Virago modern classics (London, England)

"For fans of The House at Riverton and Rebecca--a debut spanning from the 1930s to the present day, from a magnificent estate in war-torn England to Thailand, this sweeping novel tells the tale of a concert pianist, Julia, and the prominent Crawford family whose shocking secrets are revealed, leading to devastating consequences for generations to come. As a child Julia Forrester spent many idyllic hours in the hothouse of Wharton Park, the great house where her grandfather tended exotic orchids. Years later, while struggling with overwhelming grief over the death of her husband and young child, she returns to the tranquility of the estate. There she reunites with Kit Crawford, heir to the estate and her possible salvation. When they discover an old diary, Julia seeks out her grandmother to learn the truth behind a love affair that almost destroyed Wharton Park. Their search takes them back to the 1930s when a former heir to Wharton Park married his young society bride on the eve of World War II. When the two lovers are cruelly separated, the impact will be felt on generations to come. Lucinda Riley skillfully sweeps her readers between the magical world of Wharton Park and Thailand during World War II with irresistible and atmospheric storytelling. Filled with twists and turns, passions and lies, and ultimately redemption, The Orchid House is a romantic, poignant novel that became an instant bestseller in the UK and Germany"--

"The Sheltered Life," writes Carol S. Manning in her Afterword to this new paperback edition, is "a jewel of American literature and deserves recognition as a masterpiece of the Southern Renaissance." It is a remarkably unsentimental look at the old South, a society that blindly holds to past values enforced by a strict code of conduct, being overtaken by the new age of industrialization. We see in the families of the Archibalds and the Birdsongs - especially in the character of General Archibald, the quintessential Southern gentleman, and of the celebrated beauty Mrs. Eva Birdsong - how upholding these old Southern ideals denies any opportunity for growth and fulfillment. The only hope is in the General's impetuous young granddaughter, Jenny. By the end of the novel, however, she too has learned that beauty is to be most admired and that deception is moral and civilized - that it is good to tell lies if they make others feel better. Ellen Glasgow's career-long attempt to expose the cruelty of the "cult of beauty worship" and the "philosophy of evasive idealism" that she saw as prevalent in the South's conversations, manners, customs, and literature reaches its zenith in The Sheltered Life. First published in 1932, it was hailed by Alfred Kazin as Ellen Glasgow's "most moving and penetrating novel. Like Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which it closely resembles in spirit, The Sheltered Life became a haunting study in social decomposition."