Arch enemies Mapp and Lucia return in the next installment of E.F. Benson's classic series of rural snobbery. Lucia is now a permanent resident of Tilling and continues her way up the social ladder with gusto, making attempts at the Town Council, finance, a platonic marriage and even the cricket club.
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and...