Yay! Clearly you survive on the book veldt.

Jane Gardam is one of the authors whose new books I just buy. From England, if needs be. I can trust them to be good.

I am very fond of her story collection, The Sidmouth Letters, and of her novels A Long Way from Verona, Bilgewater, and The Queen of the Tambourine, but you won't go far wrong with any of them. She is especially good on adolescent girls and the dotty elderly.

Nine