In this sequel to The Virgin in the Garden , Byatt illuminates the conflicts between ambition and domesticity, confinement and self-fulfilment, while providing a observation of intellectual and cultural life in England during the 1950s.

Miss Abigail Wendover's efforts to detach her spirited niece Fanny from a plausible fortune hunter are complicated by the arrival in Bath of Miles Caverleigh, his uncle, the black sheep of the family.

The Honourable Christopher Fancot is more than alarmed to find that his twin, Evelyn, has disappeared without trace. The unfortunate Kit Fancot is forced into an outrageous masquerade by the tangled affairs of his wayward family. But in the face of Evelyn's continues absence, Kit's ingenuity is stretched to the limit.

In an 18th-Century England of wit, womanising and powdered wigs, provincial Philip Jettan runs the risk of irreproachability. Cleone Charteris stands in no such danger.

Murder, mystery and the famous white stallions of Vienna

Renowned gamester, and the first to own that he is untroubled by a romantic disposition, Max Ravenscar regards all eligible females with indifference.