Madeline Hall: 4 books

At nineteen, Persephone does the London season, the summer season, waiting on tables in a French bistro.  Other girls may be sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but with Persephone, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared.  Her credentials in living up to her outlandish name, queen of the underworld, are honed here in seamy, steamy Soho.

  Two women establish contact through Facebook after a forty year estrangement.  Lydia summarises a positive, fulfilled life: a passionate love affair, a son, a happy marriage, professional success in widowhood, comfortable retirement.  There's some truth in her account, and...

These are the stories of sisters growing up in south Essex in the sixties and seventies.  One (Mary) stayed home and brought up babies whilst the other (Alex) took the hippie trail east and brought back her man from Pakistan, a marsh Arab, Pitsea marshes that is.  Later they reversed positions,...

Five Easy Pieces is the collected edition of stories of sisters taken out of Essex to grow up on a farm in Alsace-Lorraine.  They are smart, sharp, funny, playful and occasionally cheeky.  So are the sisters.  Each story stands alone but they draw on the tangle of relationships...