While on her last assignment with British Intelligence in Morocco, the widowed Julia Probyn Jamieson meets and is strongly attracted to an Irish country lawyer, Gerald O'Brien, who is travelling with friends of hers. O'Brien has asked Julia to marry him but she delays her decision until he has met her five-year-old son Philip, who is somewhat hard to handle.

Boy and man take to each other, and it becomes clear that Gerald will be an ideal stepfather. On his part, Gerald insists that she come to Ireland to see his modest home and meet his friends and neighbors before she makes up her...

Miss Bridge takes us to Portugal; not only the well-known world of Estoril and the Embassies, but behind the scenes, into the life lived on country estates by the Portuguese themselves. Both aspects are seen through the fresh eyes of a young Hungarian girl just released from behind the Iron Curtain, who also gives vivid and horrifying glimpses of life in Soviet-dominated Hungary from 1945 to 1955.

Communist intrigues lend suspense and excitement to this book full of rapid movement, when any drive in a car may hold possibilities of danger; and readers who enjoyed the calm,...