Лучшие книги Стеллы Гиббонс

Классика английской литературы ХХ века. Изысканная, элегантная и бесконечно ироничная пародия на «провинциальный» британский роман, читая который можно провести немало забавных параллелей с произведениями Эмили Бронте, Томаса Харди и прочих великих прозаиков XIX – начала ХХ вв. Религиозные снобы и раздираемые тайными страстями юные (и не очень) девицы… Деревенские ловеласы и эксцентричные кумушки… Потрясающая коллекция колоритных и нелепых персонажей, немыслимых ситуаций и невероятных диалогов, которая не оставит равнодушным ни одного истинного ценителя английского юмора!..

The farm lies in the shadow of a hill, and the farmyard rarely sees the sun, even in summer, when the sukebind hangs heavy in the branches. Here live the Starkadders - Aunt Ada Doom, Judith, Amos, Seth, Reuben, Elfine...They lead messy, untidy lives, full of dark thoughts, moody silences, and sudden noisy quarrels. That is, until their attractive young cousin arrives from London. Neat, sensible, efficient, Flora Poste cannot bear messes (they are so uncivilized). She begins to tidy up the Starkadders' lives at once ...

Set in wartime London, Westwood tells the story of Margaret Steggles, a plain bookish girl whose mother has told her that she is not the type that attracts men. Her schoolfriend Hilda has a sunny temperament and keeps her service boys 'ever so cheery'. When Margaret finds a ration book on Hampstead Heath the pompous writer Gerard Challis enters both their lives. Margaret slavishly adores Challis and his artistic circle; Challis idolises Hilda for her hair and her eyes and Hilda finds Gerard's romantic overtures a bit of a bind. This is a delightfully comic and wistful tale of love and longing.

Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled "Quiete Retreate" and "Greate laundrie". It is, Flora winces, "exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time". Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the "sadistic owl" Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump. And worst of all, there are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. All the he-cousins have gone abroad to make their…

'Don't show proper feelin', does it, not turnin' up for 'is dad's funeral?' Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last six months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they wonder what will become of them now that the last connection to their difficult childhood has been severed. What have they inherited - financially and emotionally - to guide them to adulthood, and build a new home together? Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years which Gibbons and her brothers spent living in a cottage in Hampstead Heath: a wonderfully astute, bittersweet novel about family, grief, money,…

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous 'rackman'. He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit...

Wilfred Davis, quiet, retired, respectable widower, is sitting and sobbing on a park bench. He has lost his daughter and any sense of purpose. A mysterious stranger passes him a handkerchief, and strikes up a conversation that leads to friendship and an unconventional new home for Wilfred. Mary Davis wants only four things out of life: a husband and three children, so at seventeen she runs away from school, her father and her home and moves to London to find them. Only a few months later Mary is engaged, but love and marriage promise to be very different from her childhood daydreams. For Mary and Wilfred, it seems Fate has taken a hand, or…

Available for the first time since its original publication more than fifty years ago, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is a charming collection whose hilarious title story features Christmas dinner with the Starkadders before Flora's arrival. With Adam playing Santa while draped in Mrs. Starkadders's shawls, the family shares their traditional "Christmas pudding"-a mlange containing random objects of doom foretelling the coming year: a coffin nail for death, a bad sixpence for financial ruin, and a menthol cone to indicate that the lucky recipient will go "blind wi' headache." These lively tales will delight anyone who loves Stella Gibbons…

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH A glorious collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm. The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith's red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: 'Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!'

In St Alberics, Hertfordshire, stands a newly built family home: Sunglades. Its seven rooms house Kenneth and Constance Fielding, middle-aged bachelor and spinster, along with Kenneth's old flame, an industrious Balkan exile, a young economist and the

My American follows the lives and loves of Amy Lee and Robert Vorst: from a chance childhood meeting to the comic, tragic and romantic trysts that follow. A baker's daughter, Amy has dreams of becoming a writer, whilst Robert is destined to be a doctor. Later, embarking on a lecture tour, Amy is reminded of 'her American' and endeavours to find him amidst Depression-era America.

Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate - with varying degrees of success - the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.

A sly and satirical fairytale by the author of Cold Comfort Farm

Unavailable for decades, Stella Gibbons's Nightingale Wood is a delightfully modern romance ripe for rediscovery by the many fans of Cold Comfort Farm.

Poor, lovely Viola has been left penniless and alone after her late husband's demise, and is forced to live with his family in their joyless home. Its occupants are nearly insufferable: Mr. Withers is a tyrannical old miser; Mrs. Withers dismisses her as a common shop girl; and Viola's sisters-in-law, Madge and Tina, are too preoccupied with their own troubles to give her much thought. Only the prospect of the upcoming charity ball can lift her spirits-especially as Victor Spring, the local prince charming, will be there. But Victor's intentions towards the young widow are, in short, not quite honorable.