In these two novellas and three short stories for adult readers, Hans Christian Andersen displays the imagination and descriptive brilliance familiar from his fairy tales, but turns his eye to subtler social themes: class mobility in a changing Europe; the unfairness with which talents and opportunities are meted out in this world; the struggle between nature's claims on humanity and civilization's.The title novella, The Ice Virgin, unites all these ideas in a piece of bea...

A shipwrecked sailor disturbs the life of a journalist in a late nineteenth-century English seaside town in this reimagining of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea.After a ferocious storm shipwrecks young Norwegian sailor Hans Lyngstrand in the English Channel near Dengate, aspiring journalist Martin Bridges takes a job at the local newspaper. When Hans moves into Martin's boardinghouse to convalesce and Martin interviews the young sailor for the paper, it upend...

Eline Vere is a engrossing, brilliantly observed novel. Love, sorrow, madness and the tyranny of social snobbery are all laid bare in this classic of Dutch literature the book which made Louis Couperus, The Netherlands' answer to Oscar Wilde, famous. In 1889, Dutch society was enthralled by Eline Vere, published in instalments in the newspaper, which minutely described the conventions, manners and hypocrisies of society with richness of description and vivid characterizations. Eline Vere a...

In Paul Binding's 'After Brock', Pete, a talented and intelligent schoolboy, though an outsider in both home and school life, enters and wins a quiz show 'High Flyers' a name that is to resonate throughout the rest of his life. One December night after watching his mother perform in the Mikado with a local amateur dramati society he meets Sam, an attractive and flamboyant boy, somewhat of a misfit with whom his infatuation is instant. They begin a tempestuous friendship seeking a world rem...

After a ferocious early-springtime storm, young Norwegian sailor Hans Lyngstrand is shipwrecked in the English Channel near the coastal Kent town of Dengate—he is one of few survivors. Soon after, aspiring journalist Martin Bridges takes a job as a reporter at the local newspaper. A loner by nature, he’s a curiosity to the nosy townspeople, the gregarious editor of the paper, and his melodramatic landlady, whose own private life is fraught by the unexplained absence of her son and suspicio...

INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' PHILIP LARKIN'No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure' JILLY COOPERDulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin For...

INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' PHILIP LARKIN'No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure' JILLY COOPERDulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin For...

Between the amorous antique dealer Humphrey and his good-looking nephew James glides the magnificent Leonora, delicate as porcelain, cool as ice. Can she keep James in her thrall? Or will he be taken from her by a lover, like Phoebe . . . or Ned, the wicked American?'A highly distinctive and - ultimately - charitable novel' Financial Times'Faultless' Guardian'Her Characters are all meticulously impaled on the delicate pins of a wit that is as scrup...

BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORINTRODUCED BY JILLY COOPER'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN'I devoured all her books, but Jane and Prudence remains my favourite' JILLY COOPER'Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life' ANNE TYLERIf Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates seem ...

INTRODUCED BY MAVIS CHEEK'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman'She is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life' Anne TylerTogether yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to he...

INTRODUCED BY LOUIS DE BERNIERES'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' PHILIP LARKINFormidable Miss Doggett fills her life by giving tea parties for young academics and acting as watchdog for the morals of North Oxford. Anthea, her great-niece, is in love with a dashing undergraduate with political ambitions. Of this, Miss Doggett thoroughly approves. ...

Rediscover the brilliance of Down Among the Women in the Mermaid Collection – timeless classics by pioneering female authors, beautifully reissued to enchant today’s readers.**A classic from beloved national treasure Fay Weldon sees four women break the shackles of patriarchy and domesticity in 1950s London, from the author of The Lives and Loves of a She-DevilWith a foreword by Jenny Colgan**‘Down among the women. What a place to b...