Sentimental, affectionate, uncritical, Mrs. Bracken so easily attached herself to persons, places, and even objects that after no more than two days in an hotel she had a favourite waiter, a favourite ornament, a favourite view. She had adored her husband, and was very fond of her French pepper-mill. World War II has ended and widowed Isabel Brocken, kind-hearted and generous if perhaps just a bit foolish, is back in her old family home on the outskirts...

"It's in my mind to put an end to this heathen wickedness that's stalking abroad through Gillenham. It's in my mind to terrify that evil man from his morrow's sinful doings." "We'll be going to Old Manor, then?" "Not yet," said Mrs. Pye grimly. "We go first to the village. To rouse the women... " Professor Pounce arrives in the idyllic village of Gillenham, along with his sister-in-law, his nephew Nicholas, and Carmen, his voluptuous assistant, in...

He also made himself a weekly allowance of five shillings for cigarettes, stationery, amusements, shoe-repairs, razor blades, laundry, toothpaste, hospitality and 'bus fares; and having thus cut his coat to his cloth, wore it in great content. The only thing he had not allowed for (and this in an author must surely be, considered strange) was Love. Upon the death of his distant, unaffectionate father, Alistair French, a young store clerk, takes his...

It was indeed very difficult for the Laventie children not to be a little priggish. Ann Laventie, the youngest of three children in a long line of anti-social Sussex gentry, doesn't quite fit the mould of her intellectual, elegant, ultra-modern siblings Dick, an artist, and Elizabeth, a high-brow writer. Their father is scholarly and just wealthy enough to focus all his attention on reading and other highbrow pursuits. Ann, on the other hand, worries...

Set in 1930s France, Margery Sharp's witty, warm-hearted novel tells the story of a free-spirited mother who is reunited with her very proper daughter after sixteen years, when her daughter asks her to inspect her fiancé Julia Packett has barely laid eyes on her daughter, Susan, since leaving her with her proper, well-heeled in-laws after her husband was killed in World War I. Now thirty-seven, her lack of prospects hasn't dimmed her spirit or appetite...

A young woman sent to Paris to study painting learns lessons about life and love in Margery Sharp's sparkling novel that features the now-grown-up artistic little girl who first appeared in The Eye of Love   Eighteen-year-old Martha is blessed with the opportunity of a lifetime: an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris to study where some of the world's greatest painters lived and worked. Despite her single-minded pursuit of creativity, she attracts an...

In 1950s London, a career girl decides it's high time she snared herself a husband, in Margery Sharp's high-spirited New York Times–bestselling novel Professional dog photographer Louisa Datchett is indiscriminately fond of men. And men take shocking advantage of her good nature when they need their problems listened to, their socks washed, their prescriptions filled, and employment found. But by the age of thirty, Louisa is tired of constantly...

In Victorian England, a glamorous, mysterious young woman overturns the lives of a traditional Devonshire farm family, in Margery Sharp's humorous, heartwarming New York Times-bestselling novel On a farm in Devonshire, during a long hot summer, three women await the arrival of a fourth. The corseted, petticoated Sylvesters are no ordinary females. They are as fair-tempered as they are big and strong, the wives of modestly prosperous farmers who can...

With heartfelt drama, wit, and brilliant historical detail, this masterfully told family saga spans the Victorian era and World War II and features an unpredictable and passionate heroine who defies the English class system Around the corner from the elegant townhouses on Albion Place is Britannia Mews, a squalid neighborhood where servants and coachmen live. In 1875, it's no place for a young girl of fine breeding, but independent-minded Adelaide...