Gingerbread Mansion - Hardcover

Brown, Lizbie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 072786775X ISBN 13: 9780727867759

Publisher: Severn House, 2009

Synopsis

This book describes the life in an English stately home. The Second World War has ended but the world has changed. For the Jago family, life will have to continue without their son, Kit, killed in action a week before peace was declared. Their rambling old home, Lizzah, and its antiques, is in severe disrepair and in need of more money than the destitute aristocratic family can afford. In an act of desperation, Virginia Jago brings in Charles Garland from the National Trust, a famous charity renowned for taking over and renovating the crumbling stately homes of the British Isles. However, Charles faces opposition from the family and local community as he represents a modern world at odds with Lizzah and life before the war...

About this title

About the Author:

Lizbie Brown is the successful author of the Elizabeth Blair series of mysteries, set in Bath, England. She was born in Cornwall, but now lives in the South Mendips, near Bath where she taught for many years before turning to writing full-time.

From Publishers Weekly:

Clichéd situations more typical of a stock romance novel mar Brown's historical set in post-WWII England. Charles Garland, of the newly formed National Trust, which is created to take over the operations of country houses whose owners can no longer afford their maintenance, travels from London to the Jago family's Devon home, Lizzah, to persuade the Jagos to put the property in the trust's hands. Kit, the son who was to inherit Lizzah, was killed in action at war's end, and his father, Myles, is in denial about the state of the family's finances. Romances, an unexpected pregnancy and domestic violence complicate Charles's efforts. Brown (Cat's Cradle) fails to make the reader feel the very real emotional impact of the social changes of the period on her characters' lives. Uninspired dialogue doesn't help (The whole country's at a tipping point. So many of the old ways gone. So many unknowns waiting in the offing...). (Sept.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Severn House
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 072786775X
• ISBN 13: 9780727867759
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352