Saki

FRANCESCA BASSINGTON sat in the drawing-room of her house in Blue Street, W., regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea and small cress sandwiches. The meal was of that elegant proportion which, while ministering sympathetically to the desires of the moment, is happily reminiscent of a satisfactory luncheon and blessedly expectant of an elaborate dinner to come.

Published in 1913, just one year before the outbreak of the 1914-18 war this futuristic novel takes as its story the premise that Germany have recently won a European war and were now in occupation of England. Seen through the eyes of a retired military officer the book chronicles life in England under the German occupying forces and the various reactions the British public have to this situation.

Leonard Bilsiter was one of those people who have failed to find this world attractive or interesting, and who have sought compensation in an unseen world of their own experience or imagination - or invention. Children do that sort of thing successfully, but children are content to convince themselves, and do not vulgarise their beliefs by trying to convince other people. Leonard Bilsiter's beliefs were for the few, that is to say, anyone who would listen to him.

The necklace / Guy de Maupassant -- Butch minds the baby / Damon Runyon -- A tradition of eighteen hundred and four / Thomas Hardy -- Rip Van Winkle / Washington Irving -- Michael / William Wordsworth -- To build a fire / Jack London -- The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County / Mark Twain -- The signalman / Charles Dickens -- Come again in the spring / Richard Kennedy -- In my indolence / Italo Svevo -- Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Lochinvar / Sir Walter Scott -- The Griffin and the Minor Canon / Frank Stockton -- The elixir of Father Gaucher / Alphonse Daudet -- [Taste]( [Masque of the Red Death]( / Edgar Allan Poe -- The lady with the dog / Anton Chekhov -- The Schartz-Metterklume method / Saki (H.H. Munro) -- A lodging for the night / Robert Louis Stevenson -- The Canterville Ghost / Oscar Wilde.

Dismay breaks out at a quiet country house party when the family cat acquires the power of speech and begins revealing all kinds of embarrassing secrets.

Two women--beautiful, successful Raven, still suffering from an ugly childhood, and romance writer Holly, struggling to build a new identity--cross paths as they search for love, happiness, and happy endings in Hollywood.