Quiet, clever, sensible Virginia Fly, still a virgin at thirty-one, harbours erotic thoughts of an intensity and vividness unimagined by her suburban parents, her unassuming elderly suitor Hans or even her virile American pen-friend of twelve years, Charles Whitmore Oakhampton Jr—Charlie. When Charlie announces that he is, at last, to visit England, it seems too much to hope that he should make Virginia's dreams of passion reality. Yet his arrival coincides with her appearance on a television documentary and suddenly Virginia is presented with a bewildering variety of opportunities to rid herself of her virginity.
The only question remaining seems to be whether any of them—even the suave and delicious stranger Ulick Brand—could possibly fulfil her considerable expectations.
Huth is the daughter of the actor Harold Huth. She left school at age 16 in order to paint and to study art in both France and Italy. At 18 she travelled, mostly alone, across the United States before returning to England to work on a variety of newspapers and magazines. She married journalist and travel writer Quentin Crewe and soon became known most for her writing, having written three collections of short stories and eleven novels. She also writes plays for radio, television and stage, and is a well-known freelance journalist, critic and broadcaster. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Virginia Fly Is Drowning

Literature & Fiction

HUTH, Angela

Contemporary

Sphere Books, Ltd.

Draper's startlingly original account of the causes and nature of the American Revolution is an acute dissection of the process that led to the final break with England and to the armed revolt in 1775. He lucidly examines the logic of dissolution, and the manifold ways in which trade and commerce resulted in an inexorably unfolding revolutionary process.

A STRUGGLE FOR POWER. The American Revolution.

History

Theodore, Draper

Americas

After more than three years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch died in January 1999. Early that month she was taken to a home for the terminally ill, and she remained radiant and calm for the last weeks of her life. The last year or so of Iris Murdoch's life provides the framework for IRIS AND THE FRIENDS, but within this structure John Bayley returns repeatedly to memories of his own earlier life, and of more than forty years of marriage to Iris. Alzheimer's is a lonely predicament for the carer, and Bayley describes how he copes with the ordeal of watching his wife become terminally ill by forming a growing dependency on memory as a stand-by, consolation and friend. In the final chapters, Bayley describes his wife's death which was an entirely serene one. He writes of how he is learning to cope with the loss of Iris, and how he is creating a new life for himself. Partly an autobiography, partly the biography of a marriage, IRIS AND THE FRIENDS provides a sensitive and, at times, a gently humourous lesson in the uses of adversity and will enthrall those fans of IRIS who wanted to know more about Bayley himself.

Iris and the Friends : A Year of Memories

Bayley, John

Biographies & Memoirs

ANATOMY OF MENTAL ILLNESS (ABACUS BOOKS)

Arthur Janov

Shows how psychological traumas are processed by the brain in the same way as physical injuries, and how they can surface as painful diseases in adult life.

PRISONERS OF PAIN - Unlocking the power of the mind to end suffering

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Janet Belle Smith visits Illyria, a New England artists' colony, in hopes of improving her writing, and discovers an unexpected chance for a love affair

Real People (Abacus Books)

LURIE, Alison

Redhill Rococo (Abacus Books)

MACKAY, Shena

Illustrated in black/white and color. 192p. Measures 7.25x9.75 inches. Uses the lives of the Jade Princes to examine the Han State. Photographs by William MacQuitty. Published to commemorate an exhibition of Chinese Antiquities at the Royal Academy.

PRINCES OF JADE

Capon, Edmund and Macquitty, William

The Expansion of Elizabethan England

ROWSE, A.L.

Leaders & Notable People

Masada: Herod's Fortress and the Zeolots' Last Stand

Yigael Yadin

Ancient Civilizations

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