A glorious collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm. The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith’s red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and some good Starkadder table talk over. Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: “Ay, would it were a vulture, ‘twere more fitting!”

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

Gibbons. Stella

Literature & Fiction

Vintage Classics

Robert Poste’s child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labeled ‘Quiete Retreate’ and ‘Greate laundrie.’ It is, Flora winces, ‘exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time’. Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group—a group made up of the ‘sadistic owl’ Mr. Peccavi, loathsome Mr. Mybug and the overpowering Mrs. Ernestine Thump. And worst of all, there are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. All the he-cousins have gone abroad to make their fortunes and the female cousins are having a pretty thin time of it. Once again the sensible Flora decides to take the situation in hand.

Conference at Cold Comfort Farm

Contemporary

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highgate with Mr. Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous ‘rackman.’ He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit.

Starlight

Genre Fiction

Set in wartime Highgate, Westwood tells the story of Margaret Steggles, a plain bookish girl whose mother has told her that she is ‘not the type that attracts men.’ What she lacks for in looks she makes up for with a romantic nature and cultural aspirations. By contrast, Margaret’s best friend, Hilda, has a sunny temperament and is effortlessly attractive. When Margaret finds a ration book in Hampstead Health the playwright Gerard Challis enters both their lives. Challis is delighted with his own work and lines such as, ‘Suffering is the anvil upon which the crystal sword of integrity is hammered’. He has no use for humour. Margaret slavishly adores Challis and his artistic circle; Challis idolizes Hilda for her hair, her eyes and Hilda find’s Gerard’s romantic overtures a bit of a bind. This is a delightful wistful tale of romantic entanglements and self-reliance.

Westwood

In St Alberics, Hertfordshire, stands a newly built family home: Sunglades. Its seven rooms house Kenneth and Constance Fielding, middle-aged bachelor and spinster, along with Kenneth's old flame, an industrious Balkan exile, a young economist and the Fieldings' raffish father. Together they attempt to create a rural idyll precariously close to the remains of blitzed London.

The Bachelor

Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate -- with varying degrees of success -- the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.

The Matchmaker

My American follows the lives and loves of Amy Lee and Robert Vorst: from a chance childhood meeting to the comic, tragic and romantic trysts that follow. A baker's daughter, Amy has dreams of becoming a writer, whilst Robert is destined to be a doctor. Later, embarking on a lecture tour, Amy is reminded of 'her American' and endeavours to find him amidst Depression-era America.

My American

Paperback. Pages: 224 Publisher: Random House UK The Club in central London holds the quarters of Queen Victoria's finest regiment: the First Bloods. Inside the mighty building. With its two exquisite glass towers. The First Bloods and their regimental servants tussle over a portion of recreational ground. Amidst the rows and rumbles - and remarkable punishments - is a mocking and piquant observation of factious all-male societies.

Ticky

Literary

In the years after World War Two, Nell Sely, child of the forgotten generation, wanders blind through 1950s bohemian London, smoke-filled jazz clubs and bittersweet coffee bars in search of romantic idyll, delving into the dark backstreets of squalid yet splendid London.

Here Be Dragons

On the dunes west of Bruges, two-year-old Ydette is found wrapped in a blanket and taken back to live in a small grocer's shop. Opposite the shop live the wealthy van Roeslaere family and their son, Adriaan, a spoilt boy, plagued by ugliness. With overtones of Beauty and the Beast, their romance matures as they grow up together and learn what should truly be valued in life.

White Sand and Grey Sand

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