Böcker utgivna av Michael Walmer

In the early 19th century, young Prue and Gideon Sarn live with their mother on a farm around a mere deep in the Shropshire countryside. Their life is full to brimming with the agricultural round, the seasons dominating. Also crucial is all the lore which underlies life - meanings deduced from natural events, modified to some extent by the dicta of the church.Prue is quietly aware of one essential difference in herself - she has a harelip, which her mother tells her sadly is the result of a hare having crossed her path when pregnant. Prue accepts that she will not have the fruitful life of love and children that a young woman of those times could expect. Gideon, after the death of their father, has shown his determined nature by enlisting Prue and their mother in an exhausting round of farmwork. His aim is to make a fortune quickly and buy a much grander house he has spied nearby, with all the servants and status that go with it.Prue's admiration of her brother's strength and handsomeness does not waver, even when he is too single-minded to be truly kind. The daughter of their near neighbours, Jancis Beguildy, sees him similarly, but with added romantic attachment, which is returned by Gideon. Jancis' father is looked upon with great suspicion by the local community as a waker of demons and potential wizard, but, true to her all-welcoming nature, Prue is happy to go there regularly for lessons in reading and writing. On one visit there she also sees the new local weaver, Kester Woodseaves, who, like Gideon, is extraordinarily strong and attractive. Though she sees any romance as impossible due to her blemish, Prue is privately completely captured by the idea of him.Prue and Gideon have the malleable ideas of those attached to the land, where strict church morality is seen as sometimes too restrictive and unreasonable, as long as the intentions of any misdoer are good. Jancis' father has taken against Gideon, for reasons which go back to a feud with their own father. When the physical nature of Gideon and Jancis' relationship prior to their marriage is revealed, something snaps in Beguildy. His revengeful action ushers in enormous disturbance - the tensions surrounding the Sarns and Beguildys in the local community, which had been sleeping, are awoken with savagery. Their quiet lives are devastated, their failings magnified, the impacts reverberating in ever growing circles of disaster. At the centre of the melée, it will take all her strength for Prue to survive.In her last completed novel, first published in 1924, Mary Webb reached for two key differences from her prior work: a setting further back in time, and the use of a first-person narrator, bringing the beginnings of a new and extraordinary lucidity and immediacy to her already poetic prose. Precious Bane was a harbinger of brilliance to come, sadly cut short by Webb's tragic death.

Emmeline Mowbray's history is shrouded in mystery. The common story is that she is the illegitimate daughter of a Lord, but there are very few corroborating documents. It is also said that both her parents are dead.She lives precariously alone, under the distant protection of an uncle whom she has never seen, at the old family seat, Mowbray Castle, in a remote part of Pembrokeshire. Parts of the castle have fallen into ruin, and her only companions are the small set of retainers who keep the estate ticking over, especially Mrs. Carey, the housekeeper, who loves her tenderly.Mrs. Carey's death, like a rock cast into a pool, precipitates a series of resounding changes, rippling through Emmeline's circumstances. She is finally introduced to her wealthy uncle, Lord Montreville, who is sometimes sympathetic and sometimes cold, most unaccountably. More importantly she meets his son, Lord Delamere, a wild rake, who quickly becomes infatuated with her undoubted youthful beauty. Delamere's ravenous attentions send the inexperienced Emmeline on a whirlwind of relocation, as she desperately avoids his all-out advances, again and again. She escapes to relations of Mrs. Carey initially, and there finds a staunch friend in another young woman, Mrs. Stafford, who is also struggling in great jeopardy, in her case with a disastrous marriage.Emmeline suffers, as she ventures, extraordinary advances and reverses of fate, and watches fascinatedly that of the people with whom she has begun to associate in her emergence into the wider milieu of London and the Continent. Some of them are wickedly humorous, some inveterately evil, and some emerge as her dearest allies in a dangerous world. She also meets Godolphin, a brilliant officer, whose love for her is as absolute as it is unspoken. Can Emmeline find a way through this puzzling and hazardous maze to the truth, about love, and about herself?Emmeline was Charlotte Smith's arresting first novel, first published in 1788. It was immediately popular, influencing, among others, Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen.

Ipsie Wilson has always been a striking individual - though she would say for all the wrong reasons. She has never felt quite real - like a looker-on in life, capturing little pieces of people's attention, sometimes exasperating them, sometimes entrancing them, but never adding up to a whole human being - her existence seems very smoke and mirrors. If she sometimes feels lost and bewildered, she can also be quite cussed and determined - the strange contrasts and difficult mixtures in her personality go on and on. She lost all three of her brothers in the war, which has caused further disorder in her messy life and mind. In the mid-1920s, having wandered for a while from England to San Francisco, she sets off for China to be married to Jacob Heming. He is a very stolid British customs official in Yunnan whom she met in the States; he scares and puzzles her in equal amounts, but at least the idea of him is something to hold onto. On the boat to China she meets Rodd Innes, an American who just happens to be heading to Yunnan to take over Jacob's position. His easy, cool manner and worldliness forms a stark contrast to her memories of Jacob's rigid stuffiness, and he is clearly taken with her. A contest begins in her responsive yet untidy mind. Then, while Ipsie uncertainly meets Jacob's domineering sister Pauline and old flame Sophie Hinds in Hongkong, Rodd heads to Yueh Lai Chou to take over the reins from Jacob. He is horrified by the boorish man he meets, and determines in her absence that Ipsie cannot marry him.But then Jacob is captured by brigands in the mountains close by. Ipsie, Pauline and Sophie come rushing to Yueh Lai Chou. What ransom will the brigands demand? What can any of them do to help? When Jacob is returned to them, will Ipsie's growing ambivalence let her care for him, or Rodd, or neither? In the end, fate intervenes with surprising finality.Pipers and a Dancer, first published in 1924, was Stella Benson's first novel set almost entirely in China. Universally lauded, it was acclaimed by the reviewer for the Spectator as having "more wit, more unruly intelligence than any English novel since the nineties."

Valmouth, a southern English coastal resort, has a generous supply of well-furnished and well-connected relics of society. Hare-Hatch House, inhabited by good friends Eulalia Hurstpierpoint and Elizabeth Thoroughfare, is one of the great centres of local social attention. Coming on a visit, Lady Parvula de Panzoust encounters members of several castes there, ranging from the Tooke family who are in service, through the omnipresent exotic masseuse-cum-herbalist Mrs Yajñavalkya, to those of her own status who buzz around the house gossiping and defaming, hinting and declaiming, each other's secret business and hidden predilections always the tasty subject. Indeed, Parvula herself is on something of a private mission of an amatory nature!As the season progresses, the question of who will marry Mrs Thoroughfare's son Dick, just returned from the sea, becomes an absorbing question. Will young Thetis Tooke, single-minded and passionate, recapture his attention permanently? Or will Mrs Yajñavalkya's protégé Niri-Esther steal his favour? The already agitated currents begin to stir forcefully...Valmouth, Ronald Firbank's celebrated fourth novel, was first published in 1919. Its waves of exclamatory dialogue, eccentric description and outrageous characters confirmed his unique position as high-camp chronicler of his age in all its hilarious, sharp-tongued erraticism.

Zuleika Dobson is the granddaughter of the Warden of Judas College, Oxford. She is also a famed prestidigitator, with a somewhat lively reputation and questionable skill! However, she is one thing absolutely and without question: a beauty. Youths are reputed to have died for love of her.When she arrives in Oxford on a visit to her grandfather, the many young men of the colleges sit up and take notice. Something about her inspires their unthinking devotion. But these slaves bore Zuleika; she needs someone to love whom she can respect. As she and her grandfather drive to Judas, the young, handsome, lordly and cool-tempered Duke of Dorset rides by their carriage and pays her no attention whatever. Zuleika is thrilled and delighted by his indifference - has she finally found her man?But it is not to be. Later, in a private tête-à-tête, Dorset reveals that he too is overwhelmed. In bitter disappointment, her hopes dashed, Zuleika rejects him. He is so overcome that he vows to kill himself in her name, and encourage any young men of the city who feel the same to follow his example. The duke plans this apotheosis to occur down on the river - it is Eights Week. As the fated time approaches, Zuleika begins quietly to enjoy the disturbance she is creating; many, many young men have vowed to join the mass suicide. Through twists and reverses, their egos and amour propre clashing, Dorset and Zuleika approach the moment of truth. Will he carry out his extraordinary plan? How many smitten young fellows will join him? In the end, Oxford undergoes a day that will never be forgotten.Max Beerbohm wrote fiction very rarely. Zuleika Dobson, first published in 1911, his only full-length novel, is an erudite comic masterpiece, superlatively satirising the delusions of romantic love in this legend of a literal femme fatale.

Young Inga Henderson has grown up as the daughter of the manse on a northerly Shetland isle named Vaalafiel. She is without a father; he died in a mysterious tragedy on a boat trip to Europe, in which his best friend also died, and which her mother, who was with them, won't speak about. Living with Inga and her mother in seclusion on Vaalafiel is that best friend's son, Laurence Traquair, a young man of culture who is subject to memory-obliterating fits and nervestorms, and who is Inga's kindest ally in a world made grim through her mother's coldness.In the meantime, on the neighbouring island of Jewbadaal, young, confident and cheerful Aytoun Weir lives with his father, the minister, his wise mother and happy sisters. Despite Inga's mother's wish to remain secluded, he is engaged to make the daily short trip across the voe to be her tutor. As time goes by, and her mother's fears are allayed, Inga is allowed to travel to Jewbadaal. The contrast with the gloom and quiet of her own existence could not be stronger, as is that between the two young men in Inga's life-retiring Laurence and gregarious Aytoun. Confounding their differences, the two young men become fast friends.Inga's curiosity about her father and the mysterious story of his death only grows more intense as she matures, and she discovers an even deeper ally in Aytoun. Slowly they uncover elements of the tale, but key parts are still missing. At the same time, Inga's loyalties are being tested - she has married Laurence, but feels drawn almost subconsciously to Aytoun. Only when Aytoun plans a boat-trip to Europe himself, taking Laurence and Inga's mother with him, does the full truth come to light. An astonishing story of smuggling, jealousy and embittered relationships is revealed. As the boat bringing the travellers home nears Vaalafiel, a storm erupts. In one night of momentous events, including the advent of a stranger who remains unknown to any but Inga, and a shipwreck in weather which would test the hardiest rescuer, her whole world is turned upside down. What she realizes in that time of storm and stress changes her life for ever.In this debut novel, Jessie Saxby took elements of her own life and experiences and wove them into the gripping story of a young woman discovering herself through her hitherto hidden past, and her maturing understanding of the costs and compromises of love. The result is a passionate novel with modern gothic undertones, reminiscent of the work of Charlotte Brontë and Robert Louis Stevenson, which anticipates the stirring tales of Daphne du Maurier.

Gillian Lovekin is the daughter of a lonely farm up on the high moorland of Shropshire. Her widowed father, Isaiah, is wealthy, but rustic. In a cottage on the farm lives the Makepeace family: old, slow, garrulous and accident-prone Jonathan, the man-of-all-work, his wife Abigail, cheerful and practical cook and washerwoman, and Abigail's son from a previous marriage, Robert Rideout, the farm's young cowman-shepherd.Gillian and Robert have known each other since childhood, their natures mutually understood like the backs of their hands. But as she has grown older Gillian has come to realise that she is the mistress of the farm, and Robert only one of its workers. The quicksilver of her domineering and attention-loving personality clashes playfully with Robert's more easeful and serious steadiness. She has a beginning notion that he cares deeply for her, but the idea of marrying someone so much her social inferior simply can't be countenanced.When an outsider buys the only other building on their part of the moor, a lonely, decrepit pub called The Mermaid's Rest, Gillian is intrigued by him. Ralph Elmer seems worldly, sophisticated and capable, and most crucially pays her exactly the sort of attention she likes: she is showered with gifts and extravagantly noticed. Her youthful innocence on the one hand, and feelings of intense sensual curiosity on the other, combine to bring about a situation where she has no choice but to marry him, despite her growing feeling of unease about his enigmatic manipulativeness.Robert and Ralph have been navigating a halting truce, despite Robert's heartbreak at Gillian's cruel rejection of him. But when Robert hears the account of a gipsy friend whose baby daughter disappeared in mysterious circumstances many years before, something clicks inside him. His suspicions about Elmer, and his actions toward his exposure, precipitate a hidden tumult of confrontation, desperation and, ultimately, murder. In Seven for a Secret, first published in 1922, Mary Webb took up the skeins which had exemplified her talent hitherto, and twisted them yet further. It is a vibrant novel of fatedness, comedy and rural realities, dedicated to Thomas Hardy. But now this quality became soaked through with near-pagan fabular tinctures, its potent action transpiring under looming skies of otherworldly colour; a brilliant mythic tale which has the numinous feeling of a May-game gone disastrously astray.

Cuthbert Shaw and Jenny Strangfield are secretly in love. His father is a dogmatic schoolmaster, hers a severe Baptist preacher, harsh stalwarts of their small town on the Kent coast. But so convinced are Cuthbert and Jenny of their rightness for one another that they have slipped off separately to London on false pretences, and married there. Back in Greystone, they must keep up their secret until they can summon the courage to speak to their respective despotic parents. Finally, Cuthbert determines he can wait no longer, and makes a plan with Jenny to deliver the no doubt shocking news, to her father first, one evening.But this is 1806, and pressgangs prowl British seaside places, compelling young men into the service of the navy, to fight Napoleon's forces. As he makes his way to Jenny's home for the critical conversation, Cuthbert is taken, and disappears overnight. Jenny, unaware, waits and waits on tenterhooks. But, of course, Cuthbert never comes. Heartbroken, thinking he may have abandoned her, Jenny despairs, and reveals their secret. But she is not believed - the story appears unfeasible, and seems a cover for shame. Her father is incandescent, and Cuthbert's outraged. How will gentle Cuthbert fare aboard ship, heading into battle? How will Jenny survive the vicious innuendo of the Greystone townspeople, let alone own father's savage accusations of bad character? Will Cuthbert ever return to her, or is he lost forever?W. Clark Russell followed several extremely popular seafaring tales with this elegantly written novel in 1878, proving that he was much more than a novelist of adventure. The extraordinarily poetic prose and rich imagination of Auld Lang Syne confirmed that here was a writer with more than one string to his bow.

Miss Ethel Browne is a typical adornment of her era. A single lady of a certain age in the period before the First World War usually assists a senior, or less healthy family member with the running of their house, or affords help of a more modest kind, in order to feel useful. Sometimes they are inspired to approach places of last resort to befriend and encourage poor unfortunates.In Miss Browne's case the Rescue Home pairs her with Mabel Roberts, who has had a terrible start in life, and has fallen into dubious ways. Miss Browne is somewhat dazzled by Mabel's beauty, and charmed by her simple transparency and determination to be good. She finds Mabel a good position as general maid to two elderly ladies, and all seems set fair.But, as the months go by, so do the reports of arguments, temper and secretiveness. Positions come and go, as Miss Browne struggles to help Mabel surmount her failings and find a foothold in the better life. Having 'slipped' somewhat, in a position as a waitress in a restaurant, Mabel disappears. In the end, Miss Browne finds her, only to discover that life has dealt Mabel a harsher blow.Miss Browne's Friend was originally published in four parts between June 1914 and March 1915 in the Free Church Suffrage Times, a year after the publication of F. M. Mayor's celebrated first novel, The Third Miss Symons. With its mixture of wry humour and tragedy, it confirmed her reputation as one of the most sensitive exponents of the challenges and uncertainties of single women's lives in her times.

With his career at its zenith, known universally for his three volumes of magnificently witty stories, Saki in 1912 was ready to branch out. He decided to apply his genius to a single long narrative in a novel.The Unbearable Bassington sports his famous raillery at its highest pitch:"…she came of a family whose individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going through a crowded bathing tent.""…I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.""…if one hides one's talent under a bushel one must be careful to point out to everyone the exact bushel under which it is hidden."This story introduces us to another of the author's louche young men, basking in the glow of society whilst also managing to undermine it stealthily. The handsome and infuriatingly nonchalant Comus Bassington and his mother Francesca are struggling along at the edges somewhat - an advantageous marriage would certainly help. And Comus has met an heiress who appeals, Elaine de Frey. But he has a rival, his friend Courtenay Youghal, who is an up and coming young politician of great surface charm.Francesca is relying on Comus, and there's no accounting for what she might do if he doesn't come up trumps. It will not only be embarrassing to his and his mother's pride, it will also place a terrible strain on their resources.The tracing of not only the simmering and uproarious repartee, but also the implicit tragedy in the venal expectations of high society in The Unbearable Bassington introduced a new note in Saki's repertoire. Their combined power made for a book which was instantly celebrated as one of the great novels of its decade.