by Fay Weldon
The Shrapnel Academy is available here.
Worst Fears
Beautiful and talented, Alexandra Ludd is a star on the stage in London and a queen at her home in the country. But her husband, the great theatre critic Ned Ludd, has just died of a heart attack and her perfect world is about to fall apart.
In the days between his death and the funeral, Alexandra learns more about her husband than she ever knew in his life and comes face to face with her own blind naïvety. She’s up against good friends and bad rivals, the highs of denial and the lows of her worst fears coming true.
As grief shakes everyone around her, what goes on behind closed doors is fast becoming the talk of the town.
Worst Fears is available here.
Darcy’s Utopia
If you ruled the world, what would you do?
Scandalous Eleanor Darcy, wild young wife of a world-famous economist, sketches her vision of Utopia to two journalists, Hugo Vansitart and Valerie Jones. In glorious detail, she describes an earthly paradise of peace, love and technological progress where sex is plentiful and money does not exist. Such is Eleanor’s charisma that, to their own astonishment, Hugo and Valerie abandon their families to succumb to some erotic impulses of their own.
From the storyteller who is constantly measuring the moral pulse of men and women, Darcy’s Utopia is an uproarious and subversive riff on the age-old battle of the sexes.
Darcy’s Utopia is available here.
Female Friends
Marjorie, Grace and me. How foolishly we loved, and murderous we are. We have had six children between us, but have done to death, as if to balance the scales, some six of our nearest and dearest. And though the world does not acknowledge such deaths as murder, we know in our hearts that they are.
—
They first met as children in 1940s London. Thirty years later, the three friends make their way through an almost unrecognizable post-war society, coping with oppressive husbands, children, parents, and the messy business of life.
From bestselling author Fay Weldon comes a brilliantly witty and caustic, yet deeply compassionate novel exploring the lives and loves three women and a friendship that endures all that life can throw at them.
Female Friends is available here.
Life Force
Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens…
Many years earlier, Leslie Beck entered the lives of four female friends—some married, some not, some more innocent than others. Now he is back to stir old desires and rivalries, to revitalise, if he can, the secrets, passions and infidelities of the past.
From bestselling author Fay Weldon comes a novel about pleasure—how we pursue it, how it fits into our lives, how we judge it. The life force must not be denied. More than just a mischievous, glorious novel, here is a literary handbook to all our pasts and, with any luck, our futures.
Life Force is available here.
Splitting
How many characters make up one woman’s personality?
There is certainly more to Lady Rice than her husband realizes - at least three other people currently share his wife’s body. And when Sir Edwin Rice decides to apply for divorce, these other personalities begin to emerge…
A darkly comic portrait of one woman’s shattering response to divorce.
Splitting is available here.
Moon Over Minneapolis
In this superlative anthology, Fay Weldon introduces readers to a cast of mothers, children, wives, and lovers—all of them unforgettable, timeless female characters. In “Subject to Diary,” a successful forty-ish career woman sits in an abortion clinic pondering motherhood.
In “The Year of the Green Pudding,” a woman who seems to doom everyone and everything she touches vows never to fall in love again. And an analyst’s office is the setting for a series of stories that feature four female patients—including a murderer—who lay bare their souls.
Moon Over Minneapolis is available here.
Polaris
In “Christmas Lists—A Seasonal Story,” the endless lists created by a suburban couple become a metaphor for marriage, family, and enduring love. In “Delights of France or Horrors of the Road,” a woman goes to a psychiatrist to cure her sudden, inexplicable paralysis, unaware that her constant bragging about her brilliant physicist husband conceals a raging fury. “Redundant! or the Wife’s Revenge” takes place in a plastic surgery ward, where Fay Weldon finds an ironic humor. The title story, Polaris, introduces newlyweds Meg and Timmy, whose union is tested when Timmy is called away to naval duty and Meg discovers a shocking secret.
Polaris is available here.
The Heart of the Country
When Natalie’s husband, Harry, kisses her and their two children goodbye, departs for the office, and never returns, Natalie immediately blames herself. If she hadn’t been cheating on her husband every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, he never would have left her for his secretary, a local beauty queen...
The Heart of the Country is available here.
Leader of the Band
Sandra Harris—wife, astronomer (known for discovering the planet Athena), television phenomenon, and “professional searcher after truth”—has had an epiphany. She leaves her boring attorney husband and runs off with Mad Jack Stubbs, her trumpet-playing lover, and his groupie entourage, for a tour of Southern France. Pursued by her husband, Mad Jack’s wife, and the paparazzi, Sandra lives entirely for the moment—and great sex. In between, she ponders her past (institutionalized mother, Nazi war criminal father) while trying to ignore the deafening tick of her biological clock...
The Leader of the Band is available here.
Wicked Women
Victims, liberators, blackmailers, healers, and ghosts—they’re just a few of the fascinating men and women you’ll meet in this stellar, boundary-defying anthology.
From a heartless lover to a therapist who’s exposed for being a child hater, Weldon’s characters search for meaning, betray their vows, take pleasure in others’ misfortunes, or get pushed out of the family manse by their grasping offspring...
Wicked Women is available here.
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THE LOVE & INHERITANCE TRILOGY
The Love and Inheritance trilogy is a family saga set between 1899 and 1906. The aristocratic Dilberne family lurch from wild wealth, to bankruptcy, and back again, their fortunes dependent on the new steam-powered automobiles, Spiritualist gatherings and Christmases at Sandringham. But as the century turns, the rigid rules of society begin to soften...
Following lives and loves upstairs and downstairs, and brimming with Fay Weldon’s trademark wit, wisdom and warmth, this is a trilogy to treasure.
I. Habits of the House
In the dying days of Victoria’s reign, the events of a single turbulent morning herald bankruptcy and ruin for the Earl of Dilberne. His wife, the Countess Isobel, believes the solution is to marry off their handsome, wilful son to a rich and pretty heiress from the Chicago stockyards. It’s a clash of cultures and principles that rocks the household from parlour to pantry.
Gold mines fail, bankers plot, bad girls flourish, the London fog descends, Royalty intervenes and unlikely lovers triumph. Habits of the House, the first book in the Love & Inheritance trilogy, is a ravishing portrait of the fin de siècle from one of our best-loved British authors.
Habits of the House is available here.
II. Long Live the King
With London Society in a frenzy of anticipation for the coronation of King Edward VII, the Earl and Countess of Dilberne are caught up in lavish preparations. Yet Lady Isobel still has ample time to fret, and no wonder with a much longed-for heir on the way, an elopement, family tragedy, a runaway niece and a gaggle of fraudulent spiritualists to contend with…
Fay Weldon once again draws her readers into the lives and loves of the aristocratic Dilberne family, as they embrace not only a new century, but a new generation – a generation with somewhat radic
al views…
Long Live the King is available here.
III. The New Countess
The King had foreign tastes; a French chef would have to be brought in and where could one find such a one at short notice? Existing staff would have to move up and share beds, which always made them sulky and resentful just when they should not be. Pathways must be constructed so the ladies would not get their feet muddy as they joined the men, and field kitchens erected so that dishes could be served hot and claret warmed. At least the King’s champagne – he had to have champagne when shooting, though frugal enough with alcohol otherwise – would be cold enough. Isobel found her heart beating hard and her breath coming short. Five months to prepare for one weekend – it was a monstrous task.
The New Countess is available here.
About the Author
One of the most successful advertising copywriters of her generation, Fay Weldon’s credits as a writer of fiction include classic novels like The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and Growing Rich, and the pilot episode of the original TV series ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’. In 2001 she was awarded a CBE for services to literature. She has seven sons and stepsons and one stepdaughter, and lives on a hill in the west of England.
To find out more about Fay Weldon, visit her website, www.fayweldon.co.uk, follow her on Twitter, @Fay_Weldon, or like her on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/fayweldon.writer.
A Letter from the Publisher
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HeadofZeusBooks
The story starts here.
First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Hutchinson
This eBook first published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Fay Weldon, 1987
Cover image © Sniegirova Mariia
The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781781858028
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
The Wages of Sin
The Pleasures of Adultery
Dinner
Dinner Time
Chomp, Chomp, Grittle-Grax, Gone!
Facing the Day
By Accident on Purpose
Cough, Cough, Wheeze, Gasp
Love Your Enemy
Justifications
Living Rough
Bargains
Redemption
Improvement
Attempts at Seduction
Doing it all Wrong
Washing Away the Stains
Shock
Interlude
Second Home
Driven Mad
Cough, Cough, Cough Again
Traumas
Bright and Purposeful
Bargains
Gratitude-Schmatitude
Submission
Seduction
Hi, Dad!
Interims
Praxis
Human Sacrifice
Resolutions
Preview
About this Book
Reviews
Also by Fay Weldon
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright