Monica Dickens crafted narratives that keenly observed everyday life and human relationships, often drawing from her own experiences. Her writing delves into the inner lives of characters, revealing their joys and struggles with an authentic voice. Dickens aimed to entertain readers and inspire recognition of their own lives within her stories, creating a compelling and relatable literary world. Her distinctive style is marked by its directness and a profound ability to capture the subtleties of human nature.
Dora is invited out to America to help set up a home of rest for horses. When she leaves and is given a horse to take back to Follyfoot, she can't believe her luck. One of the horses falls ill. And it looks like the same epidemic that is sweeping America . Has Dora's horse brought the disease to England?
The Winds of Heaven is a 1955 novel about 'a widow, rising sixty, with no particular gifts or skills, shunted from one to the other of her more or less unwilling daughters on perpetual uneasy visits, with no prospect of her life getting anything but worse’ (Afterword). One daughter is the socially ambitious Miriam living in commuter belt with her barrister husband and children; one is Eva, an aspiring actress in love with a married man; and the third is Anne, married to a rough but kindly Bedfordshire smallholder who is the only one who treats Louise with more than merely dutiful sympathy. The one relation with whom she has any empathy is her grandchild.
Follyfoot Farm is a retirement home for rescued horses, managed by the Colonel with the help of his stepdaughter Callie and stable-hands Dora and Steve, who all have their hands full caring for the animals.
A 1930s Bridget Jones who is waiting, often desperately, for the right man
Poppy, newly recruited cub reporter at the Downingham Post, is determined to prove to the editor that he's wrong in his belief that 'Women are a nuisance in the office'. He certainly doesn't think she's a nuisance when it's time for the tea round - a job which never fails to fall to the only female reporter.What Poppy lacks in experience, she makes up for in spirit and ambition. She'll make the Downingham Post the best regional newspaper there is - even if she occasionally gets the names wrong in court hearings. Life, for a single professional woman in the post-war years, certainly has its challenges - from finding a room, when the tyrannical landlady doesn't consider Poppy to be quite respectable, to changing her editor's deeply entrenched ways. This semi-autobiographical novel, recounted with Monica Dickens's wit, warmth and wry observation, will charm all who read it.
Monica discovered the pleasure of daily banter with the milkman and grocer's boy and the joy of doing an honest day's work, all the while keeping a wry eye on the childish pique of her employers.
A charming, funny and fascinating account of a young trainee nurse during the Second World War.
Leonard's life has never seemed safer or better. Then through the door comes Toby, he brings with him the excitement of change but he is not what he appears to be, and in the end brings tragedy.
