Zoe and Anna

                                                                                         Zoe and Anna

                                                                                          Zoe

Guests: A student and a professional and both avid readers- Zoe and Anna.

Books

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella GibbonsWhen sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to
descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better
than to organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each
of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, "Cold Comfort Farm"
(1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeenth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a
servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us, through Griet's eyes, the complicated
family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being
drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may
be high.

Ex-Girlfriends United by Matt Dunn
Despite his new-found fame on ITV 5's latest soap, womaniser Dan Davis is failing to score with the
ladies. Every time. And he can't understand why. All is revealed when Dan and his friend Ed
Middleton come across a mysterious website - slateyourdate.com - where women rate their experiences of their exes, and where Dan is shocked to learn that long after he's given them one, his
ex-girlfriends are giving him one - one out of ten, that is. Faced with the prospect of a lifetime
of singledom, Dan needs to crack the code of a website that's strictly women only to find out where
he's been going wrong. Then he must track down his many exes in order to put things right. Along the
way, Dan discovers he has much to learn about himself. Particularly when he meets up again with
Polly - and realizes he wants her back. Can Dan convince his former love he's changed? Can Ed
convince Dan he needs to change in the first place?Can the two friends use their new-found knowledge
to help other men in the same boat?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and
conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy
has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister
Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that
follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the
friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
"The Woman in White" famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister
intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white
mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and
corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, "The Woman in White" is the first and most
influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry JamesThe narrator is a young governess, sent off to a country house to take charge of two orphaned
children. She finds a pleasant house and a comfortable housekeeper, while the children are beautiful
and charming. But she soon begins to feel the presence of intense evil.

Coming up next week, Lyn Smith, author of Young Voices.For British children the Second World War was a terrifying time of deprivation, uprootings and separation. But many also endured intense air raids
or found themselves, shockingly, caught up in the action.

Young Voices tells how British children across the globe lived in the days before and during the
fighting.