Kirjahaku

Focusing on the dilemmas of contemporary women and issues of responsibility and choice, Clare Boylan's writing has become a much-loved voice of contemporary fiction. Here, published in a single volume for the first time, are all three of her collections: A NAIL ON THE HEAD, CONCERNING VIRGINS and THAT BAD WOMAN. The stories are bewitching as they unsettle, confirming Clare Boylan's ability to subvert our reactions with irony as subtle and deft as a surgeon's blade.

When Charlotte Bronte died in 1855, she left behind the beginnings of a new novel - twenty pages of a work in progress called Emma. Now, almost 150 years later, Clare Boylan has returned to this most intriguing of fragments, and turned them into an astonishing story of mystery, atmosphere and page-turning suspense.When Conway Fitzgibbon arrives at Fuchsia Lodge with his daughter Matilda, the headmistress Miss Wilcox couldn't be more delighted. The ladies' school is limited in numbers and eager for new pupils, particularly ones so finely dressed, and boasting a father who is 'quite the gentleman'. But as Christmas approaches, and Miss Wilcox inquires about arrangements for the holidays, she is in for a shock. Conway Fitzgibbon, like the address he left behind, does not exist. So who is Matilda? With Miss Wilcox unable to extract any information out of the girl, it falls to a local lawyer, Mr Ellin, and a young widow, Isabel Chalfont, to unravel the truth. What they discover is a tale that travels the highs and lows of nineteenth-century England, an investigation that begins as curiosity and ends up changing all their lives forever . . .

After fifty years of marriage in the same Dublin suburb, Dick and LIly enjoy a "safe" life of compromise until one night when LIly awakens to find Dick under the bed, holding a shotgun, convinced there's an intruder in the house--plunging deeper into his insanity. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.