Barbara Trapido

Jem McCrail is a fantastical godsend to the timid young Alice Pilling. "Like a dropped acorn," she appears halfway through the week, halfway through the term, and halfway through Miss Aldridge’s Silent Reading Hour. Through the doorway she barely clears, wearing clothes like the urchin she...

Sparky Christina and her saintly adopted sister Pam couldn’t be more different. Raised in New York, they are sent to boarding school in England where they meet the similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter. The four embark on a dazzling series of pairings and partings, outrageous...

Stunning and difficult, Stella Goldman is programmed for maximum nuisance capacity, but when she discovers both her father’s affair and her boyfriend’s infidelity on the same day, she flees into the arms of kindly Pen, who speaks as though he’s stepped out of Brief Encounter. Meanwhile...

Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950s South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction...

Katherine, appassionata di moda e Jane Austen, ha diciotto anni e viene da una famiglia medioborghese. Ha una fascinazione per le eroine sfortunate...