Mary Wesley

Before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham: 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring'. Eric Siepmann was her second husband and their correspondence charted their life together (and apart) with unusual candour and spirit. These remarkable letters, which were inspired by Mary's great love story with Eric, were also the means by which the novelist found her voice. Entrusted to Marnham in two size -5 shoe boxes, this is one of the great surviving post-war correspondences.

Escape to the Cornish cliffs in the dizzying heat of August 1939, where five cousins are making the most of the last summer of their youth. Oliver is just back from the Spanish Civil War and world-weary at only nineteen.

Die siebzehnjährige Effi von Briest heiratet den früheren Verehrer ihrer Mutter, Baron von Innstetten, und folgt ihm in ein Provinzstädtchen in Hinterpommern. Von ihrem Mann vernachlässigt und angeödet von der Provinzialität ihrer Umgebung, geht sie eine Liaison mit dem Frauenhelden Crampas ein. Durch die Entdeckung von Crampas' Liebesbriefen wird der Fehltritt Jahre später entlarvt. Baron von Innstetten, durchaus wissend um die Hohlheit der ihm auferlegten Moral, fordert den Liebhaber seiner Frau zum Duell und tötet ihn; es folgt die Scheidung und Effi Briests gesellschaftliche Ächtung. Für Thomas Mann ist der Roman aus dem Jahr 1895 Fontanes ?modernstes Werk, das am deutlichsten über die bürgerlich realistische Epoche hinaus in die Zukunft weist?.

Laura Thornby is independent, individual and perfectly in control of her life. Her affairs are brief but delightful, her career fulfilling and she copes with her two rather peculiar relatives and the gossip about her parentage with wryness and humour. But then she meets twenty-three-year old Claude, a struggling writer.

Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe has just waved off to war the two young men she has loved for the best part of her life when the air raid sirens begin to wail out across London. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger called Evelyn, frail and older than his years.

Henry Tillotson, a generous, genial man who inherited his father's philanthropic attitude along with his beautiful house, rescues Margaret from a disastrous marriage in Egypt and brings her home to the West Country as his new wife.

A train screeches to a halt in the middle of the English countryside and, observed by her fascinated fellow travellers, a woman climbs down and rushes to the aid of a sheep, stranded on its back and unable to rise.

Hebe has harnessed her two great talents - cooking and making love - to make a living for herself, but when the separate strands of her life become intangled the even tenor of her days is threatened, and her world changes forever.

Poppy Carew has just been dumped by her unscrupulous boyfriend, Edmund, when her beloved and eccentric father dies, leaving Poppy one last request - that she ensure he is buried in style by a 'fun' undertaker - and one large fortune.

But her meticulously planned bid for graceful oblivion is interrupted when she foils the suicide bid of another lost soul - Hugh Warner, on the run from the police - and life begins again for them both. Life, however, is never that simple and awkward questions demand answers.

Set in August, 1939, this story moves from Cornwall to London and back again, over the years, telling the stories of five cousins who have gathered at their aunt's house for their annual ritual of a holiday. It presents a picture of wartime London: the rationing, the fallen houses, the parties, the new-found comforts of sex, and more.

Flora Trevelyan is a ten-year-old misfit, despised by her selfish and indolent parents, and left to wander the streets of a small French town whilst her parents prepare to depart for life in colonial India.

For the whole of Rose's respectable married life, she had kept faith with both men. To Ned she was a perfect wife and mother of his son. To Mylo, Rose was an unconventional mistress, answering his erratic calls. After Ned's funeral Rose looks back on a life of dual constancy, passion, humour, and the ambiguities of love - and chooses her future.