Miss Read

The village schoolmistress, Miss Read, greets retirement with excitement, and settles down to endless lazy days, but her idyll is interrupted....

The first charming Caxley tale introduces the deep-rooted camaraderie between Septimus Howard....

Gossip From Thrush Green returns readers to that delightful English village, neighbour to Fairacre, for a golden summer....

Fairacre is a village of cottages....

Charles Henstock, vicar of Thrush Green, is living in his new vicarage after the old one burned down. In its place are eight retirement homes, but there’s heated debate in the village about the new residents....

‘As I have been given a large and magnificent diary for Christmas... I intend to fill it in as long as my ardour lasts.’ Luckily, Miss Read’s ardour lasts all year, encompassing every aspect of Fairacre life....

As spring begins at Thrush Green, a series of local dramas takes hold of the community....

The villagers of Thrush Green celebrate Christmas traditionally, in a way that has hardly changed over the generations. But not everything is as peaceful as it seems....

From the rural festivities in 'Village Christmas' to the poignant tale of a white robin, these two stories demonstrate the wry wit and light touch of Miss Read....

After the death of Emily Davis, school teacher and well-loved member of the local community, many of those who knew her cast their minds back to days past and to their memories of Emily....

Anna Lacey had spent most of her 20 years on her Essex farm. She was not prepared her for the shock of relocation to a raw new neighbourhood....

Illegal battering of gingernuts and conkers in a murky corner of the playground; a procession of bearers of lost property interrupting the telling of the story of Joseph....

The end of the school year often brings unmitigated rapture for schoolteachers, and so it should for Miss Read....

The Howards of Caxley begins on a fine May morning in the fateful year of 1939....

On a bright summer's day, old Miss Clare, now retired from teaching, awaits the visit of her oldest friend, Emily Davis. In between, she recalls the events in their 70-year friendship....

The two-hundred-year-old cottages known as Tyler’s Row....

Mrs Pringle, the lugubrious school cleaner, has always been a favourite character in the Fairacre series....

Nestled in the heart of the Cotswolds, Thrush Green is normally a peaceful place....

The Cotswold village of Thrush Green is a particularly close-knit community, where many of the inhabitants have known each other since childhood....

A mouse's appearance on Christmas Eve in a widow's bedroom leads to a chance encounter with a small boy....