"There came a moment, she imagined, in the lives of most unmarried daughters, and perhaps in other people’s too, when they must either bolt or go permanently under."
“I told Helen my story and she went home and cried.” So begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns’s beguiling novel is far from tragic, despite the harrowing ordeals its heroine endur…
A compelling story of passion, with an enduring air of enchantment throughout, Precious Bane is a novel that haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes. Set in Shropshir…
When Laura Willowes’s beloved father dies, she is absorbed in the household of her brother and his family. There, she leaves behind “Laura” and enters into the state of “Aunt Lolly,” a genteel spinste…
One of Barbara Pym’s richest and most amusing high comedies, Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of tho…
Catherine falls in love with Christopher, whom she meets at a poorly attended play, but finds the difference in their ages causes unexpected social ostracism
