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A widow, at an age when birthdays are best forgotten, with no children to occupy her mind, can be very lonely. Julia Dunstan knew she was more fortunate than most widows, not merely because she was prosperous—as widows go—but because she had always taken an interest in other people.

And from the moment Julia moves to Goatstock, where she has inherited a house, there are plenty of people for her to take an interest in. For a start, there’s cousin Dora, who might just as easily been left the house herself and who instead becomes Julia’s...

“My last secretary was thirty-five,” old M. said gloomily, “and no more sense than a child of ten. Or else she wasn’t all there. You all there?” he asked suddenly, giving Maud a searching look. “No banging your head on the table? No throwing the china at me? Hey?”

Young Maud has made her escape from an overbearing stepmother and come to stay with her cousin Alice and Alice’s companion Miss Conway in the countryside. Alice and “Con” have arranged a job for her as secretary to Mr Feniston, an eccentric and...

“I wonder what Mr. Heritage thought of his godson,” she said quickly.

“Rather clumsy, but quite good manners,” Edith remarked. “And a well-shaped skull.”

These were her own views, but she took it for granted that sensible people would agree with her.

Sisters Edith and Rose have rather come down in the world by keeping their hotel, Seaview House. So Mr Heritage believes, and he’s not pleased when Rose’s daughter Lucy—grown a bit too attractive for his comfort—becomes friendly with...

At the end of the war, Mrs. Midge stayed on. While the war lasted Mrs. Custance had accepted her as part of the war-effort; it was only in the past year or two that Mrs. Midge had been transferred to the category which Mrs. Custance described as “people we could manage without.”

Elizabeth Fair’s rollicking second novel takes place in Little Mallin, where village life is largely dominated by preparations for the August Festival. Out of such ordinary material Fair weaves a tale of conflict, scheming, misunderstanding—and of course...

“The best thing one can say about the Priory is that it would have made a splendid ruin,” she stated. “If only the Seamarks had left it alone …”

Hester Clifford has come to Mingham to recover from pneumonia, at the invitation of her godmother, Cecily Hutton, an eccentric painter with a predilection for ruins. Hester determines to bring order to the Huttons’ easygoing lives, not to mention those of the villagers—including elderly Mrs. Hyde-Ridley, attempting to enforce her Edwardian standards of behaviour, Mrs. Merlin, the...

She wondered how Lady Masters got her old parlour maid to carry the coffee right across the lawn. But, of course, Lady Masters got things simply by always having had them and by taking it for granted that she always would have them.

In Bramton Wick, the setting of Elizabeth Fair’s cheerful debut novel, tensions and resentments—not to mention romance—roil beneath the polite interactions of its charming and eccentric residents.

There’s upper crust Lady Masters, taking the good things for granted but thoroughly cowed by her gardener....