H. E Bates

'Teetotal!' Ma said. 'It's a libel. Whatever will people think? What's he going to say when anybody asks him to have one?' "No," said Dr Conner. And so after a mild heart-attack - Pop Larkin finds himself off the booze. While Ma tries to find ways around 'doctor's orders', young Primrose is finding her own way round a flustered - Mr Candy.

"An English fighter pilot brings his plane down in Occupied France during WWII. The family of a French farmer risk their lives to protect him. He and the daughter of the house are drawn to each other, but it is not time to fall in love." --

"A chronicle of the love affairs of a beautiful but wayward upper-class English girl in a skating community in the English countryside." --

"During World War II, a small English community are forced to flee when Japanese forces invade Burma. Paterson, the manager of a rice mill, organizes the evacuation and takes with him his Burmese mistress and her young brother. The rest of the party take along their prejudices, their pettiness, and their squabbles, and a small enclave of English insularity moves north through Burma. Inevitably, as the journey continues, bitterness, tension, and insoluble...

Twenty stories from the master storyteller written between 1938 and 1964.

Young and sensitive, Catherine's marriage to dry, methodical Charles Foster soon went sour on her, and when Charles's brother Andrew visited them, she welcomed him as someone to talk to. But Andrew wanted more than friendship, for the image of Catherine -- pale, silent and beautiful -- tormented him day and night. Then Catherine found herself drawn to Andrew and she began visiting him at his flat. They would buy wine and drink it together; and with...

A nostalgic look at family life, set in rural England, 1958.

A stranger arrives in town and introduces himself as Pieter and claims to be from Denmark. From the start he is a big hit with everyone. Then the villagers find out that he is actually German and people suddenly become hostile.