Series: The Mermaid Collection

Celebrating 90 Years of Penguin Michael Joseph publishing with the Mermaid collection - Helen McCloy's Through A Glass, Darkly with a foreword by Gillian McAllister. 'They watch me all the time. In and out of the classroom, their eyes are always following me . . .' Quiet, gentle, young Faustina Crayle is dismissed from her teaching position at Brereton School...

Celebrating 90 Years of Penguin Michael Joseph publishing the Mermaid collection - Fay Weldon's Down Among the Women with a foreword by Jenny Colgan. “Down among the women. What a place to be!” So says Wanda, a former radical who left her husband and raised her daughter Scarlet to be as liberated as she. But twenty-year-old Scarlet, with an abortion...

Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 7 - Henrietta Hamilton's Answer in the Negative with a foreword by Sophie Hannah. Frank Morningside, assistant at The National Press Archives on Fleet Street, is receiving nasty poison pen letters. His superior, Toby Lorn, wants to put a stop to it, so he calls on his...

Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 8- Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women Miss Clare Hartill, teacher at a girls' boarding school, has a bewitching ability to get her own way, whether it is among the staff or the pupils who'll do anything to please her. When nineteen-year-old Alwynne Durand is hired, Clare takes...

Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 6- Kathleen Farrell's The Cost of Living with a foreword by Jane Fallon Idealistic Alexandra is throwing a party to meet a more glamorous crowd. Marianne, more sardonic, worries it'll be the usual sort. The party is in Alexandra's attic flat. Marianne will contribute a few bottles...

Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 5- Nina Bawden's Tortoise by Candlelight with a foreword by Eve Chase Fourteen-year-old Emmie Bean loves her family. But she worries about them too. Her mother is gone (no one will say where). Her father drinks instead of writing. Her younger brother Oliver has started stealing. And...

Celebrating 90 Years of Penguin Michael Joseph publishing with the Mermaid collection - Lettice Cooper's Fenny with a foreword by Jennie Godfrey. Yorkshire teacher Ellen Fenwick has never been abroad. But when her mother dies, this young woman finds herself taking a position as governess to an English girl in Florence in the summer of 1933. Little does Ellen realise...

Celebrating 90 Years of Penguin Michael Joseph publishing with the Mermaid collection - Margaret Kennedy's Lucy Carmichael with a foreword by Lucy Mangan. 'People seem to get over things, don't they? I don't know how, but they do - ordinary people. I'm very ordinary, so I expect I shall do what they do.' Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar....