Bøker av Muriel Spark

First published in 1993, this book brings together Muriel Spark's writings on the Bronte sisters, including a selection of their letters and a selection of Emily Bronte's poems.

First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs, the cozy bachelors (as any Spark reader might guess) are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented - defrauded or stolen from, blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid séances - and then plunged into the nastiest of lawsuits.

A winter's night; a luxurious mansion near Geneva; a lucrative scandal. The first to arrive is the secretary dressed in furs with a bundle of cash, then the Baron, and finally the Baroness. They lock themselves in the library with specific instructions not to be disturbed for any reason. Soon, shouts and screams emerge from the library; the Baron's lunatic brother starts madly howling in the attic; two of the secretary's friends are left waiting in a car; a reverend's services are needed for an impromptu wedding-and despite all that the servants obey their orders as they pass the time playing records, preparing dinner, and documenting false testimonies while a twisted murder plot unfolds upstairs.

Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

Mrs Hawkins, a fat young war widow worked for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher in 1950s London. Looking back on shady literary doings and a deadly enemy, anonymous letters, blackmail and suicide, the thin and successful Mrs Hawkins recalls how she came through it all.

Annabel Christopher is a goddess to her adoring Italian public, her loving husband part of her perfect image. To keep the eager sycophants, ruthless paparazzi and anxious admirers under her spell the image must be carefully cultivated. Only Annabel hasn't calculated on the plans of her husband.

A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets.

Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance.