.
I don’t think it is controversial to say that duty is a bit of an old fashioned word these days. Like honor. It’s one of those words you hear someone say and squirm uncomfortably,...
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Miss Pettigrew, an approaching-middle-age governess, was accustomed to a household of unruly English children. 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...
| Author | Barbara Bower |
| ISBN | 1903155363 |
Published in 1946, under her married name, Barbara Bower.
Description: Tells the tale of a woman who goes on a cruise and is swept overboard. She lives for three years on a desert island before being rescued by a destroyer in 1943. When she returns to England it seems to her to have gone mad: she...
| Author | Mollie Panter-Downes |
| ISBN | 0953478076 |
For fifty years Mollie Panter-Downes' name was associated with "The New Yorker", for which she wrote a regular 'Letter from London', book reviews and over thirty short stories; of the twenty-one in "Good Evening, Mrs Craven", written between 1939 and 1944, only two had ever been reprinted - these very...
| Author | Emma Smith |
| ISBN | 1903155231 |
In September 1946 23-year-old Emma Smith set sail for India, to work as an assistant with a documentary unit making films about tea gardens in Assam. She was dazzled by India ...
‘I went down the gangplank at Bombay, and India burst upon me with the force of an explosion.’
... and...
| Author | Ali Smith |
| ISBN | 0241143403 |
There but for the is the sparkling satirical novel by bestselling Ali Smith. 'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party . . .' As time passes by...
| Author | Dorothy Whipple |
| ISBN | 1903155304 |
The setting for this, the third novel by Dorothy Whipple Persephone have published, is Saunby Priory, a large house somewhere in England which has seen better times. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt; then, as soon as...
| Author | Cicely Hamilton |
| ISBN | 0953478009 |
William was 'written in a rage in 1918; this extraordinary novel... is a passionate assertion of the futility of war' (the Spectator). Its author had been an actress and suffragette; after 1914 she worked at the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont and organised Concerts at the Front. William - an...
| Author | R.C. Sherriff |
| ISBN | 1903155487 |
In The Hopkins Manuscript we watch through his eyes as the moon veers off course, draws slowly closer to the earth, and finally crashes into it on May 3rd 1946. Because it falls into the Atlantic much of humanity survives – only to generate new disasters. But this is not science fiction in the mode of H...
The Fortnight in September
| Author | R.C. Sherriff |
| ISBN | 1903155576 |
The Fortnight in September embodies the kind of mundane normality the men in the dug-out longed for – domestic life at 22 Corunna Road in Dulwich, the train journey via Clapham Junction to the south coast, the two weeks living in lodgings and going to the beach every day. The family’s only regret is...
| Author | Dorothy Whipple |
| ISBN | 1903155460 |
I read this massive chunk of a book in two sittings.
Dorothy Whipple is an amazingly understated writer. I am so thankful to Persephone books for re-releasing her work to a wider audience. She writes with wit, candor and seemingly light years ahead of her time. I have only read 2 of her other books but...
