Rosanne Dingli

A Place in Society Rosanne Dingli

A daughter in search of a wealthy suitor

Another trapped by skirts and tradition

A son strangled by disease

Denisthorn Hall, an ancient stately home in Gloucestershire, is home to Lord and Lady Croukerne and their children. Intrigue, drama and even death assail the stout doors of the beautiful home, to creep upstairs where the family live their glittering lives, and downstairs to where servants endure very different, but equally momentous situations.

Trouble, passion ... and misfortune ... ignore class barriers.

Lady Athena battles her way through changing fashions, and Lady Geraldine, whose only desire is to ride a horse 'like a man', resents the fact she is so hemmed in. Their lives are planned for them; marriages considered, dowries calculated.

The sisters' lives are stifling; they do almost everything together, but events occur to push them apart. As their mother contrives encounters with appropriate suitors, the girls find that what appears to be independence and freedom is only a leap from one restriction into a new one.

A Place in Society accurately portrays the late Victorian era and its values, customs, fashions and morals. It transports the reader to a time which is at times enviable for its elegance and slower pace, but more realistically seen as a period when even life's more ordinary features were stricter and more difficult.