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...

It is London 1970 and Carmel McBain is in her first year at university. She begins her experiments in life and love but as the year turns and the mini-skirt falls out of style an era of concealment begins. Carmel's world darkens and tragedy waits in the wings.

As the world teeters on the brink of war again, change is in the air… After graduating from finishing school, Celia and Wenna Pengelly go their separate ways – Celia to New Jersey to recover from a broken heart, and Wenna to London, where she discovers ambitions she never knew she had. However, though worlds apart, both sisters are inexorably drawn towards Cornwall, to the family businesses of china, clay and pottery. And as the world teeters...

Cassandra Darcy, disowned by her family, struggles to support herself by working as a painter in bohemian London, an effort that is challenged by the unwanted advances of Lord Usborne and a cache of compromising letters written by the queen.

A darkly comic novel about a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, set against the backdrop of a London awash with faithless lovers, cutthroat strivers, and so-called friends One day successful young journalist and dedicated urbanite Rosa Lane sends her boss an e-mail that says "I quit" and then walks out of her job. She can't explain why-not to Liam, who's lived with her for years; not to her friends; not to her anxious, recently widowed father....