Fresh from the Country

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The scene of this entertaining story is laid in a charming English village. The plot centres round Miss Barbara Buncle, a maiden lady who was obliged to write a book because – as she naively explained – her dividends were so poor. Unfortunately, Miss Buncle had no imagination, so she wrote about her friends – quite kindly and truthfully, of course, for she was a benevolent and veracious soul.

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.

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.

A brand-new audiobook by the number one best-selling author Katie Fforde containing never before published Christmas short stories. Perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings.

Gervase Phinn’s colourful characters have now become firm favourites – the mostly mad staff at County Hall and the children themselves, who find ways of embarrassing the school inspectors with innocent ease. We reconvene with Christine Bentley, head teacher of Winnery Nook School and now Gervase’s wife and mother of their son; the well-named Mrs Savage and not forgetting the Queen of the Clean – Connie.

For Gervase Phinn growing old is not about a leisurely walk to the pub for a game of dominoes or snoozing in his favourite armchair. As this sparkling collection of his very best humorous writing shows, he may be ‘out of the woods’ but he is certainly not ‘over the hill’.

Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives, and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her – she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk. But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away.