Elizabeth Jane Howard

May's second marriage to Colonel Herbert Brown-Lacy is turning out to be a terrible mistake. Her son, Oliver, leaves home only to drift from one affair to another; his sister Elizabeth follows him, yearning for some kind of secure relationship. While even Alice, Herbert's meek daughter, is driven into marriage to escape her father's sinister behaviour ... At once a candid depiction of a post-war family on the cusp of change and a touching love story,...

Henry Kent has been looking for someone. Anyone will do, as long as they are female, preferably with some money. But when writer Daisy Langrish buys a cottage close by, her agent's suspicions are aroused as a chilling secret is discovered.

It is 20 years since Julius died, but his last heroic action still affects the lives of the people he left behind. Emma, his youngest daughter, 27 years old and afraid of men. Cressida, her sister, a war widow, blindly searching for love in her affairs with married men. Esme, Julius's widow, still attractive at 58, but aimlessly lost in the routine of her perfect home. Felix, Esme's old lover, who left her when Julius died and who is still plagued...

The long, dark days of struggle provide the background to this book in the Cazalet Chronicle. As the war enters its fourth year, chaos has become a way of life, as the family find the battle for survival echoes the confusion in their lives.

By 1939, the sunlit days of childish games are over as the shadows of war cloud the lives of an English family. At the family home, the windows are blacked out, food is scarce, and a new generation of Cazalets take up the story.