The stunning collection of short fiction that established Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the most powerful and provocative artists in nineteenth-century America   Dr. Heidegger invites four friends to witness an experiment. As the impoverished merchant Mr. Medbourne, the gout-ridden sinner Colonel Killigrew, the ruined politician Mr. Gascoigne, and the aged widow Wycherly watch, Heidegger places an old rose in a vase filled with water drawn from the...

Lucy Snowe makes her way by teaching, as she unhappily watches John Bretton's infatuation for the flirt, Ginevra Fanshawe, but then she falls in love with and transforms the professor, Monsieur Paul Emanuel.

At their holiday home in Cornwall, a distant lighthouse holds a haunting attraction for the members of an Edwardian family as disillusionment, turmoil, and a world on the brink of war plague the family's relationships.

The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about...

Winn Van Meter has a Harvard education, membership in all the right clubs, a pedigreed wife, and a tastefully understated summer home on a pristine New England island where the wedding of his eldest daughter, Daphne, is about to take place. The weather is idyllic and so, it would seem, is the gathering. But the three-day wedding weekend soon turns into a complete social disaster in every way imaginable.

"Bourgeois housewife Ruth Whiting is 'paralysed by triviality', measuring out her days in coffee mornings, glasses of sherry, and bridge parties-- routines that barely disturb the solitude of her existence. Her husband spends his weeknights in town; their daughter, eighteen-year-old Angela, is at Oxford; and their sons are at boarding school. Then Angela accidentally falls pregnant, and Ruth must keep her own past from repeating itself. First published...

A witty, beloved novel of heart and heartland, Farm Fatale skewers the culture clash of city vs. country in the snappy, observant style that made Wendy Holden famous. Cash-strapped Rosie and her boyfriend Mark are city folk longing for a country cottage. Rampant nouveaux riches Samantha and Guy are also searching for rustic bliss-in the biggest mansion money can buy. The village of Eight Mile Bottom seems quiet enough, despite a nosy postman, a reclusive...

Follows the fortunes of sisters Bea and Evie who, after leading privilaged lives, find themselves penniless and forced to look for work for the first time. Their home-made attire attracts the attention of wealthy socialites and leads to jobs in the fashion industry and eventually to them running their own fashion house.