Stella Gibbons' hilarious comic novel of rural life, in Penguin Black Classics. When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex.

At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who saw 'something nasty in the woodshed'.

But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people, and resolves to take each of them in hand. A hilarious parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm (1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.