Isabel Colegate
The Shooting Party

It is 1913 and Edwardian England is about to vanish into history. A group of men and women gather at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for a shooting party. Opulent, adulterous, moving assuredly through the rituals of eating and slaughter, they are a dazzlingly obtuse and brilliantly decorative finale of an era.

The film The Shooting Party was adapted from Colegate's novel. Directed by Alan Bridges, it starred James Mason, Edward Fox, Dorothy Tutin, Sir John Gielgud and Robert Hardy.

Maureen Lee
Queen Of The Mersey

It is Liverpool, 1939. The Second World War is about to start when pretty Laura Oliver meets Queenie Todd. Laura is twenty-one and happily married, whereas plain Queenie is only fourteen and has been deserted by her mother. The two become good friends, along with big-hearted Vera Monoghan across the street. When the air raids begin, the older women trust Queenie sufficiently to put their ghters, Hester and Mary, into her care, and the three young people are to Caerdovey, a small town on the coast of Wales. At first, y is a haven of peace and quiet - until something terrifying.

Margaret Mayhew
Those In Peril

n 1940, as the shadows are lengthening over Europe, artist Louis Duval decides to leave his studio in Brittany and makes the perilous journey to England. His aim: to help liberate his beloved France from the enemy. Reaching Dartmouth he finds lodgings with a young widow, Barbara Hillyard. Meanwhile, Lieutenant-Commander Alan Powell of the Royal Navy, assigned the task of forming an undercover organisation, enlists Louis Duval, who agrees to return to France. Alan falls deeply in love with Barbara, but she seems to have eyes only for Louis.