Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Ten Way Street
"This is our new governess," said Meggie. "She's a nice sort of governess. She called us little horrors." "And toads," David chimed in. Betsy stood on one leg and held the other. "And she said we were smug and detestable little beasts." Beverley Shaw, raised in an orphanage and trained to be a governess, gets her long-awaited first job working for Margot Cardew, a brilliant stage actress (and narcissistic diva), whose three precocious children are sadly used to being little more than their mother's props. With advice from her friend Sarah, Beverley navigates between Margot's exhausted secretary Winkle, her sleazy maid Marcelle, and the handsome Peter Crewdson, whom Margot loves but who is so...
Peter and Paul
It is not fun being the plain one of the family. But being the plain one of twins is a wretched position. That's why parables about grains of mustard seed, which grew up and startled everybody by their magnificence, did Pauline good. Petronella and Pauline Lane are 17-year-old twins, but not identical. "Peter", kind but utterly self-absorbed, is ravishingly beautiful while "Paul"-practical, sensitive, and loved by all-tends to slip through the cracks. Their father is the local vicar ("so much of a saint that if he wasn't a great dear he'd be a prig"), but malleable in their mother's hands, so that she (with an eye for getting them married) is able to arrange for the girls to work in a London...
Summer Pudding
There was silence. In it Janet heard the twittering of innumerable birds chatting as they settled down for the night. Some rooks cawed overhead. The baa of a sheep came from a distant field. London had been so noisy, with its crashes at night, and blastings and hammerings at smashed buildings by day, that the quiet and peace fell on her spirit like a cold hand on a sprained ankle. Janet Brain has been bombed out of her job in a London office and comes to the village of Worsingford (surely a case of going from bad to Worsingford), where her self-absorbed sister Sheila and their mother Maggie are weathering the war. Maggie has a bad heart and should be resting, but Sheila's too busy fancying h...
Love in a Mist
It was the last day of school term and, though nobody knew it except herself, an important day for Ruth. Tomorrow, when the holidays started, was the day when, guided by her friend, the author of The Mind and the Child, she would start her plan for freeing Paul's ego. Worried about her son Paul, who's showing signs of complexes (or perhaps just being spoiled?), Ruth Tring consults a work of child psychology. When a film crew spots the boy at his school and a major director decides he should be a star, Ruth thinks it's just what the doctor ordered. But her husband and father-in-law would be dead set against it, so Ruth consults the wise matriarch of the family and manages to get Paul his clos...
Sally-Ann
The Marchioness's face changed. ... She turned to Ann. "What is your name, dear?" "Ann." "Would you mind being Sally for this one afternoon?" When her boss succumbs to influenza on the day of a high society wedding, perky young Ann Lane, assistant cosmetician at the elegant Maison Pertinax, is urgently called to a Sussex castle to make up the bride, the kind and understanding Lady Mona. Then a bridesmaid falls ill too and threatens the visual effects carefully planned by Cousin Dennis, and Ann (who just happens to be the perfect size) fatefully agrees to impersonate her. She makes a hit-and a considerable impression on the best man, Sir Timothy Munster. Ann slips quietly away at the end of t...
Babbacombe's
"I thought we were allowed to sit. I mean I thought it was the Shop Act or something that we had to have something to sit on." Jenny laughed. "So they say, but it doesn't work out that way. You won't get sacked for sitting, but if you sit you'll get the sack." Lovely Beth Carson is just out of school and beginning her first job at Babbacombe's department store. She is pure as the driven snow, and knows her "place", but she can hardly be blamed for tripping over a charming young man's dog, can she? And how could she help being trapped in an elevator with the same man a few days later, and giving him a piece of her mind before learning that he just happens to be David Babbacombe, the ne'er-do-...
Under the Rainbow
To those who saw Saltings first on a hot day in summer-when heat shimmered in the hollows-that churchyard, and those sheep, and the surrounding cottages with their flaming gardens, stood for ever as a picture of peaceful England. Martin Richards, a dedicated, idealistic vicar, has been moved, for health reasons, from London to the idyllic village of Saltings, watched over by a dedicated housekeeper and surrounded by the beauties of the countryside. But his peace is disrupted when he takes in his newly-orphaned niece and nephew, and (far more reluctantly) his ghastly Aunt Connie. Then peace is dispelled altogether with the arrival of Judy Griffiths, the kind young woman hired to care for the ...
Poppies for England
This one week's holiday was all that most of the audience could get, they were free for one week from food queues, housework and even, for many hours a day, the care of their children. It was a week of absolute rest, but everybody in the audience knew that outside the camp lay the hard, difficult world of 1946. The Corners and the Binns are show business families on the verge of dire straits due to lack of jobs in the postwar economy. But crisis is averted when they snag a summer gig performing a variety show at a holiday camp. It's not all smooth sailing, however. The Corners' daughter Dulcie is attractive and talented, but a bit of a diva, and when she sets her sights on the show's pianist...
Murder While You Work
Judy sat staring out of the railway carriage window. Of course there was a war on, but could any train that was trying at all really dawdle the way this one was doing? On the way to her new munitions work in the village of Pinlock, Judy Rest meets handsome, dynamic Nick Parsons, who turns out (after the two engage in some extremely careless talk) to be engaged in top secret work at the same factory. Nick warns her about suspicious goings-on at her new billet, wherein a suspicious death has recently occurred, but Judy is unphased. As she adapts to her work and learns to maintain the proper rhythm with her lathe ("The girls in this group say that 'White Christmas' just swings it nicely"), more...
The Man in the Dark
"Yes, and then I'll go over Miss Kay's rooms with either you or the housekeeper." "There is no housekeeper, Miss." From his voice it sounded as if the housekeeper had been strangled and her body put in the cellar; it nearly made Marda giggle. James Longford, a wealthy former racing car driver with vision loss from an accident several years before, hires 26-year-old Marda Mayne as companion to his newly-orphaned 17-year-old American ward Shirley. His main concern is to avoid being troubled so he can continue to live in self-imposed isolation, but as plucky, practical Marda and flirtatious, kind-hearted Shirley take his intimidating household staff in hand (and find an unexpected ally in that ...
