Elizabeth Von Arnim

Two unhappily married women, Rose Arbuthnot and Lotty Wilkins, respond to an advertisement offering a month's rental of a small medieval Italian castle. In order to defray the not inconsiderable cost of such a venture, two other ladies, Lady Caroline Dester and the formidable Miss Fisher, are invited to join them, and thus the four embark on their adventure. The ill-matched companions get off to a rocky start, but the delightful and spell-binding...

Published in 1899, The Solitary Summer is a charming companion to von Arnim's earlier novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden. As with its prequel, the novel is semi-autobiographical and in the form of a series of diary entries. The narrator decides to spend one summer alone in her country house far away from the demands and distractions of the world. She offers us a witty and lyrical account of a solitary summer, filled with reading and reflections...

Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss, both recovering from recent unhappiness, meet and quickly fall in love. However, over their new-found bliss looms the spectre of Vera, Wemyss's first wife who died in mysterious circumstances. After their wedding the couple return home and Lucy really does begin to be troubled by what happened to Vera. Considered a high-water mark by the author, the story is an extraordinarily black vision of a young wife who gradually...