Ursula Hirst

While holding a séance for skeptical novelist Charles Condomine, self-proclaimed 'spiritualist medium' Madame Arcati inadvertently summons the spirit of his deceased first wife Elvira, leading to an increasingly complex love triangle with Ruth, his current wife of five years.

The orderly suburban life of a 1950's English town is turned on its head when the teenaged daughter of one of the residents writes a steamy bestseller featuring characters obviously based on the local population.

A bored housewife has an affair with her mother's lodger.

A repressed junior librarian, frustrated with looking after her sick father, finds herself drawn into a dangerous relationship with the man who might have murdered her mean-spirited grandmother.