Explore the latest books of this year!
Bookbot

Mary Wesley

    June 24, 1912 – December 30, 2002

    Mary Wesley was an English novelist whose works delve into the intricacies of human relationships and destinies, often set against the backdrop of the English countryside. She emerged as a prolific writer for adults later in life, quickly becoming one of Britain's most commercially successful novelists. Her narratives are known for their keen observation of society and human nature, blending humor with a distinct touch of melancholy. Wesley believed in the importance of having something meaningful to say, ceasing to write when she felt she had nothing more to express.

    An Imaginative Experience
    Not That Sort of Girl
    Harnessing Peacocks
    Part of the Furniture
    A Sensible Life
    Jumping The Queue
    • 2008

      In 1944 Henry Tillotson brings his new wife, Mararet, home to his farmhouse in the English countryside. Margaret is a strange, unpleasant woman, determined, it seems, to make Henry's life miserable. 'Poor Henry!' say his friends, as they visit at weekends and holidays. 'What an awful life he has!' But Henry is not at all the sad and disappointed man we might expect him to be. He manages to enjoy life, and indeed, has quite a lot of fun, one way and another ... Mary Wesley's story takes a sharp but light-hearted look at love, sex, and marriage - and the things people will do to get what they want

      A Dubious Legacy: Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4
    • 2007

      The Vacillations Of Poppy Carew

      • 320 pages
      • 12 hours of reading
      3.2(10)Add rating

      Poppy Carew has just been dumped by her unscrupulous boyfriend, Edmund, when her beloved and eccentric father dies, leaving Poppy one last request - that she ensure he is buried in style by a 'fun' undertaker - and one large fortune.

      The Vacillations Of Poppy Carew
    • 2007

      Hebe has harnessed her two great talents - cooking and making love - to make a living for herself, but when the separate strands of her life become intangled the even tenor of her days is threatened, and her world changes forever.

      Harnessing Peacocks
    • 2006

      Jumping The Queue

      • 208 pages
      • 8 hours of reading
      3.5(10)Add rating

      Matilda Poliport, recently widowed and largely estranged from her four adult children, has decided to End It All. But her meticulously planned bid for graceful oblivion is interrupted when she foils the suicide bid of another lost soul - Hugh Warner, on the run from the police - and life begins again for them both.

      Jumping The Queue
    • 1998

      Early in 1941, having just seen off at Euston Station the two young men whom she has loved for the best part of her seventeen years, Juno Marlowe is hurrying down a London street with her ill-fitting shoes in her hands.  Airplanes thunder overhead; a battery of guns opens up.  When a stick of bombs falls she cowers, then takes to her heels in flight.  She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger, frail and older than his years, and, guiding her up his front stairs, he offers her the protection of his house.Given this respite from the bleakness of having no home and no family to turn to, Juno first encounters tragedy, then a series of events which take her to a house in the West Country and the blossoming of an English spring into which war only occasionally intrudes.  Here she may find peace; here she will no longer be part of the furniture.  Part of the Furniture completes the triptych of wartime novels begun with The Camomile Lawn and A Sensible Life.

      Part of the Furniture
    • 1994

      A traveller on a train smells the burn of brakes on the rails as the train stops suddenly in the countryside. Looking out the window, he sees a white-faced woman leap from the train in aid of a stranded sheep. The image lodges in his mind, a familiar despair he knows.

      An Imaginative Experience
    • 1992

      When James and Matthew spent the weekend with Henry Tillotson in 1954, they took an instant liking to the country house that Henry had inherited from his father. His wife was a bit odd though - she never seemed to get out of bed. Gossip suggested that Henry had inherited her as well.

      A Dubious Legacy
    • 1992

      After her husband's funeral, Rose looks back on a life of dual constancy, passion, humour and the ambiguities of love - and chooses her future. A witty and charming love story among the British middle classes with surprising twists.

      Not That Sort of Girl
    • 1991

      She was a thin, lonely child with huge eyes and an extensive vocabulary of French foul language. Amongst the elegant middle-class British families holidaying in Dinard in 1926--leading their privileged lives of secure routine pleasures--Flora was a ten-year-old misfit. Ignored by her self-absorbed parents, unloved, and pitied by the pleasant, stylish people in Brittany that summer, Flora was--peripherally--included in their gracious circles. And there, meeting kindly civilised people for the first time, she fell in love--with Cosmo--with Hubert--with Feix. It took forty years for the love affairs to be explored, consummated and finally resolved. From the Trade Paperback edition.

      A Sensible Life
    • 1988

      After a mysterious catastrophe befalls much of the earth, Muriel, her son Paul, and his friend Henry must learn how to survive in this new, barren, and disturbingly empty world. By the author of A Dubious Legacy.

      The Sixth Seal