Последние издания книг Стеллы Гиббонс

'Don't show proper feelin', does it, not turnin' up for 'is dad's funeral?'
Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last six months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they wonder what will become of them now that the last connection to their difficult childhood has been severed. What have they inherited - financially and emotionally - to guide them to adulthood, and build a new home together?
Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years which Gibbons and her brothers spent living in a cottage in Hampstead Heath: a wonderfully astute, bittersweet novel about family, grief, money, and the pleasures of London.

Wilfred Davis, quiet, retired, respectable widower, is sitting and sobbing on a park bench. He has lost his daughter and any sense of purpose. A mysterious stranger passes him a handkerchief, and strikes up a conversation that leads to friendship and an unconventional new home for Wilfred.
Mary Davis wants only four things out of life: a husband and three children, so at seventeen she runs away from school, her father and her home and moves to London to find them. Only a few months later Mary is engaged, but love and marriage promise to be very different from her childhood daydreams.
For Mary and Wilfred, it seems Fate has taken a hand, or is there another kind of guiding spirit at play?
Stella Gibbons' final novel, written in the 1970s but only discovered many years after her death, is published here for the first time.

Gladys and Annie Barnes are impoverished sisters who have seen better times. They live in a modest cottage in the backstreets of Highate with Mr Fisher, a mild but eccentric old man living secretively in the attic above them. Their quiet lives are thrown into confusion when a new landlord takes over, a dreaded and unscrupulous 'rackman'. He installs his wife in part of the cottages in the hope that there she will recover from an unspecified malady. With a mounting sense of fear, Gladys and Annie become convinced she is possessed by an evil spirit...

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

Классика английской литературы ХХ века. Изысканная, элегантная и бесконечно ироничная пародия на «провинциальный» британский роман, читая которую можно провести немало забавных параллелей с произведениями Эмили Бронте, Томаса Харди и прочих великих прозаиков XIX – начала ХХ вв. Религиозные снобы и раздираемые тайными страстями юные (и не очень) девицы… Деревенские ловеласы и эксцентричные кумушки… Потрясающая коллекция колоритных и нелепых персонажей, немыслимых ситуаций и невероятных диалогов, которая не оставит равнодушным ни одного истинного ценителя английского юмора!..

Patricia Gallimore and Miriam Margolyes star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the classic comic novel. Strong of will and slender of ankle, 20-year-old orphan Flora Poste is blessed with every virtue save that of being able to earn her own living. Casting around for suitable relatives with whom she can make her home, Flora alights on the mysterious Starkadders and, ignoring the horrified shrieks of her friends, heads down to darkest Sussex.

There she is confronted by an exceptionally odd cast of characters: grief-stricken Judith, fervently religious Amos, the lusty smouldering Seth, wild and mysterious Elfine and, of course, the invisible tyrant Great Aunt Ada Doom who saw something nasty in the woodshed. Many would be overcome by the simmering passions of the Starkadder family, but not Flora. All they need is a little organising.

Stella Gibbons' deliciously witty parody has been delighting readers since 1932 and retains its original sunny charm in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation.

Классика английской литературы ХХ века.

Изысканная, элегантная и бесконечно ироничная пародия на «провинциальный» британский роман, читая которую можно провести немало забавных параллелей с произведениями Эмили Бронте, Томаса Харди и прочих великих прозаиков XIX – начала ХХ вв.

Религиозные снобы и раздираемые тайными страстями юные (и не очень) девицы…

Деревенские ловеласы и эксцентричные кумушки…

Потрясающая коллекция колоритных и нелепых персонажей, немыслимых ситуаций и невероятных диалогов, которая не оставит равнодушным ни одного истинного ценителя английского юмора!..

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

Классика английской литературы ХХ века. Изысканная, элегантная и бесконечно ироничная пародия на «провинциальный» британский роман, читая который можно провести немало забавных параллелей с произведениями Эмили Бронте, Томаса Харди и прочих великих прозаиков XIX – начала ХХ вв. Религиозные снобы и раздираемые тайными страстями юные (и не очень) девицы… Деревенские ловеласы и эксцентричные кумушки… Потрясающая коллекция колоритных и нелепых персонажей, немыслимых ситуаций и невероятных диалогов, которая не оставит равнодушным ни одного истинного ценителя английского юмора!..

In St Alberics, Hertfordshire, stands a newly built family home: Sunglades. Its seven rooms house Kenneth and Constance Fielding, middle-aged bachelor and spinster, along with Kenneth's old flame, an industrious Balkan exile, a young economist and the

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

A glorious collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm. The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith's red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: 'Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!'

Brother and sister, Constance and Kenneth Fielding live in calm respectability, just out of reach of London and the Blitz. But when a series of uninvited guests converge upon them – from a Balkan exile to Ken’s old flame and the siblings’ own raffish father – the household struggles to preserve its precious peace. In this full house, in a quiet corner of suburbia, no one expects to find romance.

In the years after World War Two, Nell Sely, child of the forgotten generation, wanders blind through 1950s bohemian London, smoke-filled jazz clubs and bittersweet coffee bars in search of romantic idyll, delving into the dark backstreets of squalid yet splendid London.

My American follows the lives and loves of Amy Lee and Robert Vorst: from a chance childhood meeting to the comic, tragic and romantic trysts that follow. A baker's daughter, Amy has dreams of becoming a writer, whilst Robert is destined to be a doctor. Later, embarking on a lecture tour, Amy is reminded of 'her American' and endeavours to find him amidst Depression-era America.

Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate - with varying degrees of success - the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.

"Здесь водятся драконы" - роман Стеллы Гиббонс.
Когда Нелл Сил переезжает из сонного Дорсета в Хэмпстед, она оставляет позади детство с унылыми чаепитиями и деспотичными правилами ради свободы большого города. Наивная и всего девятнадцатилетняя, она связывается со своенравным Джоном Гонтом и попадает в лондонскую богемную тусовку. В этом городе соблазнительных, изменчивых нравов, прокуренных джаз-клубов и гламурных эспрессо-баров Нелл должна овладеть своей вновь обретенной независимостью и научиться идти своим собственным курсом.
Книга на английском языке.
When Nell Sely moves from sleepy Dorset to Hampstead she leaves behind a childhood of dull teas and oppressive rules for the freedom of the big city. Naive and only nineteen, she becomes embroiled with the wayward John Gaunt and falls in with London's bohemian crowd. In this city of seductive, shifting morals, smoke-filled jazz-clubs and glamorous espresso bars, Nell must master her new found independence and learn to strike her own course.

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Available for the first time since its original publication more than fifty years ago, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is a charming collection whose hilarious title story features Christmas dinner with the Starkadders before Flora's arrival. With Adam playing Santa while draped in Mrs. Starkadders's shawls, the family shares their traditional "Christmas pudding"-a mlange containing random objects of doom foretelling the coming year: a coffin nail for death, a bad sixpence for financial ruin, and a menthol cone to indicate that the lucky recipient will go "blind wi' headache." These lively tales will delight anyone who loves Stella Gibbons and her signature wit.

Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled "Quiete Retreate" and "Greate laundrie". It is, Flora winces, "exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time".
Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the "sadistic owl" Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump.
And worst of all, there are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. All the he-cousins have gone abroad to make their fortunes and the female cousins are having a pretty thin time of it. Once again the sensible Flora decides to take the situation in hand.

We are not like other folk, maybe, but there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. Sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn a living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to descend on relatives - the doomed Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm. There is Judith in a scarlet shawl, heaving with remorse for an unspoken wickedness; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; lustful Seth and despairing Reuben, Judith's two sons; and there is Amos, preaching fire and damnation to one and all. As the sukebind flowers, Flora takes each of the family in hand and brings order to their chaos. "Cold Comfort Farm" is a sharp and clever parody of the melodramatic and rural novel.