Brace yourself for deep truths about newspapers and reporting, in a world where the characters have names with a strange resemblance to typefaces, and where no magic is used to make the news, only identifying the story. Brilliant satire from Terry Pratchett in The Truth: what more do you need?

More wigs! More swordfights! Learn how to tip wine down your coat sleeve if you don't want to get drunk while dressed in clothes of the opposite sex. Study the disguises of highwaymen and practice your court curtseys. Georgette Heyer's The Masqueraders teaches valuable life skills for the 18th century.

Its glorious summer in Barsetshire, and the boys of Southbridge School are preparing to persecute their suffering classics master, who is engaged to the lovely but terminally stupid daughter of the headmaster, and is hating every minute of it. Angela Thirkell's joyous romp Summer Half brings the warm weather back, whenever you read it. For suffering parents everywhere.

The Provincial Lady is put-upon by domestic chaos, but never despairs; is routinely crushed by Lady Boxe, but bounces back; escapes to London to see friends and frivol, but worries incessantly about her children; has great plans and marvellous ideas, but is crushed, again, by her husband. E M Delafield's 1930 comic classic lives forever: for all those stuck out in the sticks.

Great-Aunt Ada once saw something nasty in the woodshed, and has held her family trapped in Cold Comfort Farm ever since. And now Flora Poste comes to rescue them, with common sense, a belief in Vogue, and the certainty that messy living needs to be tidied up. Stella Gibbons' immortal satire mocks pretentiousness, and reassures the meek that they will inherit the farm. For melodramatists everywhere.

Just like her name, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson is a classic of British bathos, sending up the pompousness of Oxford University with a feminine attack on its Edwardian male bastions. For those who wear pearls for pleasure.

In 1950s Kensington, the gossip in the anglo-Catholic parish of St Luke's is hotting up. Father Thames needs a new housekeeper, and he gets a man. New priest Father Ransome needs somewhere to live, but when his hostess dies he has to move out rapidly in case he compromises her middle-aged daughter. Wilmet, indolent and under-occupied, falls in love with the brother of her best friend, and totally fails to notice that both her husband and her mother-in-law are trying to have affairs. Bitchy Mr Bason may be a wonderful cook, but he takes a Faberge egg shopping. Barbara Pym's A Glass of Blessings is all about love among the cassocks. For those who like their ecclesiastical intrigue with incense.