Mischief (50 page)
Authors: Fay Weldon
Marjorie, Grace and me. How foolishly we loved, and murderous we are. We have had six children between us, but have done to death, as if to balance the scales, some six of our nearest and dearest. And though the world does not acknowledge such deaths as murder, we know in our hearts that they are.
—
They first met as children in 1940s London. Thirty years later, the three friends make their way through an almost unrecognizable post-war society, coping with oppressive husbands, children, parents, and the messy business of life.
From bestselling author Fay Weldon comes a brilliantly witty and caustic, yet deeply compassionate novel exploring the lives and loves three women and a friendship that endures all that life can throw at them.
Female Friends
is available
here
.
Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens…
Many years earlier, Leslie Beck entered the lives of four female friends —some married, some not, some more innocent than others. Now he is back to stir old desires and rivalries, to revitalise, if he can, the secrets, passions and infidelities of the past.
From bestselling author Fay Weldon comes a novel about pleasure—how we pursue it, how it fits into our lives, how we judge it. The life force must not be denied. More than just a mischievous, glorious novel, here is a literary handbook to all our pasts and, with any luck, our futures.
Life Force
is available
here
.
How many characters make up one woman’s personality?
There is certainly more to Lady Rice than her husband realizes - at least three other people currently share his wife’s body. And when Sir Edwin Rice decides to apply for divorce, these other personalities begin to emerge…
A darkly comic portrait of one woman’s shattering response to divorce.
Splitting
is available
here
.
In this superlative anthology, Fay Weldon introduces readers to a cast of mothers, children, wives, and lovers—all of them unforgettable, timeless female characters. In “Subject to Diary,” a successful forty-ish career woman sits in an abortion clinic pondering motherhood.
In “The Year of the Green Pudding,” a woman who seems to doom everyone and everything she touches vows never to fall in love again. And an analyst’s office is the setting for a series of stories that feature four female patients—including a murderer—who lay bare their souls.
Moon Over Minneapolis
is available
here
.
In “Christmas Lists—A Seasonal Story,” the endless lists created by a suburban couple become a metaphor for marriage, family, and enduring love. In “Delights of France or Horrors of the Road,” a woman goes to a psychiatrist to cure her sudden, inexplicable paralysis, unaware that her constant bragging about her brilliant physicist husband conceals a raging fury. “Redundant! or the Wife’s Revenge” takes place in a plastic surgery ward, where Fay Weldon finds an ironic humor. The title story, Polaris, introduces newlyweds Meg and Timmy, whose union is tested when Timmy is called away to naval duty and Meg discovers a shocking secret.
Polaris
is available
here
.
When Natalie’s husband, Harry, kisses her and their two children goodbye, departs for the office, and never returns, Natalie immediately blames herself. If she hadn’t been cheating on her husband every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, he never would have left her for his secretary, a local beauty queen...
The Heart of the Country
is available
here
.
Sandra Harris—wife, astronomer (known for discovering the planet Athena), television phenomenon, and “professional searcher after truth”—has had an epiphany. She leaves her boring attorney husband and runs off with Mad Jack Stubbs, her trumpet-playing lover, and his groupie entourage, for a tour of Southern France. Pursued by her husband, Mad Jack’s wife, and the paparazzi, Sandra lives entirely for the moment—and great sex. In between, she ponders her past (institutionalized mother, Nazi war criminal father) while trying to ignore the deafening tick of her biological clock...
The Leader of the Band
is available
here
.
Victims, liberators, blackmailers, healers, and ghosts—they’re just a few of the fascinating men and women you’ll meet in this stellar, boundary-defying anthology.
From a heartless lover to a therapist who’s exposed for being a child hater, Weldon’s characters search for meaning, betray their vows, take pleasure in others’ misfortunes, or get pushed out of the family manse by their grasping offspring...
Wicked Women
is available
here
.
All 17 of these titles are available in a single omnibus edition:
Now in her ninth decade, Fay Weldon is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children’s books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.
Comprising 14 novels and 3 short story collections, the most comprehensive omnibus of the wickedly witty Fay Weldon available.
Contains:
Down Among the Women; Female Friends; Little Sisters; Praxis; Polaris; The Shrapnel Academy; The Rules Of Life; The Heart of the Country; Leader of the Band; The Cloning of Joanna May; Darcy’s Utopia; Moon Over Minneapolis; Growing Rich; Life Force; Splitting; Wicked Women; Worst Fears.
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