Looking back in wonder..

Charlotte on unmissable reissues dusted off for a new generation of readers

MAMMA (British Library, £9.99)

The beautiful British Library reissues would make fabulous presents – if you could bear to part with them. The latest addition to the list is a 1956 novel in which Libby and husband Steven move in with her widowed mother, Joanna. But Steven is closer in age to Joanna than Libby and their mutual attraction creates an impossible situation.

TENSION

by EM Delafield (British Library, £9.99)

First published in 1920, this is the tale of Miss Marchrose, who takes a new job in a college only for a director’s wife to recognise her as the woman who jilted her cousin and launch a smear campaign. She starts a whispering campaign against Miss Marchrose that casts doubt on her character and undermines her position at the college.

THE BLACK MOTH by Georgette Heyer (William Heinemann, £12.99)

If Bridgerton whetted your appetite for Regency fiction, don’t miss an eye-catching hardback reissue of Black Moth published to mark the book’s centenary. Diana falls for a mysterious highwayman – but can he save her from the dastardly and determined Duke Of Andover?

MORE WOMEN THAN MEN by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Ivy explores gender and power in this tale first published in 1933. Seemingly affable head teacher Josephine rules her family with an iron fist amid a tangled web of family secrets, hypocrisy and repression.

THE FEAST by Margaret Kennedy (Faber & Faber, £9.99)

First published in 1950, The Feast follows the guests of Cornwall’s Pendizack Manor Hotel across a summer week in 1947, shortly before the hotel is destroyed by the cliff collapsing beneath it. But which of these colourful characters have met their death? An atmospheric, witty and often dark read.