Clubland London between the wars, a secret codicil to a will, and a viciously unhappy marriage. The murderer, thief and lying she-devil Rowena is determined to make her husband divorce her so she can marry and dispose of a nobleman, keeping his title and money en route. Dornford Yates' This Publican is an attack on how men are failing to keep their women under control, and how society would be much improved by a bit more obedience all round. For fogeys who need their ideas confirmed.

The Jewish family saga of G B Stern's The Matriarch is dominated by the party-planning interfering head of the family, Anastasia the adored eldest sister, the engulfing wife, the admired mother, the bossy aunt and the totally dominating Grandmere. She's a monster of cheerful bullying, a delightful character you wouldn't want to live with, the life and soul of the the party you want to leave. She lacks reticence, justice, tact and no-one can teach her anything. Her recipes are divine, but only she can cook to perfection. For the underdogs in the family.

This is a splendidly entertaining novella by Jane Austen, written as 41 letters between the characters of a tightly-plotted farce, doninated by the towering figure of Lady Susan. She is a magnificently disloyal houseguest (she sleeps with the husband and seduces the daughter's suitor), a bullying mother (she torments and bosses her terrified 16 year old daughter), and a scheming sister-in-law (she dangles the heir to the estate for as long as she wants him). If only she could meet her match. For readers who snap their fans coolly in the face of disaster.

In the middle of the Second World War, Lady Carados found a dead woman in her son's bed, so she decided to move it somewhere else, which is why Albert Campion got involved because the body ended up in his bed instead. In Margery Allingham's Coroner's Pidgin, Campion is struggling with sleep deprivation, the blackout, familiar streets bombed out of recognition, and the bizarre dislocations of life in a Blitzed London. He feels his way through mental fog to work out who killed whom, and who is continuing to try to kill others. How big does a national war hero have to be before he is above suspicion? How aristocratic do you have to be before the law can't touch you? For readers who like to see more than one step ahead.

We're plunged into 1930s high society, riddled with blackmail, drugs and wicked little gambling dens. Girls have gone back to being chaperoned, and wives are deceiving their husbands. It's all rather sordid, and then Lord Robert gets suffocated in a taxi on the way back from the heady, glittering, gossiping Carrados ball. Hear all about the social humiliation that Death in a White Tie, a Golden Age detective novel by Ngaio Marsh, secretly conceals. For those who prefer to dance until three in the morning.