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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Less Than Angels follows the loves, works and hopes of a group of young anthropologists.Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love triangle are the activities of Deirdre's fellow students and their attempts to w...

INTRODUCED BY KATE SAUNDERS'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN'My favourite writer . . . I pick up her books with joy' JILLY COOPER'Beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip' NEW YORK TIMESIn a provincial university town, Caro Grimstone, a dissatisfied faculty wife, becomes the unwilling accomplice to her husband Alan's ...

INTRODUCED BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMANMildred Lathbury is one of those excellent women who are often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fête spoilt by bad weather'. Her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, seem to be facing a marital crisis. On...

To his parents' dismay, Colin Keith - out of the noble but misplaced sense of duty peculiar to high-minded young university graduates - chooses to quit his training for the Bar and take a teaching job at Southbridge School. Little does Colin imagine that he will count among his pupils the demon in human form known as Tony Morland; or that the master's ravishing, feather-brained daughter Rose will, with her flights of fancy and many admirers, spread chaos throughout school and village. Humo...

‘Barbara Pym is one of my most favourite novelists. Few other writers have given me more laughter and more pleasure’ – Jilly Cooper, author of Rivals‘Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.’The lives of Humphrey and James Boyce, a seasoned antique dealer and his good-looking nephew, are changed for ever when the elegant Leonora Eyre glides into their bustling Bond Street salesroom, delicate as porcelain, coo...