Best Selling Books by Stella GIBBONS

Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by English author Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb. Following the death of her parents, the book and ''s heroine, Flora Poste, finds she is possessed "of every art and grace save that of earning her own living". She decides to take advantage of the fact that "no limits are set, either by society or one and ''s own conscience, to the amount one may impose on one and ''s relatives", and settles on visiting her distant relatives at the isolated Cold Comfort Farm in the fictional village of Howling in Sussex. The inhabitants of the farm – Aunt Ada Doom, the Starkadders, and their extended family and workers – feel obliged to take her in to atone for an unspecified wrong once done to her father.

Available for the first time since its original publication more than fifty years ago, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is a charming collection whose hilarious title story features Christmas dinner with the Starkadders before Flora''s arrival. With Adam playing Santa while draped in Mrs. Starkadders''s shawls, the family shares their traditional "Christmas pudding"-a mélange containing random objects of doom foretelling the coming year: a coffin nail for death, a bad sixpence for financial ruin, and a menthol cone to indicate that the lucky recipient will go "blind wi'' headache." These lively tales will delight anyone who loves Stella Gibbons and her signature wit.

** AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME ** ''Stella Gibbons''s gift is very special'' Daily Express Amy, a neglected motherless child in 1920s London meets Robert, a wealthy American boy. It''s an encounter she will never forget. My American follows the lives and loves of Amy Lee and Robert Vorst: from a chance childhood meeting to the comic, tragic and romantic trysts that follow. Amy, a baker''s daughter, has dreams of becoming a writer, whilst Robert is destined to be a doctor. Later, embarking on a lecture tour in Depression-era America, she is reminded of her childhood friend and endeavours to find him. My American is an unashamedly romantic novel by Stella Gibbons, author of the beloved satire Cold Comfort Farm.

In St Alberics, Hertfordshire, stands a newly built family home: Sunglades. Its seven rooms house Kenneth and Constance Fielding, middle-aged bachelor and spinster, along with Kenneth''s old flame, an industrious Balkan exile, a young economist and the Fieldings'' raffish father. Together they attempt to create a rural idyll.

Left penniless, young widow Viola is forced to live with her late husband''s family. There''s Mr Wither, a tyrannical old miser, Mrs Wither, who thinks Viola is just a common shop girl, & two sisters-in-law, one of whom is in love with the chauffeur.