Gillian Kersley: 2 books

Lizzie, who became pregnanct while at Oxford and refused to tell the father, sets up a snail farm in Bath to make her dysfunctional family's fortune. But because snails take three years to reproduce and provide a return on the investment, there's a struggle to make ends meet in the meantime.

This becomes an escape from her current problems with husband, mother-in-law and recalcitrant teenage children. At first this mirror existence alleviates the pressures of her difficult family, her subservience to all, and a hopeless romance. But gradually the earlier century takes over and the parallel relationships intensify leading t a dramatic ending.