Two sisters fall for the same man in this New York Times–bestselling novel of WWII-era England by an “immensely readable” author (Elizabeth Jane Howard). Rickie Masters is married to Madeleine, who is sitting out the war in the country with their children. Their domestic serenity is shattered when Rickie falls in love with Madeleine’s sister, Dinah, and they begin a clandestine, guilt-ridden affair. When Madeleine discovers their infidelity, accusations are hurled and hard choices are made. Then, a year before the war officially ends, tragedy strikes, and it is only after an estrangement of fifteen years that Madeleine and Dinah will begin to struggle toward some kind of reconciliation. Shifting between the three characters’ viewpoints, and shuttling seamlessly between past and present, The Echoing Grove is a story of life: messy, unpredictable, and unstoppable. It is about family, the things that hold us accountable, the events that lead to life-altering decisions, and the emotions that make us human. And above all it is about love: romantic love, married love, familial love, and illicit love. The heart wants what it wants, regardless of the cost.

This is Judith Earle's story - her solitary childhood, her awkward experiences at Cambridge rounded with passion and disillusionment, and her travels abroad with her socialite mother. Above all, this novel is about her consuming relationship with the Fyfe family, who each fall in love with her.

In 1930s England, an encounter on a train leads to an illicit affair, in this novel of “spare, poetic prose” by the author of Invitation to the Waltz (Joyce Carol Oates). Just ten years ago, Olivia Curtis attended her first dance. Now she is divorced and living with her cousin in London. When she gets a call notifying her that her father is gravely ill, she makes preparations to return to Tulverton, in the English countryside—and on the railway journey home, she runs into Rollo Spencer, her girlhood crush. He and Olivia once shared a fleeting, magical moment on a moonlit terrace that she has never forgotten. Now, fate has thrown them together again, and in spite of the fact that Rollo is married, they embark on a clandestine affair. The Weather in the Streets charts the tempestuous course of Olivia and Rollo’s forbidden relationship, from the first throes of passion through the toll of their deception on Olivia as she confronts the harsh reality of being the other woman. A novel ahead of its time that touched on a variety of taboo subjects, it is an enduring classic by an author who “has always written brilliantly of women in love” (Margaret Drabble).

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.

Description of the life and work of the English author (1901-1990).

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 'Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD 'Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes' ENGLISH PEN 'Combines something of the earthiness of Colette with the imaginative insight of Virginia Woolf' CYRIL CONNOLLY Rosamond Lehmann, one of the most distinguished British writers of this century, published eight acclaimed works of fiction. Her only autobiographical work, The Swan in the Evening, recreated first the child she was and the experiences that made her the woman she became, moving on to tell the story of her beloved daughter Sally and the tragedy of her early death at the age of twenty-four. Then, tentatively and persuasively, Rosamond Lehmann relates the totally unexpected, overwhelming and scrupulously recorded psychic and mystical experiences she underwent following that terrible loss. The meaning of such events, their messages of hope and comfort to others she then, through a letter to her grandaughter, passes to us.

The life of Rosamond Lehmann was as romantic and harrowing as that of any of her fictional heroines. Her first novel, the shocking Dusty Answer, became wildly successful launching her career as a novelist and, just as her novels depicted the tempestuous lives of her heroines, Rosamond's personal life would be full of heartbreaking affairs and lost loves. Escaping from a disastrous early marriage Rosamond moved right into the heart of Bloomsbury society with Wogan Philipps. Later on she would embark on the most important love affair of her life, with the poet Cecil Day Lewis; nine years later he abandoned her for a young actress - a betrayal from which she would never recover. Selina Hastings masterfully creates a portrait of a woman whose dramatic life, work and relationships criss-crossed the cultural, literary and political landscape of England in the middle of the twentieth century.