Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, a 1958 novel by Penelope Mortimer, is about the expectations of women, about a house-bound mother reluctantly (desperately) at home all day, in contrast to her daughter who has escaped, to university and then, we can assume, to a job.'The book came out at a time,' writes Valerie Grove in the Preface, 'when the impact of the new wave of feminism, which would change everything under the banner of women's liberation, had not yet arrive...

A peakthrough novel of suburban loneliness and subversion—“her style, spare and singular, cuts through the decades like a scalpel” (Rachel Cooke, The Observer)A bourgeois housewife, Ruth Whiting, is “paralysed by triviality,” measuring out her days in coffee mornings, glasses of sherry, and pidge parties—routines that barely disturb the solitude of her existence. Her husband spends his weeknights in town; their daughter, eighteen-year-old Angela, is at Oxf...

This darkly humorous novel of a woman’s inner musings on motherhood, betrayal, dreams—and the unpredictable emotions that surround them—is “so moving, so funny, so desperate, so alive . . . one to be greatly enjoyed” (The New York Times).The “strange, fresh” feminist classic that inspired the 1964 film starring Anne Bancroft (Nick Hornby, author of Funny Girl).The Pumpkin Eater is a surreal black comedy about the ...

Three classic short stories by the novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973). 'So Much Depends', 'The Easter Egg Party' and 'The Needlecase.' Country house fiction.

"A superb novel...Evil has seldom been so sinister." --TimeHailed as the first modern psychological thriller, The Collector is the internationally bestselling novel that catapulted John Fowles into the front rank of contemporary novelists. This tale of obsessive love--the story of a lonely clerk who collects butterflies and of the beautiful young art student who is his ultimate quarry--remains unparalleled in its power to startle and mesmerize.

Sisters Mattie, Nell and Renie have all managed to escape their oppressive and bullying father, but now separated, the girls must draw upon their strength and courage to build new lives for themselves.Renie, the youngest sister, is living with the newly married Nell, happy in her waitressing job at the King's Head Hotel. But a shadow falls over her the day Mr Judson arrives as assistant manager. Feeling increasingly harassed by him and also eager to escape from Nell's unpleasant hus...

When Angela Marchmont’s motor-car runs off the road in the fog-bound Romney Marsh, she stumbles upon the body of a young woman hidden in a ditch, her face so badly disfigured that identification seems impossible. Who was she? Why was she left in that lonely spot? And why did someone go to such lengths to ensure she would never be recognised? Angela’s search for answers leads her from the eccentric household at Gipsy’s Mile to the great estate of Blakeney Park, and from ther...

When Liverpool solicitor and detective Harry Devlin takes on a client who has been taping his wife's telephone conversations with her lover, he gets more than he bargained for. The first mystery is the identity of Becky's boyfriend, whose voice Harry finds oddly familiar. Then, as a case of adultery slides frighteningly into conspiracy to murder, a trespasser makes a shocking discovery: three dead bodies in a converted church. Who are they? Who has killed them, and why? Trapped in a maze w...

On a reluctant visit to her painfully respectable brother and his wife, Angela Marchmont finds herself once again caught up in murder when a local farmer is shot dead, apparently at the hands of his sworn enemy.But the case is not as simple as it seems, for other motives and suspects soon come to light. With reporters hot on the scent and her friend Inspector Jameson battling a conflict of interest, Angela must use all her ingenuity to unravel the case and bring the murdere...

The New York Times Bestseller! The story of an outcast boy, his eccentric dad, and the scary underground world they discover through secret TUNNELS. 14-year-old Will Burrows has little in common with his strange, dysfunctional family. In fact, the only bond he shares with his eccentric father is a passion for archaeological excavation. So when Dad mysteriously vanishes, Will is compelled to dig up the truth behind his disappearance. He unearths the unbelievable: a secret subterranean socie...

With her husband injured serving the IRA, an Irish woman is forced to become an American socialite's maid in this epic saga set in the 1920s.Sweethearts since childhood, Ellie Hogan and her husband, John, are content on their farm in Ireland—until John, a soldier for the Irish Republican Army, receives an injury that leaves him unable to work. Forced to take drastic measures to survive, Ellie does what so many Irish women in the 1920s have done and sails across a va...

When an unwelcome figure from her past turns up unexpectedly, Angela Marchmont has no idea that she is about to become the most notorious woman in Britain. Forced to reveal secrets she has kept to herself for many years and which she had thought were safely buried, Angela faces a fight for her very life which she looks almost certain to lose without the help of the man she loves. But what hope does she have when the one man who can save her is the one man who has every reason to abandon he...