On a rainy Sunday in January the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric & endlessly curious living off crumbs of affection & snippets of gossip. Together upper lips stiffened they fight off their twin enemies: boredom & the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unexpected friendship with Ludo a handsome young writer & learns that even the old can fall in love.. . ...

Mrs Pepperpot never knows when she's going to shrink to the size of a kitchen pepperpot & its usually at the most inconvenient moments! But being small can be a lot of fun too
- Mrs Pepperpot will meet the little people in the Magic Wood be taught to swim by a frog & even sit on a mouse's back! A compilation of nine short stories including: Mrs Pepperpot in the Magic Wood"; " Mrs Pepperpot & the Puppet Show"; " Midsummer Eve with the Ogres"; " Mrs Pepperpot & the Baby Crow"; " Mrs Pepperpot learns to Swim"; ' Mrs Pepperpot gives a party"; " Sir Mark the Valiant"; " Mrs Pepperpot turns Detective"; " Mrs Pepperpot & the Brooch Hunt"."
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Mrs Pepperpot has a problem
- a huge problem
- she shrinks! & when she does she finds herself in all sorts of trouble... In

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Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is growing increasingly disenchanted after her decades of public service & years of family scandal. One day the Queen takes things into her own hands & in a spur-of-the-moment decision leaves the palace alone & incognito. An unlikely group of six including two of the Queens most trusted household staff members William & Shirley; one of her loyal ladies in waiting Lady Anne; an equerry fresh from the battlefields of Afghanistan Luke; a young equestrienne who minds the horses in the Royal Mews Rebecca; & Rajiv an Etonian spending his early 20s behind the counter in an artisanal cheese shop in Mayfair & moonlighting as a tabloid photographer are the only ones who know of her disappearance. They vow to find her & bring her back to the palace before MI6 turn her Scottish sojourn into a national crisis. Capturing the faded but enduring glamour & glory of a seemingly old-fashioned institution & a woman who wonders if she too has become outmoded this is a charming witty & poignant novel of responsibilities & freedom. ...

From the number one bestselling multi-award-winning author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher comes a brand new true story of Victorian scandal On a mild winters evening in 1850 Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburghs Georgian New Town & drew up at 8 Royal Circus a grand sandstone terrace lit by gas lamps. The guests were gathered in the high airy drawing rooms on the first floor the ladies in glinting silk & satin pulled tight over boned corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats waistcoats & neckties. When Mrs Robinson joined the throng she was at once enchanted by a Mr Edward Lane a handsome medical student ten years her junior. He was fascinating she told her diary before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a mans charms. But a wish had taken hold of her which she was to find hard to shake... ...

Margaret Greville of Polesden Lacey who styled herself ' Mrs Ronnie' rose from obscure & humble origins to become a fabulously wealthy & ambitious society hostess travelling the world & acquiring a portfolio of movie stars monarchs maharajahs & millionaires. Her long rich & fascinating life of dark secrets racy scandal & power-broking intrigue encompassed close relationships with royals from Edward Vii to George VI. But her fascination with charisma also led her to champion characters as diverse as Winston Churchill Oswald Mosley Mussoini & Hitler. No-one doubted her patriotism but some questioned her judgement. King Edward VII who commended her 'positive genius for hospitality' appreciated her discretion in his affair with her friend Alice Keppel. Mrs Ronnie intrigued with King George V & Queen Mary & advanced the courtship of ' Bertie & Elizabeth' who honeymooned at her luxurious country house Polesden Lacey in Surrey. She disapproved of the Prince of Wales & had a ringside view of the Abdication Crisis becoming a valued supporter of the new King & Queen. Mrs Ronnie was a complex & contradictory character & her astonishing rise from a straitened & obscure childhood to the position of 'favoured aunt' to the British Royal Family is a genuine 'rags to riches' tale. ...

The romance of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor has been called the greatest love story of the twentieth century. However with the first edition of this biography in 1988 highly acclaimed author Charles Higham used explosive secret intelligence files to reveal a far darker side to their forty-year relationship. Now the author has re-visited & updated his international bestseller resulting in a fascinating & at times shocking expose of Wallis Simpson. New & disturbing revelations have come to light adding to the now classic story of an illegitimate child from Baltimore who rose to become the mistress of the king of England & brought about his abdication. Wallis gained control of the Monarch through sexual techniques learned in China but risked losing everything through a reckless long-term affair with William Bullitt US Ambassador to France. Newly released FBI files demonstrate as no other source has done the extent of the Duchess espionage activities & how she conspired against Britain in the interest of Hitler. This is an intimate & extraordinary account of the woman who very nearly became the Queen of Engl&. An enthralling & jaw-dropping read"
- " Sunday Express". " An excellent account of life love & Roger Vivier shoes"
- " Tatler". "A rattling read"
- " Mail on Sunday"."


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Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form & reflects a genuine humanity & a concern with the experiences that both enrich & stultify existence. Society hostess Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts & sensations on that one day & the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide. ...

REBECCA was Daphne du Mauriers most famous & best-loved novel. Countless readers wondered: what happened next? Out of fire-wracked ruins of Manderley would love & renewal rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the embittered past? Married to the sophisticated wordly-wise Maxim the second Mrs de Winters life should be happy & fulfilled. Bu the vengeful ghost of Rebecca Maxims first wife continues to cast its long shadow over them. Back in England after an absence of over ten years it seems as if happiness will at last be theirs. But the de Winters still have to reckon with two hate-consumed figures they once knew
- both of whom have very long memories...
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They are not like other rats. They work at night in secret... Time is running out for Mrs Frisby. She must move her family of mice before the farmer destroys their home. But her youngest son Timothy is too ill to survive the move. Help comes in the unexpected form of a group of mysterious super-intelligent rats. But the rats are in danger too & little by little Mrs Frisby discovers their extraordinary past. ...