Rumer Godden

In post-World War II London, two street-tough children attempt to build a hidden garden, an act that awakens hidden courage in the children and profoundly disrupts the neighborhood.

High in the Himalayas, the old mountaintop palace shines like a jewel. Built for the General's harem, laughter and music once floated out over the gorge. But now it sits abandoned; windswept and haunting. The General's son bestows the palace to the Sisters of Mary, and 'the House of Women', as it was once known, becomes the Convent of St Faith. Close to the Heavens, the nuns feel inspired, working fervently to establish their school and hospital....

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Greengage Summer: Two English sisters' lives are transformed when their father brings them to India. At fifteen and twelve, the daughters of Sir Edward Gwithiam of the diplomatic service have already seen more of the world than most children their age. But when Una and her younger sister, Halcyon, are summoned from their English boarding school to join their father in New Delhi, they encounter a reality...

Before she was La Balafrée -- the Scarred One -- one of post-War Paris's most notorious and successful madams, Lise was simply Elizabeth Fanshawe, a young Englishwoman with a spirit of adventure. A chance encounter with Patrice Ambard, whose hypnotic charm belies an inescapable sadism, draws Lise into the destructive, depraved world of prostitution. Only after a sudden and shocking crime does she find release, followed by respite and renewal at the...

For nearly one hundred and fifty years the Quin family has lived at China Court, their magnificent estate in the Welsh countryside. The land, gardens, and breathtaking home have been maintained, cherished, and ultimately passed along--from Eustace and Adza in the early nineteenth century to village-girl-turned-lady-of-the-manor Ripsie Quin, her children, and her granddaughter, Tracy, in the twentieth. Brilliantly intermingling the past and the present,...

Dark Invader, a thoroughbred training in India for the Viceroy Cup race, bolts from a malicious jockey and is given refuge by a convent of nuns.

Ghosts past, present, and future haunt an old London house in this masterful work of fiction from a New York Times–bestselling author. Sir Roland Ironmonger Dane is the last of his family to occupy the house at Number 99 Wiltshire Place in London. Now, in the early days of World War II, the elderly former general has been told that he must vacate the premises when the ninety-nine-year lease is up, leaving the only home he has ever known.   But...

Die meisten Leute erleben in einem ganzen Leben nicht, was den fünf Geschwistern in diesem einen heißen Sommer in Vieux-Moutiers widerfährt, da sind sich die beiden ältesten Joss und Cecil einig. Ihre Mutter ist unerwartet erkrankt, und die Kinder sind in dem in die Jahre gekommenen Hotel in der Champagne auf sich allein gestellt. Einzig der charmante Eliot nimmt sich ihrer an. Alle im Hotel, Erwachsene wie Kinder, erliegen seinem Charme; die...

Four evocative and moving works of fiction set in India from the New York Times–bestselling author of Black Narcissus-including her final novel. Having spent her formative years in colonial India, British novelist Rumer Godden would continue to return to that setting for inspiration throughout her career-from her best known work about five nuns in a Himalayan convent, Black Narcissus, to her final novel, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva. Cromartie...

Lawyer Michael Dean is sent from London to India, the land of his birth to investigate the theft of an 11th century statue of the Hindu god Shiva. The assignment leads him into a romance with a woman archeologist. A look at Hindu culture.