An affair with the unpredictable Joe led to a marriage that Virginia was determined would work. But Joe had no reason to trust or respect women. As he drew her into one humiliating situation after another, Virginia was forced to admit that her romantic dream had turned into a nightmare.
Rose has seen a dark object of despair struggling in the water. As evil threatens to drag her down in a churning sea, she has to try a desperate rescue - alone.
When two young women, Lily and Ida, meet on a flight to America they embark on a relationship that is to see them through two very different marriages and is to bring them comfort and distress, joy and tragedy, in equal measure as the years unfold.
I can't decide between three and four stars. I'm giving it four because I read this in a week and it was the first time in almost ten years that I've read anything that fast. This book made me remember what it was like to check out a mile-high pile of books from the library and devour them all ...
'All's well' at The Sanctuary, the country home of William and Dorothy Taylor. A haven of tranquillity for their family and friends, the magnificent public gardens of the estate are their pride and joy, and an enchantment to the steady stream of visitors who wander through.Then Jo comes to work a...
Carrie had gone up to the meadow to catch John. He usually came when she whistled, but today he stood staring at nothing with his ears lopped sideways, as if he were blind and deaf, and made her come to him. From the wood, a squirrel chittered. It wasn’t a squirrel. It was Lester. He climbed over...
There was so much to do: clothes to buy, hairdressers and beauty specialists, the reading Rodney made her do each day, piano and elocution lessons, the museums and theatres and concerts by which Rodney, on a carefully graded schedule, gently initiated her into a world which she might once have de...
’Some new schemes are coming up for the English Department and they want all of us there.’ Alice was quite good at being lied to. She did not question the lie, she questioned what it said. ’You mean, all the English teachers?’ ‘All of us who work with the seniors.’ ‘I thought you might take me ou...
She usually came out at midday, even when it was raining, instead of going up to the store canteen. You could never get a table to yourself, and whoever sat with you always wanted to talk grumbling shop about the customers or the management. Everyone at Goldwyn’s seemed to have a grievance of som...
It was a trait of the female Norths to run things to death. Heather ran Susan, Mrs. North ran Oliver, Violet had always run horses and dogs, and now she was running her engagement. The day fixed for her wedding was the only date on the calendar and all other time was referred to it. If someone re...
Especially a chubby, unmysterious boy with cheeks like rosy ping-pong balls, a mouth like a pink buttonhole for the button nose above it and a cowlick of chocolate-coloured hair that would never do anything but stand up in a butcher-boy quiff. When he grew up looking like one of those dolls that ...
‘Less than a year married, and runs home to mother so soon?’ Dorothy asked, with a gruesome twinkle. ‘She hasn’t run home.’ Laurie tried to stay polite. ‘She wants to see them, and this is the cheap fare season, and later she’ll be too far on with the baby.’ ‘In my day,’ Dorothy said, ‘wives stay...
He would get an envelope and a stamp from the office when Mr D. went to tea. Mr D. did not take his tea break. One of his favourite customers, the wife of a famous racehorse trainer, was in the department, doing up a cottage for the stable lads, and Mr D., like a porpoise by the bows of an ocean ...
He hadn’t come! Or he was disgusted with them for being five minutes late, and had gone away. ‘What can we do?’ could Michael set up the detour sign behind Jake’s van and then run the half mile down the road in time to pull the horse out of the van while Jake was still stopped, looking at Carrie’...
When anyone came by, she turned away her face and stood still, so that they would not see her limp. She felt that she must look as dreadful as she felt. They would rush her off to the hospital. Doctors would prod her bones. They would pull down the blinds and say she had concussion. It would all ...
he told Geneva Hogg. “I do nothing for them. I don’t go there often enough. I want to get away from the place as soon as I arrive, and when I say I’ll stay two hours longer, they’re in heaven.” “Don’t let it get you down,” Geneva said. “That’s parents for you. Only yours are more helpless than mo...