New Releases by Stella Gibbons

Esta Navidad llegan las Hermanas Raras, una deliciosa antología de cuentos firmados por las grandes damas del pulp, seleccionados con mano experta por Mike Ashley. Brujas, vampiras, mujeres que se funden con sus deseos más oscuros, madres monstruosas, hijas vengativas, damas con el alma podrida y jovencitas que ríen mientras todo arde... Esta Navidad llegan las Hermanas Raras, una deliciosa antología de cuentos firmados por las grandes damas del pulp, seleccionados con mano experta por Mike Ashley para la British Library. Catorce autoras —de la célebre Margaret St. Clair a la enigmática Allison V. Harding, pasando por Tanith Lee, la baronesa Greye La Spina o incluso Lucy Maud Montgomery en su noche más gótica— firman estos relatos turbios, sugestivos y altamente adictivos, nacidos en las páginas de Weird Tales y otras revistas míticas entre los años veinte y los setenta. Tesoros recuperados del subsuelo del horror, el suspense y la ciencia ficción, estas historias están habitadas por ratas que piensan, niños con secretos atroces, amantes espectrales, figuras que se duplican en el espejo y presencias que te observan desde la alacena... con mucha paciencia. Son cuentos que arañan, que ríen entre dientes, que brillan de puro malicia, y que nos recuerdan que las mujeres siempre han sabido jugar —y reinar— en los márgenes de lo raro.

Dr. Orison Swett Marden (1848–1924) was an American inspirational author who wrote about achieving success in life and founded SUCCESS magazine in 1897. His writings discuss common-sense principles and virtues that make for a well-rounded, successful life. Many of his ideas are based on New Thought philosophy. Marden wrote in an energetic and readable style that used simple, yet lucid vocabulary. He favored the "bold headline" approach and presented his ideas with brevity, directness and clarity. It was perhaps owing to his business background that he could pack so much "punch" into a mere few words. He also carried a distinctive American tone and syntax that modern readers may easily relate to. Among the many subjects to be found in his writings, perhaps his strongest were in business, salesmanship and the art of balanced living. Other interests include literature, history, philosophy, biography, fine art, education, psychology, and physical health. Like Samuel Smiles, he expounded upon many of the virtues that make up success, such as self-reliance, perseverance, and hard work. His writings breathe a spirit of "lofty austerity" and focus on themes of adversity and triumph, defeat and victory, failure and success.” Marden often kept his writings simple, concrete, and grounded in reality. Indeed, he advises young writers to "Live, Then Write" and to "Keep Close to Life." Yet along with this simplicity, his writings also displayed a remarkable talent for rhetorical flight. Marden made frequent use of metaphors and similes in conveying ethical principles and moral lessons. Objects or scenes observable in nature such as rocks, marbles, streams, trees, snows, and tempests imparted a sublime, poetic depth to his writing: The frost, the snows, the tempests, the lightnings, are the rough teachers that bring the tiny acorn to the sturdy oak...Obstacles, hardships are the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beauty.

Wilfred Davis, quiet, retired, respectable widower, is sitting and sobbing on a park bench. He has lost his daughter and any sense of purpose. A mysterious stranger passes him a handkerchief, and strikes up a conversation that leads to friendship and an unconventional new home for Wilfred. Mary Davis wants only four things out of life: a husband and three children, so at seventeen she runs away from school, her father and her home and moves to London to find them. Only a few months later Mary is engaged, but love and marriage promise to be very different from her childhood daydreams. For Mary and Wilfred, it seems Fate has taken a hand, or is there another kind of guiding spirit at play? Stella Gibbons' final novel, written in the 1970s but only discovered many years after her death, is published here for the first time.

Creepy. Peculiar. Fairy. Goblin. Liar. Weirdo. Crank. Genius. No one knows what to make of Juliet Slater, not even her mother. And clothes, boys, school, friends, the changing seasons and what other people think - none of these things seem to matter to Juliet. She spends hours in her room with incomprehensible mathematical text books, her mind voyaging in strange seas of thought, alone. Is she a genius? It might take the rest of her life to find out. While Stella Gibbons was celebrated for her beloved bestseller Cold Comfort Farm, the manuscript for Pure Juliet lay unseen and forgotten until it was brought to light by her family in 2014, and is published here for the first time in Vintage Classics. A tale that travels from an eco-millionaire's British country idyll to an Arabian Nights-style fantasy of the Middle East, this is a treat for fans of this witty, curious and always surprising author.

Ruinée après la mort de son mari, la jeune Viola est contrainte de quitter Londres pour s'installer chez sa belle-famille, dans l'Essex. Celle-ci la méprise en raison de ses origines modestes et se montre peu chaleureuse. Viola peine à trouver sa place dans cette grande maison austère et sombre peu à peu dans la déprime. Jusqu'à ce qu'elle croise le chemin de Victor, un riche et bel héritier, avec qui elle se laisse aller à flirter... Ignorant que ce dernier est sur le point de se marier.

Viola Wither es una chica encantadora y no muy avispada que se casa con un hombre con posibles al que no ama realmente. Cuando su marido fallece, Viola se queda en la más absoluta miseria, por lo que no tendrá más remedio que vivir con su familia política en The Eagles, una casa en la que todo es tristeza y oscuridad. El señor Wither es un hombre tacaño y gris. La señora Wither la ignora desde el principio y sus dos cuñadas, Tina y Madge, piensan demasiado en sí mismas como para ocuparse de ella. Por fortuna, siempre existirán las fiestas benéficas y la posibilidad de cruzarse en ellas con Victor Spring, el ídolo local, un hombre rico y algo superficial con el que todas las mujeres sueñan en silencio. Stella Gibbons, autora de "La hija de Robert Poste", nos vuelve a deleitar con una comedia llena de agudeza, ternura e ingenio, en la que no faltan las largas fiestas estivales, los amores cruzados, las huidas, los giros repentinos, los amantes de la poesía y un bosque en el que los encuentros y los desencuentros ocurren siempre de noche.

On the dunes west of Bruges, two-year-old Ydette is found wrapped in a blanket and taken back to live in a small grocer's shop. Opposite the shop live the wealthy van Roeslaere family and their son, Adriaan, a spoilt boy, plagued by ugliness. With overtones of Beauty and the Beast, their romance matures as they grow up together and learn what should truly be valued in life.

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.

Thrown out of her long-established office job, Miss Christine Smith takes up a new role as housekeeper for a group of middle-aged artists. Charmed by a previous mystical experience, her spirituality is nurtured further by the tenants, who seem stuck in their own personal lull. Written in the 1960s, surrounded by social and political transitions, the novel focuses on change, or the lack thereof.

A sly and satirical fairytale by the author of Cold Comfort Farm Unavailable for decades, Stella Gibbons's Nightingale Wood is a delightfully modern romance ripe for rediscovery by the many fans of Cold Comfort Farm. Poor, lovely Viola has been left penniless and alone after her late husband's demise, and is forced to live with his family in their joy­less home. Its occupants are nearly insufferable: Mr. Withers is a tyrannical old miser; Mrs. Withers dismisses her as a common shop girl; and Viola's sisters-in-law, Madge and Tina, are too preoccupied with their own troubles to give her much thought. Only the prospect of the upcoming charity ball can lift her spirits-especially as Victor Spring, the local prince charming, will be there. But Victor's intentions towards the young widow are, in short, not quite honorable.

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.