"Sympathy butters no parsnips"

As the leaves start to fall on this side of the pond, fans of this show begin counting down the days until January. 

While you're waiting, you might as well read…

Atonement by Ian McEwan after multiple readings never disappoints.  Briony, age 13, misinterprets a brief scene she witnesses in the library and changes lives in ways even the impending war cannot.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton shifts between 1924 and 1999. When a modern filmmaker decides to make a movie about the Hartford sisters, she finds a primary source in former housemaid Grace Bradley. As Grace thinks back to her years in service, she remembers not the glamour of the times, but the craftily concealed deceit.  

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton opens in 1913 with a four-year-old wandering aboard a ship bound for Australia. The little girl grows up with her adopted family and decade after decade discovers another part of her mysterious past. When she dies, she bestows an English cottage to her grieving granddaughter. Tracing her grandmother’s steps back to England, she fits the pieces together for the reader.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters looks at a once stately household now fallen into disrepair. The Ayres family is befriended by a lonely country doctor. He soon discovers that their ailments are hauntingly difficult to diagnose.