Showing results by author "Elizabeth Cadell" in All Categories

When, like Ruth and Roger Mallard, you inherit a large house but no money to keep it up, one thing you can do is turn it into a guest-house. And having made up their minds, the Mallards decided that River Lodge was to be a guest-house of the very best kind. The first week’s guests were specially chosen - or self invited: a rich aunt; a theatrical producer and the lovely Felicity; Felicity’s sister and her twins; a famous artist and the amiable “Goosey”; the fattest dog in fiction; and a not-so-rich but very comic uncle and aunt.

On his retirement, George Ainstey had moved to Ellstream, hoping to escape from the tensions of London life. His only neighbors were Lady Charlotte Merrion, who lived in the mansion on the site of an 18th-century ruin, and her daughter-in-law, Antonia Merrion, whose land adjoined Mr. Ainstey’s.

Tourists found it hard to imagine a quainter, more lovable spot than Deepwood Village; but the villagers were not quite as lovable as their surroundings. Deepwood House, too, was chiefly known as the home of three wicked and rich Stirlings. So one summer, Deepwood attracted some rather strange visitors, as well as the tourists. Like the eccentric new gardener, who let the flowers scorch and talked to people nobody else could see.

There was no money, the family was scattered, and Lucille, who had mothered them all since she was 16, was going to be married. So the house must be sold; Lucille knew that was the only sensible things to do, but the family had other ideas. Home they came by whatever way they could, penniless and bedraggled but with certain newfound friends who were to help them to upset Lucille's plans - all her plans for a calm, settled, and sensible life.

Lucille Abbey runs her London secretarial agency with utmost efficiency. When, therefore, a certain Professor Hallam rejects three girls sent by her to apply for the post of his secretary and they each pronounce him "impossible", Lucille herself sets out to interview the Professor at his home in Hampshire. He is, she finds, eccentric—even impossible; but he represents a challenge and, what is more, an excuse to delay what promises to be a trying holiday in Paris. She stays on to tame and to organize him—a less formidable task than she had imagined; in fact, she grows fond of him.

High Ambo, in England, is the setting. It is winter, and Caroline West - a very human, placid, and unexcitable person - has gone there to escape her late husband's relatives. Like so many good-hearted people, she is immediately put upon. Caroline's sister Iris comes first, full of impulse and determination to be a reporter - an ambition abruptly deflected by a handsome young schoolmaster - an authority on birds. Then comes Robert, with his sweet, ingenuous fiancée Polly, and thus making the three-ring circus of a genuine Cadell household.

Three girls decide to share a flat in Chelsea: Denny, the sensible daughter of a famous actress; Chess, the long, lean, temperamental daughter of an Earl; Marya, the beautiful daughter of an Argentinian millionaire. The light-hearted story of their life together and of the men they meet is suddenly interrupted by the death of Mr. Flower, their meek little landlord.

The Village of Greenhurst, headquarters for the Wayne family, is aflutter with excitement and festivity in anticipation of Miriam Arkwright's upcoming marriage to the Italian count. All the Waynes descend on brother Nicholas, including red-headed Julia, who had been sent to Italy to become a concert pianist and returns home not quite sure what she wants to be. She is no longer the child Nicholas remembers, but is still enough of a scatter-brain to mix up her luggage... thereby involving Nicholas in the most wonderful love of his life.

When Jeanne spent her summer holidays there as a child with her school friend, Parson’s House on the cliff top had been a seaside haven, and the small Devon village a sleepy, tranquil place where nothing much ever happened. Now, years later, returning there from Canada, divorced and with twin four-year-old daughters, she could hardly expect the place or the people to be the same. But she was quite unprepared for the bustle of the modern town which greeted her, for the shadowy rumors and mystery surrounding the old house....

Greenhurst, a sleepy English village, had not changed since a year ago when the Waynes of Wood Mount fought so fiercely to keep their home together and undesirable characters out of it. But now the place was buzzing with news of Miss Dryden-Smith's sudden death. To think that all these years the village had never known that she had a son! And what of the loud-but-likable American playwright who had just wound his way to Wood Mount?

Jessica de Vrais was 22, the only child of an elderly and irritable widower. Though they thought alike on almost all matters, they agreed on none; least of all did they see eye to eye on the subject of men. Jessica, pretty and popular, invited them to come and stay; Mr. de Vrais, irritable and suspicious, invited them to go away and stay away. Fortune-hunters all, he said furiously to his daughter. One and all, they were after her money - his money. One look, he shouted, and he could smell them a mile off. Hangers-on. Yahoos. Parasites.

On holiday in Portugal to take their daughter's mind off a troubled love affair, the Channing family is befriended by the hospitable Baronesa Narvao - but they soon find her hospitality something of an embarrassment.

After a short but happy marriage, Lorna and Roderick quarrelled, and separated, and Lorna, all too hastily, left her husband and two sons and fled to Spain to start a new life. Lorna is a person people come to when in trouble, and one day her son Nicholas, now a handsome Naval Officer, appears at the beautiful Casa de Nuestra Señora del Carmen to ask her for advice regarding a lovely Spanish girl whose father is a friend of Lorna’s...and also a well-known smuggler.

This is the diary of an English girl who falls in love with an eligible young Portuguese, Afonso. The bride recounts, vividly and hilariously, her and her mother's plans for an English country wedding, how they dealt with Uncle George (The Head of the Family), and their success in making sure that on her wedding day the church was filled with music and flowers (both officially banned due to the “mixed” marriage of a Catholic bridegroom and a Church of England bride). She subsequently finds herself living on a horse-rearing estate in a rural part of Portugal, coping with a truculent cook and a primitive kitchen....

Mr. Channing is devoted to his garden, but it is his youngest daughter Christine who is truly the apple of his eye. When Christine’s fiancé breaks off his engagement to her at the request of his grandfather, Mr. Channing is persuaded by his wife and other daughters to take Christine to Portugal for a holiday. They are charmed by the country where they soon make many friends. Among them, the Baronesa Narvão who invites them to stay in her luxurious mansion. But the Baronesa is not all she appears to be.

Although this story's particular events could not have happened anywhere except in British-India, everyone will feel at home in its sunny atmosphere. The three girls who lived these adventures were completely different, but they formed a close-knit trio and shared all of each other's joys and problems. Poopy possessed a face that seemed blank to everyone but her two friends, who read it with ease.

Rae knew a good deal about Richard Ashton. Sharing his sister Judy’s flat, she'd lived for a year with his photograph: a dark, handsome, somewhat commanding young man. She'd listened to long extracts from his letters and built up a picturesque if inaccurate picture of his life in Kenya. She knew he declared himself heart-whole and had instructed his sister to find him a wife.

Old Mrs. Lauder was as loathsome as her lilies were lovely. Every year, the vicar had hoped for a change of heart in this sinister woman whose murder brought fear and suspicion to the village, to the church, and the lilies she had denied them every Easter while she lived. But somewhere in those waxen blooms, there was a message and a danger signal.

One day Jody was found lying at the foot of a staircase on her way to give a client a beauty treatment. When she recovered and talked of a man with a goat and a yellow-and-black front door, her brother-in-law and Charles, her fiancé, told her she was imagining things. But Jody was unconvinced, and determined to find the man she remembered, leading a small goat.