England, early May, 1926 After the funerals of the late Duke of Sutherland and his daughter-in-law, Charlotte, (and of course Grimsby, the blackmailing valet), the younger members of the family—Philippa Darling, her cousins Christopher and Francis, and Crispin, Viscount St George—are invited to a weekend party at the Dower House in Dorset by Dowager Lady Peckham’s children, Constance and Gilbert. Once in Dorset, things go sideways very quickly. Lady Peckham’s ward, the lovely Dutch emigree Johanna de Vos, has been making a dead set at Crispin, and has had him all to herself for the past few days. Constance’s time has been monopolized by Francis, while Pippa wouldn’t throw Crispin a rope if he were going down for the third time. However, the house party also includes the beautiful Lady Laetitia Marsden, a former dalliance of Crispin’s, and she doesn’t take the competition for his affections—or his title and fortune—lying down. As a result, when the lovely Johanna is found murdered, the suspects are plentiful. Did Lady Laetitia decide to remove her rival? Did Lord Geoffrey, her brother, the handsy one, lose control and strangle the woman he was trying to seduce? Or perhaps Crispin was tired of the relentless pursuit, and took matters into his own hands? When Lady Peckham also dies, miles away in Wiltshire, the case develops yet one more wrinkle. Now Pippa, with some help from Christopher, must figure out who wanted the two women dead, hopefully before the murderer can consign her to the same fate.

In this atmospheric tale from the author of the Miss Silver Mysteries, a widow is reunited with her girlhood love in a house haunted by all-too-human ghosts They meet again in the dusk of a ruined garden. Amabel Grey hasn’t laid eyes on Julian Forsham in twenty years, not since she gave him up—the man she’d fallen passionately in love with—for the fiancé who needed her. Now an unexpected circumstance brings the British widow and the world-famous scientist together again. Amabel’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Daphne, has been invited to join her friends—and the boy she adores—on a trip to Egypt. But she needs two hundred pounds from her mother. George Forsham is offering that exact sum to anyone willing to stay six months at Dower House, the centuries-old estate in the English countryside where Amabel and Julian first met. The fact that the overgrown, sadly neglected house is rumored to be haunted doesn’t deter Amabel. Until strange things start happening . . . The mewing of a cat that doesn’t exist, the sound of flapping wings, someone crying in the dark. Are restless spirits walking the night? Or is there a rational explanation? Plunged into deadly danger, Amabel could lose her second chance with the man she never stopped loving.

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations. In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

This study of modern Japan traces the impact of defeat and reconstruction on every aspect of Japan's national life. It examines the economic resurgence as well as how the nation as a whole reacted to defeat and the end of a suicidal nationalism.

Is the baby Caterina, Countess of Rasen, brought back from Portugal hers and her dead husband's? The new Earl, Nicholas, is attracted to her, but suspicious. Catarina, in order to protect her young sister Joanna, cannot reveal the truth. And then Cousin Matthew insists that the baby is his and Joanna’s, that their marriage was legitimate. Nicholas will have to prove him a liar. Regency Romance by Sally James writing as Marina Oliver; originally published by Robert Hale [UK]

Widely praised for her rich and elegant prose, Annabel Davis-Goff delivers the story of Molly Hassard, an Anglo-Irish orphan coming of age in a formerly privileged society. As the Protestant-Irish emerge from the postwar years, the refuse to face the inevitable: They have beautiful old houses, but can scarcely afford to heat them; eat meals on exquisitely set tables, while the roof leaks; and talk very seriously about the importance of making suitable marriages. When Molly flees the genteel poverty of Ireland for London of the 1960s, she must balance the allure of the new against the romance of a world that no longer exists.