H E : 982 books

The Beauty of the Dead (Jonathan Cape, 1940) featuring fifteen stories, was released to critical acclaim. Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote in John O'London's Weekly that "all have that delicate luminosity by which visions are seen more clearly than in the bright sunlight." 'Old' is a...

The Daffodil Sky, first published in 1955 (Michael Joseph), mixes eclectic characters travelling to foreign lands with poetic treatments of rural life in Bates's Northamptonshire. 'A Place in the Heart' is set in Asia against a colourful backdrop of rickshaws and ceremonial drumming. An Englishman,...

The Flying Goat (Jonathan Cape, 1939) features sixteen diverse stories from slapstick sketches to portraits of marital tension; one Uncle Silas tale; and three that hark back to Bates's boyhood roots. 'A Funny Thing' is an escalating bragging match between Uncle Silas and Uncle Cosmos. Cosmos...

Published in 1972, The Song of the Wren contains some light entertainments in the style of the Uncle Silas tales, alongside some more serious stories concerning thwarted love, love triangles, and, in two of the cases, the violence that comes out of psyches twisted by love. 'The Song of the...

First published in 1961, Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories is a collection full of light and shade, setting sensitive character studies against Bates's signature vibrant, delicate imagery. A fussy and obsessive golfer encounters a troubled young woman at a wind-swept beach in 'Lost Ball',...

Bates's famous loveable rogue, Uncle Silas, has a unique range of work to his name. For the first time, all of these stories are gathered together in one collection, allowing readers to experience Silas from multiple perspectives. Some tales offer sly, affectionate glimpses of the narrator's...

The Bride Comes to Evensford, a novella first published in 1943, follows a woman from her arrival in a small town (modelled on Bates's native Rushden) to her work for a draper, her marriage to him, her increasing command over the business and the household, and finally to her infatuation with a young...

'An honest and skillfully told love story' - New York Times Lydia - shy, sheltered, beautiful and just nineteen - glides into Evensford one wintry day, stirring up feeling amongst the town's young men. But it is the young Mr Richardson that she befriends. As winter turns to drowsy summer, his...

Published in 1970, The Triple Echo was Bates's last significant novella, but one which he described as taking twenty-five years to complete. Set in the 1940s, the wife of a war prisoner lives in desperate loneliness and fear on an isolated farmstead. She encounters a young farmboy completely...

First published in 1968, The Four Beauties is Bates's last collection of novellas offering a mixture of comedy, adventure, a semi-autobiographical piece and an exploration of a dark love triangle. 'The Simple Life' is set at a country cottage offering the joys of a humble existence, and focuses...

In this collection of five novellas, Bates contrasts two comic stories with the atmospheric title story, and includes a complex psychological tale alongside the romantically bleak. 'The Golden Oriole' features a fragile and troubled woman, frozen in a stultifying and unconsummated marriage,...

This report from an outpost of the British Empire in Northern Burma during the last decade of the nineteenth century highlights the colonial mindset. Written for an American Audience of the period.

Bobbie Turner discovers wearing a mask to her school's halloween Masquerade Ball is an exercise in disguise - nobody recognises her. Lucas Jordan isn't in the mood to hang out with his friends. Instead, he rescues a masked damsel in distress, and spends the night sharing secrets with a girl...