GOING INTO A DARK HOUSE

BILGEWATER

Marigold Green, 'Bilgewater' to some, thinks of herself as plain and peculiar, an idea reinforced by growing up in the boys' school where her father is a housemaster. Groomed by wise and loving Paula, but upstaged by bad yet beautiful Grace, Marigold suffers almost comically through the turbulent world of adolescence.

CRUSOE'S DAUGHTER

In 1904, when she was six, Polly Flint went to live with her two holy aunts at the yellow house by the marsh - so close to the sea that it seemed to toss like a ship, so isolated that she might have been marooned on an island. And there she stayed for eighty-one years, while the century raged around her.

THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS

In the summer of 1946 Una, Hetty and Lieselotte find themselves growing up rapidly in the months between leaving school and taking up their scholarships at University.

LAST FRIENDS

Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, his clever, misunderstood wife Betty, and their friends tell a tale of love, friendship, grace and the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and the disappointments and consolations of age.

THE MAN IN THE WOODEN HAT

Filth (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong) is a successful lawyer when he marries Elisabeth in Hong Kong soon after the war. But Elisabeth is different - a free-spirit, with a lust for survival and an affinity with the Far East. No wonder she is attracted to Filth's hated rival at the Bar - the brash, forceful Veneering.

MISSING THE MIDNIGHT

A collection of twelve wise and witty stories that cover everything from ancient English folklore to modern manners.

OLD FILTH

Born in Malaysia but sent 'home' to England to be educated, Edward Feathers, also known as Filth, became an international lawyer with a practice in the Far East. Now only the oldest QC's and Silks remember that his nickname stood for Failed In London Try Hong Kong.

THE PEOPLE ON PRIVILEGE HILL

A collection of short stories from Jane Gardam. She is a writer well-known for her caustic wit, free-wheeling imagination, love of humanity and wicked powers of observation - and for the hint of the bizarre and the surreal that she brings to her fiction.

SHOWING THE FLAG

The flag that is shown, literally and metaphorically, by these characters is always the Union Jack. Gardam's stories are acutely observed social commentaries on Englishness, its weaknesses and its illusions.

THE SIDMOUTH LETTERS

This collection brings together past and present, probing many and varied lives. The title story examines Jane Austen's love life, while others introduce a trio of mean-spirited and middle-aged Kensington widows, a dreaded stranger, and the mercurial changes in young love.