When a marriage meets a therapist... Annette and Spicer make a perfect pair: he thirty-nine, wide-shouldered, square-jawed, and often likened to Harrison Ford; she slight, fair, delicately featured, and sometimes likened to Meryl Streep. He with a son (Jason, eleven) from a previous marriage, she with a daughter (Susan, thirteen) from a ditto. He and she, after ten years, expecting their own baby. But on this, the first day of the rest of their blissful lives, Spicer fails to kiss Annette goodbye as he leaves for the office.

A selection of lectures and essays contributed to newspapers, magazines and books over recent years, revised for this volume and all highly relevant to today. In these essays find a portrait of the times, to help us map our way through the new Garden of Eden, in which men hold the baby and women the mobile phone. The garden is timeless, its beauties are ineradicable, the angel's blazing sword no longer bars the way - so what's going wrong? Tricky to see the wood for the trees in this new-old land, hard to find a Third Way through: let this collection point the way. From the changing face of government, the feminisation of politics, the stamping of the warrior foot, to whence and whither Feminism, via the dangerous new cult of Therapism, to our turbulent and benighted Royals, brushing up against the famous (Roseanne, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jean Paul Gaultier) on the way - it's all here. Plus a rare glimpse of the author's life and loves.

A turbine-driven fantasy of love and revenge, values and morals: a witty and compellng elixir. Bernard Bellamy has done a deal. He's sold out to the Devil, in all his forms. In return, he is promised that all his wishes will be granted, all his desires fulfilled. One of them, young Carmen Wedmore, is proving to be quite a challenge. Carmen lives in the new town of Fenedge, East Anglia, near her former schoolfriends Laura and Annie. The three girls dream of the day they'll escape their dullsville existence. While Annie flies off with a fluttering, blipping heart to the snowcapped peaks and frothy rapids of New Zealand to join the man of her dreams and Laura marries, capably moving the population graph a few notches higher, Carmen stays in Fenedge, under the powerful clasp of Sir Bernard and Driver, the Devil's agent. Disguised as a suave chauffeur, Driver cruises in his plush, shiny, sinister limo, stalking her every move. But Carmen becomes ever more determined to ride out the temptations laid in her path and not to sell her soul. Will she eventually succumb? Or will the Devil, for once, not have everything his own way?

An adventure story where love triumphs over lust, good will over satanic forces in the spirit of Dickens. An adventure story in which, you will be glad to hear, love finally triumphs over lust, good will over satanic forces, and sheer kindness over piercing malevolence. The pace never falters; the language glitters. The wit is as ever razor sharp. Yet laughter, tears and a lump in the throat are never far away.

Weldon on top form; Weldon tackling love, sex, ageing, death; Weldon at her wittiest best; Weldon unparalleled. Sophia is a thirty-four-year-old film editor living in Soho. Her only living relation (she thinks), her grandmother Felicity, is an eighty-three-year-old widow (several times) living in smart Connecticut. Sophia is torn between her delight in her freedom and a nagging desire for the family ties that everyone else grumbles about: casual sex is all very well, but who do you spend Christmas with? Her current bed-mate seems to be in love with a glamorous Hollywood film star (not that Sophia cares, of course: she's a New Woman); her mad mother is dead. All she has is Felicity. But Felicity is not your average granny. Temperamental, sophisticated, chic (and alarmingly eccentric), she has seen much of life, love and sex and is totally prepared to see more. Even if it is from a twilight home (The Golden Bowl Complex for Creative Retirement)...Twilight is not at all Felicity's idea of fun; and quite possibly she has more idea of fun than her granddaughter. As the two women's stories unravel, the past rears up with all its grimness and irony; but points the way to a future that may redeem them both.

A classic tale of how a perfectly knitted life can unravel in the space of days. Alexandra Ludd is an actress, playing Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House. In the eyes of the world she has everything a woman could want: husband, home, child, income; good looks, good friends, the plaudits of the crowd and the affection of neighbours. But Alexandra inspires envy as well as love: she was unwise to forget it: she was complacent, perhaps a little vain - and all fate has to do to bring her down is to snip a single strand... Worst Fears is the story of how bereavement can turn love hollow and truth destroy a past. It is a headlong, headstrong tale of anger and forgiveness, of worst fears realised but, in the end, best wishes granted.

Fay Weldon's first novel, a sharp and witty parable of the way people see themselves. For several weeks, Esther Sussman had lived in a sordid flat in Earls Court. During the day she read science fiction novels. In the evenings she watched television. And she ate, and ate, and drank, and ate. She had not felt so secure since she spent her days in a pram. It had been her husband's idea that they should go on a diet. Together they would fight middle-age flab and feel young again. It was the diet that had made Esther leave home. The lack of food had made her see things very clearly and she had looked at her life - the daily dusting, sweeping, cooking, washing-up - and found it all pointless. She had not felt strong enough for marriage, and so she escaped. From the fastness of her Earls Court retreat Esther starts to recount the events leading up to her revelation to her friend Phyllis. 'I suppose you really do believe your happiness is consequent upon your size?' she asks. Phyllis does; Esther does not and triumphantly sets out to prove her point.

In Wicked Women, a 1997 New York Times Notable Book of Year and her most celebrated collection of stories ever, critically acclaimed Fay Weldon brings her bracing wit to bear on men, love, therapy, marriage, parenting, and the myriad self-deceptions and half-truths that oil the wheels of "civilized behavior".

In these twenty madcap tales we enter Fay Weldon's world, peopled with therapists who blithely destroy marriages and Family ties, husbands and lovers whose greatest cruelty is their indifference, and clever women navigating the perils and pitfalls of domesticity. In lucid and finely honed prose, Fay Weldon serves up our greatest denials and most imprudent compromises. Her wicked humor and seasoned wisdom are as evident here as always -- and tempered by great compassion for the foibles of the human heart.

'Sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy' Spectator Here are nineteen glittery new tales about the way we live now, as lovers, partners, children, parents. Or alone. Stories of passion, desire, and necessary restraint; of the near future, the recent past; of old habits, new technology; of won't-be mothers and would-be fathers; of houses, ancient and modern. Stories, in fact, to enlighten us to the true and timeless nature of the human condition in this the new age of self-knowledge.

This copulative sotry of passion, jealousy, fidelity and faithlessness is Weldon at her most provocative. Into the lives of Marion, Nora, Roaslie and Susan erupts Leslie Beck, an old flame not quite extinguished. Recently widowed, though somewhat weepy Leslie is still a man with the Life Force. To the four friends he is Leslie the Lucky, Leslie of the magnificent dong – his force forever pulls. Old secrets stir, old rivalries are resurrected ans cores are settled as the friends are catapulted back into their murky past.

A marriage its breakdown and a perforated heroine: one woman, many faces, many personalities and more emerging .....Witty, sexy and funny, Fay Weldon uses a sharp but healing laser to re-lay out notions of love, marriage and the self. A marriage, its breakdown, and a perforated heroine: one woman, many faces, many personalities, and more emerging: a crumbling house, and the rooms of that house (which in our dreams are aspects of the self). Any more trauma and it's all over! Sir Edwin Rice has decided to divorce Lady Angelica, ex-rock star. She has behaved intolerably. He petitions the Court to set him free. Angelica fights back. She is not what he thinks - but then what woman ever is? Angelica takes a job as secretary to her husband's divorce solicitor - only to find one false personality leading to another. How is she to find herself: amongst good wife Angelica, Angel the tart, Jelly the secretary, all-male Ajax, Angela the hopeless - and only one body, albeit a beautiful one, to go round between the lot of them?

'A savage, sadistic even, but beautifully and compellingly written satire' Sunday Express Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish. 'The fun grows steadily blacker and wilder' Guardian Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge. 'A tour de force: a macabre, fast-moving moral fable' The Times A blackly comic satire of the war of the sexes, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil is the fantasy of the wronged woman made real.

The local river has burst its banks, causing flooding in Cynthia's and Step's antiques business. Cynthia, immobile with her leg in plaster, can only comment on the rising tide to her husband and daughter Angela as they endeavour to save the stock by carrying it upstairs. Their elder daughter, high-flying city exec Jane, and her partner, Trevor, arrive to help, with Jane intent on organizing everyone. But the animosity between the sisters is apparent and a startling announcement by Angela opens up another flood - this time of family secrets!3 women, 2 men

A witty, astutely observed study of sexual politics in contemporary society which centres on an all-female reading group. Oriole wants to study contemporary authors, while Anne prefers well-known classics. Pondering the relative merits, the women reveal themselves, their personalities echoing the literary heroines. But not everyone is there for literature. Nefarious designs are uncovered and tensions rise to a dramatic climax.5 women, 2 men

A brilliant and caustic cautionary tale from one of Britain's best-loved and most controversial writers. Hattie and Martyn are a decent, hard-working, ecologically-minded young couple - partners with a new baby, bickering over whether they should get married or not and how to arrange their lives in a morally sustainable way. Hattie has given up work to look after baby Kitty, but she is, frankly, bored by domesticity. They meet Agnieszka, a Polish domestic paragon who's married to a bus driver back home and is sending money back to her old mother and sister. Morally responsible couple that they are, Martyn and Hattie take pity and invite her to live with them. Hattie eventually succumbs to temptation and asks Agnieszka to baby-sit, and soon she's back at full-time work. In fact life is pretty much as it was before the baby came along, except the house is cleaner and better organized, and she's galloping ahead in her career. Martyn is thrilled and wants a marriage ceremony but Hattie refuses: life is perfect as it is, thanks to the existence of Agnieszka, who is modest, docile, prepared to work for a pittance, and not even too pretty for comfort. And if she tells the occasional lie - the little sister turns out to be a child - and her social attitudes are atrocious, well, they can be overlooked. She'll learn our ways along with the English language. But soon, things begin to sour. Martyn and Agnieszka grow closer and it occurs to Hattie now that baby Kitty, given a choice, would choose Agnieszka over her. Her friends are warning her - but that's too vulgar for consideration. And their lives are by now hopelessly intertwined - it's too late. And so the downward spiral continues as visas, a marriage of convenience and even her own friends and family conspire to force Hattie out of her home and her partner's bed ...

A brilliant, inventive and endlessly delightful new memoir from Fay Weldon, one of our most respected commentators on sex, relationships and gender, that picks up where her acclaimed Auto da Fay left off. Fay Weldon, one of our cleverest and best-loved novelists, returns to the rich material of her own eventful life in this stylish blend of memoir and fiction. Mantrapped is the continuing story of Weldon, writer, mother, daughter, sister, cook, campaigner, juggler of life, time, work and money. Weldon has been rich and poor, sad and happy, and throughout it all, well and truly mantrapped -- but does not regret it one bit. From 1960s London (wild parties, no money) to 1970s Somerset (animals, wild parties, no money) Weldon has lived a life rich in adventure and courage. The things you regret, as she points out, are what you don't do, not what you do. In this vastly entertaining book she argues that in a world in which the writer can no longer hope to be anonymous, it is devious, and indeed dishonourable, to keep yourself out of your own books. True to her word, in Mantrapped we get Fay Weldon at her most charismatic, perceptive and entertaining.

Trendy magazine Femina offers two contrasting wives - country-bumpkin Anne and sophisticate Cat - GBP1000 to swap places for a week to compare lifestyles. Anne goes to London to run the chic apartment of Cat's advertising executive husband, while Cat journeys to deepest Devon to cook, clean and care for gentle, sexually-repressed, shopkeeper Derek. Violent snowstorms mean that Cat and Derek are cut off, and when the snow ploughs eventually arrive the life-swap has become a wife-swap.3 women, 2 men

Abandoned wives remain as lingering presences in the homes of their ex-husband's new girlfriends; beautiful young models find their misdemeanours exposed for all the world to see in the tabloids; middle-aged women get swept off their feet and into the criminal underworld by charismatic con-men; young trophy wives get thrown in jail after over-exuberant cavorting on their private yachts; mothers beg their thirty-something career-minded daughters to freeze their eggs in the hope that they may one day bear their grandchildren.

Bold, glamorous, sexy, unrepentant, Fay Weldon's heroines offer a quite unique view of the world as they face their trials without fear or trepidation. Both her legions of existing fans and new readers will be enthralled.

Watching Me, Watching You was Fay Weldon?s first collection of short stories. They vary widely in theme, while remaining avowedly feminist, sometimes bitter, sometimes angry, yet always handled with wit, irony and courage. A sense of sisterhood is one of the most important qualities a woman may possess and its loss, as in one particular story, ?Alopecia?, can bring tragedy. On the other hand, in ?Threnody?, a women?s commune can be gently mocked, and the failings of the leading characters are human rather than masculine.

Fay Weldon?s observation is always wonderfully acute and Watching Me, Watching You is dominated throughout by her humour and intensity of purpose, giving to these stories a marvellous strength and unity.

Isabel Acre?s journey through life has taken her from the Australian outback via the beds and alleys of Fleet Street and the seamier side of Washington high life to a comfortable home in London, a reputation as a serious journalist, and a husband in the new chore-sharing, child-rearing mould. Suddenly, however, the past which Isabel had thought safely behind her becomes the source of actual physical danger. With frightening ease, the worlds of political intrigue and murderous conspiracy intrude into the cosiness of her domestic life. Whom can she trust? Man? When she reveals to her husband that she long ago had an affair with a young American senator, a man who is now challenging for the Presidential nomination itself, and that her son is the love-child of that affair, even she cannot foresee the consequences. Love got her into the predicament in which she finds herself; but can love now get her out of it?

Fay Weldon, one of the pre-eminent writers of our times, has crammed more than most into her years. From the 1930s to the 2000s, Weldon has seen and lived it all. As a child in New Zealand, as young and poor in London, as unmarried mother, as wife, lover, novelist, feminist, anti-feminist, there are few waterfronts that she hasn't covered, few battles she hasn't fought.

'Effervescently funny, honest and insightful. Transports us across years of sadness, brightness, chaos, triumph. An exuberant and thoughtful treat.
Andrea Ashworth

'Wonderfully fluent and entertaining, revealing a life crammed with more gritty drama than a tea-time soap. You can always trust Fay to be provocative – and this time she excels herself.'
Val Hennessey, 'Daily Mail'

'You couldn't make it up. The rich, fruity haphazardness of her experience will startle and amaze. She embarks on a romantic career so potentially damaging – yet so gleefully undertaken – that a modern feminist reaches for the smelling salts. This is a book that reminds us of the value of living first and writing later.'
Lynne Truss, 'Sunday Times'

'It is an astonishing, gripping story, lightly and deftly told, without self-pity. It will delight her many fans.'
Lynn Barber, 'Daily Telegraph'

Richard and Liffey haven't been married long. They are still madly in love, and lust, and so, when Liffey suggests moving out of London to a country cottage in the middle of Somerset, Richard puts aside his reservations; he wants his young, pretty wife to be happy, after all.

But then the real world intervenes, and Richard must remain in London during the week and see his Liffey, now pregnant, only on weekends. And so that leaves poor Liffey, pregnant and alone, burdened, confused and frustrated by biological impulses which are suddenly overwhelming her. Can she rely on Mabs, her seemingly kindly neighbour, and Tucker, her rather over-friendly husband, for solace? Surely there can't be anything sinister in their motives – can there? At least she has no reason to doubt Richard's love for her – or does she?

With wit, wisdom, and a little dose of witchery, Fay Weldon reveals the conflicts that arise from the eternal struggle between male and female.

'Magical – she lays out the ingredients of her brew with a kind of manipulative glee, coolly moulding her characters and then neatly skewering them with mockery.'
'Daily Mail'

This is a study of the shifting inter-relationships between three young couples, following the developments with sympathy and a certain ironic humour, through a span of twenty-five years.3 women, 3 men

An entertainment on marriage by George Melly, Alan Ayckbourn, James Saunders, Harold Pinter, Alun Owen, Fay Weldon, David Campton, Lyndon Brook and John Bowen.1 woman, 1 man or flexible casting

A provocative view of modern society weaved into a tale of explosive love and, perhaps, even, black magic. Scandalous Eleanor Darcy, wild young wife of a world-famous economist, sketches her vision of Utopia to two journalists, Hugo Vansitart and Valarie Jones. In glorious detail, she describes an earthly paradise of peace, love and technological progress where sex is plentiful and money does not exist. Such is Eleanor's charisma that, to their own astonishment, Hugo and Valerie abandon their families and set up home together om a Holiday Inn.