Elsie Piddock skips in her sleep

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Liz Fenwick

When artist Maddie inherits a house in Cornwall shortly after the death of her husband, she hopes it will be the fresh start she and her step-daughter desperately need. Trevenen is beautiful but neglected, and as Maddie discovers the stories of generations of women who've lived there before, she begins to feel her life is somehow intertwined within its walls. But Maddie's dream of a calm life in the countryside is far from the reality she faces - and as she pulls at the seams of Trevenen's past, the house reveals secrets that have lain hidden for generations.

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Marion Chesney

The delightful Miss Hannah Pym returns to the English countryside in search of adventure and romance in distress. With her infallible wisdom and charming demeanor she corn steer even the most misguided of hearts back on course! No sooner does Miss Pym board her next stagecoach than she finds herself embroiled in the plight of Miss Belinda Earle, a spirited heiress banished to Bath after swearing off the marriage mart! When the coach founders near Baddell Castle, and the dashing Marquess of Frenton comes to the rescue, Miss Pym decides to give fate a hand! Although the austere bachelor disdains romance, his furtive glances toward Belinda prove to Miss Pym that her expert matchmaking will soon turn this star-crossed couple into a heavenly match!

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Charles Dickens

Upon its publication in 1857, Little Dorrit immediately outsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of William Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughter and helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progress of the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction, David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift from which Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear, his near-universal empathy, his ability to entertain both a sense of the ridiculous and a sense of ultimate significance.

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Peter Lovesey

"Battle and burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to the folly known as Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has investigated, involving golf, horseracing, Civil War re-enactment and the Cyrillic alphabet. Inevitably, Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member. She resolves to sideline Diamond by sending him to Bristol and handing the skeleton investigation to his deputy, Keith Halliwell. Fortunately matters don't pan out as Georgina plans."--Jacket.