Frozen Music (inbunden)
Guppies For Tea (pocket)
A Rival Creation (pocket)
The Purveyor of Enchantment (pocket)

Frozen Music
Marika Cobbold
Inbunden
1999
376 sidor
Står namn i bläck på första sidan
My name is Esther Fisher and I'm about to walk out on the only man I've ever loved... I have to try to make light of it. How else do you survive in a world which seems like a nursery ruled over by a capricious six-year-old?'
Esther has been angry all her life — angry at her mother's frivolity, her father's detachment, the triviality of toys, and the lack of order in a world whose social rules, and obsession with love and
'having fun' she finds baffling. Now, as a London-based journalist, she is being angry on behalf of an old couple about to be evicted to make way for a tycoon's dream opera house.
Coincidentally, the Swedish architect turns out to be the stepson of her mother's best friend, about whom Esther has been hearing for years. Linus, the clumsy, dreamy boy whose mother died tragically when he was seven, has grown into not only an elegant man, but an architect of vision, who longs one day to create a great building instead of a design compromise, but is as much a social misfit as Esther.
Their first meeting is hardly propitious, and matters are not improved when Esther is forced by an accident to spend a few weeks on an idyllic Swedish island with Linus, an assortment of distinctly peculiar relatives, and Linus's maddeningly cheerful, glamorous girlfriend, Pernilla. In a blue clapboard cottage, with white painted floorboards, dog-eared books and faded wallpaper, against a background of old, dangerous family secrets, Esther finds herself caught up in a love story which seems as impossible as a choice between life and death.
A compellingly warm, wry, funny story, centred on two flawed but enormously sympathetic characters, with a supporting cast of engaging eccentrics, Frozen Music is the most ambitious novel yet from this bestselling author, and the best.

Guppies For Tea
Marika Cobbold
Pocket
1993
287 sidor
Litet veck på omslaget, se bilder

"Amelia Lindsey was an exceptional young woman. She had a grandmother whom she loved, a mother whom she bore with patient fortitude (Dagmar spent much of her time scrubbing the backs of wardrobes and wiping clothes-hangers with Dettol-drenched J-cloths), and Gerald.
Gerald had fallen in love with Amelia two years earlier, when he was in his artistic phase, and had begged her to move in with him.
Now
(no longer in his artistic phase) he was showing signs of irritation.
And then Selma, the talented and much-beloved grandmother who had given Amelia all the background of family and home Dagmar could not give, suddenly became old. As life - and Gerald -
began to collapse all round Amelia, she determined thae the person who would not collapse would be Selma. Fighting a o woman battle against Cherryfield retirement home, against Geralds defection and her mother's obsession with germs, Amelia found herself capable of plots, diversions, and friendships she had never
encountered betore"

A Rival Creation
Marika Cobbold
Pocket
332 sidor
1994

"At thirty-nine, Liberty Turner, mother of an illegitimate and nearly grown-up son, and daughter of a flamboyant father who had never grown up, realised that she had no talent. Once, in more prosperous times, her books had been published. Now, as relentless rejections pulverised her every effort, she faced up to the whimsical truth that while she was absolutely bursting with the creative urge, the talent just wasn't there.
But as she began to observe her friends and neighbours in the village of Tollymead (not quite the idyllic community that everyone wished it was) she noticed that there were different kinds of creations. Evelyn Hoffman, her eccentric and idealistic elderly neighbour, chained herself to condemned oak trees and fought against polluters of the countryside.
The vicar, resenting his congregation of middle-class - apparently - well-adjusted parishioners, sought longingly for a real social problem to deal with. Even Nancy Sanderson, magistrate and secretary of the Women's League, was eventually to revolt against her life-style and create something of her own.
As Liberty stoically continued her progress through harvest lunches and creative writing classes, she waited for a rival creation of her own to emerge, and when Oscar Brooke moved into the village, she thought perhaps she might have found it."

The Purveyor of Enchantment
Marika Cobbold
Pocket
236 sidor
1996
Litet veck på omslaget, se bilder

'A life lived in fear is a life half lived,
Clementine Hope's sister, Ophelia, is fond of quoting to her.
Clementine, thirty-something and newly divorced, lives in a small Hampshire town, teaching music and working on a collection of fairy tales left to her by her Great Aunt Elvira. But mostly she worries.
She worries about the rising crime rate. She worries about disease and illness, about offending God and, in the rare moments when she is at peace with Him, about upsetting the man in the carpet shop or Mrs Challis who runs the café where she meets with her friend Jessica.
Clementine enjoys as little of the life around her as any Sleeping Beauty.
Just as she thinks she has found love with Nathaniel Scott, the son of her next-door neighbour, her fears cause her to lose him.
Then, at a moment of real crisis, Clementine sees the destructive quality of her life and resolves to change and make amends. To do so she must turn from victim to heroine, slay her personal dragon of fears and phobias, and rescue her own Prince Charming.