News from Thrush Green

A new excitement comes to the village of Thrush Green when Harold Shoosmith, a distinguished bachelor who has chosen the village for his retirement, takes the corner house on the green. Harold is soon enmeshed in village politics and becomes involved in the private lives of his neighbours as well. His presence has a dramatic effect on Dimity Dean and Ella Bembridge and is the cause of a serious misunderstanding between the two friends.

The villagers of Thrush Green celebrate Christmas traditionally, in a way that has hardly changed over the generations. Children eagerly hang up their stockings, families go to church together and everyone enjoys the treats of the festive season. And when it snows as the carol singers make their way round the cottages on the green, it looks as if Christmas will be perfect this year. But not everything is as peaceful as it seems.

It's the May Day holiday, and a fair has come to the village of Thrush Green. The residents of Thrush Green all have their own views about the fair. For young Paul, just recovered from an illness, it is a joy to be allowed out to play at the fair; for Ruth, who returned to the soothing tranquility of Thrush Green nursing a broken heart, the fair is a welcome distraction from her own problems. And for Dr Lovell, the fair brings an unexpected new patient.

Fairacre is a village of cottages, a church and the school - and, at the heart of the school, its head mistress Miss Read. Through her discerning eye, we meet the villagers of Fairacre and see their trials and tribulations, from the irascible school cleaner Mrs Pringle, to the young school children, with their scraped knees, hopeful faces and inevitable mischief.

Mrs Pringle, the lugubrious school cleaner, has always been a favourite character in the Fairacre series. Here we trace Maud Pringle's life from childhood visits to the village from her Caxley home.

The Howards of Caxley begins on a fine May morning in the fateful year of 1939, and then follows the path of the two families and the little town through the Second World War, towards hope for happier times ahead.

The first charming Caxley tale introduces the deep-rooted camaraderie between Septimus Howard, a calm and controlled man, and Bender North, a confident, successful but gruff ironmonger. Their argumentative sides often clash, displaying moments of fury and forgiveness with wonderful tenderness. Theirs is a friendship that survives misunderstandings, the tragedy of war, and the bitterness of loss. The story of their families continues through the generations. Read by June Barrie.

From organising the school summer fete - 'Because of our inability to recognise our climatic shortcomings from the outset, arrangements for outdoor jollities get completely out of hand' - to the sometimes rather odd passions of childhood - 'I collect stones with holes in them' - Miss Read captures the essence of rural life, and in particular of village schools, as only she can.

She was wearing red shoes! With silver heels! Elisabeth Devine causes quite a stir on her arrival in the village. No one can understand why the head of a big inner city school would want to come to sleepy little Barton-in-the-Dale, to a primary with more problems than school dinners. And that's not even counting the challenges the mysterious Elisabeth herself will face: a bitter former head teacher, a grumpy caretaker and a duplicitous chair of governors, to name but a few. Then there's the gossip.

Here's a story that brings all the villagers of Fairacre together, as they face the prospect of developers who hope to build new houses on the fields adjoining old Mr Miller's farm. Everyone has an opinion, but not everyone is in agreement about the development. Under the watchful gaze of Miss Read, the school teacher, we meet old characters and new, from retired teacher Miss Clare and the surly Mrs Pringle, to the new assistant teacher, Miss Jackson, who brings with her problems of her own.

In the Spring of 1926, the corpses of three men are found in shallow graves off the beaten path in Epping Forest outside of London - each shot through the heart and bearing no identification. DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, the lead detective, is immediately given two urgent orders by his supervisor at the Yard: solve the murders quickly and keep his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, away from the case! Thankfully, Daisy's off visiting their daughter at school. But when a teacher is found dead, Daisy is once again in the thick of it.

Artist's daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are. Yet she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old age.

Jack's a retired ex-cop from New York, seeking the simple life in Cherringham. Sarah's a Web designer who's moved back to the village find herself. But their lives are anything but quiet as the two team up to solve Cherringham's criminal mysteries. This compilation contains episodes 1 - 3: MURDER ON THAMES, MYSTERY AT THE MANOR and MURDER BY MOONLIGHT.

Illegal battering of gingernuts and conkers in a murky corner of the playground; a procession of bearers of lost property interrupting the telling of the story of Joseph; justice being firmly done on three malefactors who stole Mr Henry's eggs... Here are 40 delightful stories about life as a village schoolteacher, set against the changing seasons of the countryside.

Those who have come to love Miss Read's delightfully humorous novels of country life will be enraptured by these two autobiographical volumes, affectionate and unashamedly nostalgic accounts of her childhood. In A Fortunate Grandchild, Miss Read draws on her gentle and colourful memories of Grandma Read in Lewisham and Grandma Shafe in Walton-on-the-Naze, and their rambling, flock-wallpapered houses full of nooks and forbidden adult mysteries, which provided young Dora with a bedrock of security in the uncertain days of the Great War.