Fay Weldon

'I read my daughter's diaries the other day. Let me share with you. You may think you know pretty much what's going on in your own family. Believe me, you do not'. Sappho was so happy when she married Gavin. She was in love and it seemed that at last everything was falling into place. But she hadn't considered his daughter, Isobel. She is a delightful, charming girl who spends her school holidays caring for the elderly and is the apple of Gavin's eye.Now cast in the role of Wicked Stepmother, Sappho tries all she can to befriend Isobel and find her place in the new family. It's not easy, but no one had promised it would be. Sappho perseveres. But she has a history, and the history works against her. When it becomes clear that, contrary to popular belief, it is Isobel who steals Gavin's love and attention, and Sappho who must fight for his affection, Sappho is at a loss. How can she win her husband back? With warmth, wit and her unique insights into the workings of the female mind, Fay Weldon has written a brilliant, unsettling new novel about family life today.

A classic tale of how a perfectly knitted life can unravel in the space of days.

A marriage its breakdown and a perforated heroine: one woman, many faces, many personalities and more emerging .....Witty, sexy and funny, Fay Weldon uses a sharp but healing laser to re-lay out notions of love, marriage and the self.

Weldon on top form; Weldon tackling love, sex, ageing, death; Weldon at her wittiest best; Weldon unparalleled.

An adventure story where love triumphs over lust, good will over satanic forces in the spirit of Dickens.

'Sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy' Spectator

A turbine-driven fantasy of love and revenge, values and morals: a witty and compellng elixir.

A selection of lectures and essays contributed to newspapers, magazines and books over recent years, revised for this volume and all highly relevant to today.

Fay Weldon's first novel, a sharp and witty parable of the way people see themselves.

When a marriage meets a therapist...

This copulative sotry of passion, jealousy, fidelity and faithlessness is Weldon at her most provocative. Into the lives of Marion, Nora, Roaslie and Susan erupts Leslie Beck, an old flame not quite extinguished. Recently widowed, though somewhat weepy Leslie is still a man with the Life Force. To the four friends he is Leslie the Lucky, Leslie of the magnificent dong – his force forever pulls. Old secrets stir, old rivalries are resurrected ans cores are settled as the friends are catapulted back into their murky past.

Brilliant stories from the hyper-real world of Weldonia.

Ten high achieving ladies are gathered together in the week between Christmas and the New Year, at the expensive Castle Spa, seeking, through Botox, aromatherapy and general all round pampering, a new beginning to their lives. The Ladies lounge around in the Jacuzzi, drinking champagne and eating chocolate telling each other the stories of their lives. Starting with the Trophy wife's tale: her spell in a Greek prison has left her in serious need of a makeover; the Brain Surgeon's tale: of twins and mistaken identity; the Judge's tale: of the sex change which allowed him to judge the pleasures of the bedchamber from both male and female perspectives. The manicurist, the public speaker, the journalist, the company director, the ex vicar's wife, the screenwriter, all share their stories, ending with the stepmother's tale, a reversal of Cinderella's fate, with the stepmother as victim...Sparkling, witty, always compassionate and occasionally libidinous, Fay Weldon's new novel recalls Boccaccio's late medieval masterwork, The Decameron. Boccaccio dedicated his book to the ladies of his time, who were forced to hide their amorous passions under a veil of discretion, while men were free to indulge theirs.

A delicious treat of wisdom for better self-awareness and satisfaction. Tackle anxiety, envy, guilt, while giving in to sex, food, friends, family, shopping – and chocolate. What makes women happy?Nothing, for more than ten minutes at a time, so stop worrying. In this new book, Fay Weldon offers wisdom gleaned from a remarkable life, a brilliantly successful career and a fair share of trouble. She explores what makes women happy, and what we can do to lead more rounded and desirable lives. Chapters contain sassy morals, illustrative and sympathetic stories, and a lot of frank advice to show women how to stop obssessing and feeling bad about themselves. Later chapters confront the four horses of a woman's apocalypse: despair, depression, isolation, and self-doubt. A blend of philosophy, storytelling and self-help, this inspirational work shows Weldon at the peak of her creative powers, as brisk, stylish and entertaining as ever.

A smart, handsome, liberal, and unmarried couple in their early thirties, Hattie and Martyn are delighted by their newborn daughter, Kitty, but trouble arrives when they hire a live-in nanny, Agnieska, a Polish domestic goddess with problem immigration papers, the solution to which might be to have Martyn marry her. Reprint.

A brilliant and caustic cautionary tale from one of Britain’s best-loved and most controversial writers. Hattie and Martyn are a decent, hard-working, ecologically-minded young couple – partners with a new baby, bickering over whether they should get married or not and how to arrange their lives in a morally sustainable way. Hattie has given up work to look after baby Kitty, but she is, frankly, bored by domesticity. They meet Agnieszka, a Polish domestic paragon who's married to a bus driver back home and is sending money back to her old mother and sister. Morally responsible couple that they are, Martyn and Hattie take pity and invite her to live with them. Hattie eventually succumbs to temptation and asks Agnieszka to baby-sit, and soon she’s back at full-time work. In fact life is pretty much as it was before the baby came along, except the house is cleaner and better organized, and she's galloping ahead in her career. Martyn is thrilled and wants a marriage ceremony but Hattie refuses: life is perfect as it is, thanks to the existence of Agnieszka, who is modest, docile, prepared to work for a pittance, and not even too pretty for comfort. And if she tells the occasional lie – the little sister turns out to be a child – and her social attitudes are atrocious, well, they can be overlooked. She'll learn our ways along with the English language. But soon, things begin to sour. Martyn and Agnieszka grow closer and it occurs to Hattie now that baby Kitty, given a choice, would choose Agnieszka over her. Her friends are warning her – but that's too vulgar for consideration. And their lives are by now hopelessly intertwined – it's too late. And so the downward spiral continues as visas, a marriage of convenience and even her own friends and family conspire to force Hattie out of her home and her partner's bed …

After brushing by each other on the stairs above their local laundromat, Peter and Trisha find their lives turned upside down when their souls are switched into each other's bodies and they face untold predicaments as they attempt to deal with the complexities of male-female relationships, sexual and marital woes, and other predicaments. Reprint.

A brilliant, inventive and endlessly delightful new memoir from Fay Weldon, one of our most respected commentators on sex, relationships and gender, that picks up where her acclaimed Auto da Fay left off.

A collection of stories that expose women's clumsy, often doomed, attempts to negotiate a smooth path through life. Bold, glamorous, sexy, unrepentant, Fay Weldon's heroines offer a quite unique view of the world as they face their trials without fear or trepidation.

The river has burst its banks and Cynthia, with her leg in plaster, watches as her husband and daughters Angela and Jane try to save their antiques business. But the animosity between the sisters is apparent and an announcement by Angela opens up another flood - this time of family secrets!