Stella Gibbons

When sensible sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos preaching fire and damnation; their sons lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will she resolves to take each of the family in hand.

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 fortunes and the female cousins are having a pretty thin time of it. Once again the sensible Flora decides to take the situation in hand.

Viola is a young widow left penniless by her late husband. She is forced to live with his family : a miserly father-in-law, a snobbish mother-in-law and two sisters-in-law. A satirical tale of a modern-day Cinderella.

Ivy Gover, a curmudgeonly middle-aged charwoman with witchy talents, inherits a rural cottage in a tiny Buckinghamshire village. Once settled in with a rescued dog and a pet pigeon, she manages, despite her anti-social instincts, to have surprising effects on her new neighbours, including Angela Mordaunt, a spinster still mourning her dead beau, Coral and Pearl Cartaret, ditzy sisters who have just opened a tea shop, the local vicar, and wealthy Lord Gowerville, whose devotion she earns by healing his beloved dog. But her biggest challenge will likely be the 12-year-old runaway who shows up at her door...