The fourth novel by Elizabeth Bowen, described by the Guardian as 'One of the last century's greatest woman writers' Cecilia, capricious and unable to love, inches reluctantly towards a second marriage to the kind, passionless Julian Tower. Meanwhile, her sister-in-law, Emmeline, is surprised to find the calm tenor of her life disturbed by her attraction to the predatory Mark Linkwater. Markie's appearance disrupts the lives of both women, but in the pain of misunderstanding, it is Emmeline who reveals her vulnerability in a violent and tragic act.

The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?' Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, she develops a passionate sense of social justice, and a turbulent relationship with mill-owner John Thornton. North and South depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal of what divides people, and what brings them together. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

R. K. Narayan is one of India's most valued and adored twentieth-century novelists. He takes his place alongside Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen and Chekhov in the pantheon of twentieth-century greats. Krishna, an English teacher in the town of Malgudi, nagged by the feeling he's doing the wrong work, is nonetheless delighted by his domestic life, where his wife and young daughter wait for him outside the house every afternoon. Devastated by the death of his wife, Krishna comes to realise what he really wants to do, and makes a decision that will change his life forever.

The first novel from one of the twentieth century's most admired and stylish writers It's the balmy days of the 1920s and where could be more pleasant for a holiday than a hotel on the Italian Riviera? Filled with prosperous English visitors, the Hotel offers a closed world of wealth and comfort. It also provides the stage for the display of social niceties, for passionate but unspoken love affairs and for the comedy of the shared bathroom. With great wit and insight Elizabeth Bowen's first novel lays bare the intricacies and eccentricities of polite society.

Celebrated for her much-admired novels, including The Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart, Bowen established herself in the front rank of the century's writers equally through her short fiction. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. N. WILSON Throughout these seventy-nine stories - love stories, ghost stories, stories of childhood, of English middle-class life in the twenties and thirties, of London during the Blitz - Elizabeth Bowen combines social comedy and reportage, perception and vision in an oeuvre which reveals, as Angus Wilson affirms in his introduction, that 'the instinctive artist is there at the very heart of her work'.

Published to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, these are powerful wartime stories written by the finest women writers of that generation. This collection of wartime stories includes some of the finest writers of a generation. War had traditionally been seen as a masculine occupation, but these stories show how women were equal if different participants. Here, war is less about progress on the frontline of battle than about the daily struggle to keep homes, families and relationships alive; to snatch pleasure from danger, and strength from shared experience. The stories are about saying goodbye to husbands, lovers, brothers and sons - and sometimes years later trying to remake their lives anew. By turn comical, stoical, compassionate, angry and subversive, these intensely individual voices bring a human dimension to the momentous events that reverberated around them and each opens a window on to a hidden landscape of war. Writers include: Jean Rhys, Beryl Bainbridge, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Stevie Smith, Rosamond Lehmann, Barbara Pym, Angela Thirkell, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Dorothy Parker, Doris Lessing, Olivia Manning, Rose Macaulay and Stevie Smith

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. The main heroine of North and South, Margaret Hale, is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers. There Margaret meets Mr. Thornton, a wealthy cotton mill owner, and dislikes him immediately, but he falls passionately in love with her.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. The main heroine of North and South, Margaret Hale, is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers. There Margaret meets Mr. Thornton, a wealthy cotton mill owner, and dislikes him immediately, but he falls passionately in love with her.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. The main heroine of North and South, Margaret Hale, is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers. There Margaret meets Mr. Thornton, a wealthy cotton mill owner, and dislikes him immediately, but he falls passionately in love with her.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. The main heroine of North and South, Margaret Hale, is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers. There Margaret meets Mr. Thornton, a wealthy cotton mill owner, and dislikes him immediately, but he falls passionately in love with her.

Genteel life at 'the 'Big House' continues while the Irish War of Independence rages beyond the gates, but for how long? Read Elizabeth Bowen's accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracy With an introduction by Victoria Glendinning The Irish troubles rage, but up at the 'Big House', tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social relationship with the mill-owner and self-made his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social relationship with the mill-owner and self-made his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

R. K. Narayan is one of India's most valued and adored twentieth-century novelists. He takes his place alongside Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen and Chekhov in the pantheon of twentieth-century greats Discover one of India's most valued and adored twentieth-century novelists, including his novel Swami and Friends. Here are three of R. K. Narayan's most famous and best loved novels: Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. All set in the imaginary Indian town of Malgudi, these irresistible works provide the perfect introduction to a universal world of humour, sadness, wisdom and joy. Featuring one of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World.

1592. Robert Carey, eighth son of Lord Hunsdon, has – to his servants' dismay – abandoned Queen Elizabeth I's court and is heading north to take up the post of Deputy Warden of the English West March, a lawless badlands, peopled by cattle-rustlers, horse-thieves, arsonists, kidnappers and murderers created by centuries of Anglo-Scottish conflict. Carey, in his lace-collared, pearl-sashed courtly finery, will be expected to bring order to this bloody flux. Plunging readers straight into the raucous world of late sixteenth-century border reivers and unfettered Elizabethan intrigue, Guns in the North, the first chronicle of Sir Robert Carey's adventures, collecting the novels A Famine of Horses, A Season of Knives and A Surfeit of Guns under one volume.

Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine's movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell's skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society.This is a tale of hard-won triumphs - of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first century will find themselves absorbed as this Victorian novel traces the origins of problems and possibilities which are still challenging a hundred and fifty years later: the complex relationships, public and private, between men and women of different classes. .