A wryly, perceptively funny novel which nevertheless has its sudden darkly suggestive turns. By turns it is a story of pursuit, marital problems, tourist-watching, young love, old love (and an astonishing mixture of the two), and social-political intrigue veiled in recent history, yet involving a bloody murder and a hidden body. Territorial Rights might therefore be labeled a suspense novel, but it is not; it is too cheeky and cheerful for that. Rather,...

A balance between fact and fantasy is humorously portrayed in the person of an aspiring author, Miss Talbot, who goes to work as a secretary to the Autobiographical Association in 1949 London.

The zany lives and morals of the girls of the "May of Teck Club", a haven for young ladies, in 1945, when "all the nice people of England were poor, allowing for exceptions." Thus begins Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club building itself-"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"-its lady inhabitants do their best...

Mrs. Hawkins, a buxom young war widow, spends her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books") and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming-house. At work and at home Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovers evil-- shady literary doings and a deadly enemy, anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. Mrs. Hawkins confidently sets about putting things to order, little imagining the mayhem which would ensue. Now decades...

The arrival of Chris Wiley, a seventeen-year-old literary prodigy, at the College Sunrise finishing school sparks a dangerous game of envy, sexual jealousy, and adultery for Rowland Mahler, a would-be novelist, and his wife, Nina.