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Discover the heartwarming, witty, and poignant new historical novel about changing (sometimes reluctantly) with the times set in the aftermath of WW2, perfect for fans of Maggie O'Farrell and Rachel Joyce.

It's 1945, and Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is on his way home.

But ‘home’ is Dimperley, built in the 1500s, vast and dilapidated, up to its eaves in debt and half-full of fly-blown taxidermy and dependent relatives, the latter clinging to a way of life that has gone forever.

And worst of all - following the death of his heroic older brother - Valentine is now Sir Valentine, and is responsible for the whole bloody place. To Valentine, it’s a millstone; to Zena Baxter, who has never really had a home before being evacuated there with her small daughter, it’s a place of wonder and sentiment, somewhere that she can’t bear to leave.

But Zena has been living with a secret, and the end of the war means she has to face a reckoning of her own…

Funny, sharp and touching, Small Bomb at Dimperley is both a love story and a bittersweet portrait of an era of profound loss, and renewal.

'Generous, touching and romantic' Clare Chambers

'Incredibly assured and affecting... the perfect novel to be read in such dark times’ Graham Norton

'Wodehouse meets Barbara Pym… Funny, poignant, perfect' Daisy Goodwin

©2024 Lissa Evans (P)2024 Penguin Audio