Books like The element of lavishness by Sylvia Townsend Warner

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece examines the glittering yet hollow glamour of the Roaring Twenties as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby pursues love, wealth, and identity across the social divide.

The Bell Jar is the sole novel by Sylvia Plath, a psychologically intense and autobiographical look at a young woman’s decline into mental illness.

In *To the Lighthouse*, Virginia Woolf follows the Ramsay family as they spend a summer at their Scottish holiday home, exploring the depths of memory, longing, and the changing dynamics of adult relationships. The novel blends lyrical prose with a keen awareness of transience.

An ageing butler’s reflective holiday reveals the quiet horrors of duty and the fragile nature of love within a grand English house in the 1950s.

Virginia Woolf’s *The Waves* traces seven friends from childhood to middle age, intertwining their social milestones with a lyrical exploration of inner consciousness, identity, and self‑actualization.

A deeply moving portrait of George Falconer, a middle‑aged English professor, who navigates grief and loneliness after the death of his lover Jim, finding unexpected joys in everyday life.

Flora Poste, a sensible young woman, inherits the dysfunctional Starkadder clan at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex and, with wit and common sense, tries to organize the unruly family members.

Better known for her five volume portrait of English rural life, Our Village, Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) was one of the most prolific female writers of her day. Part critical essay, part autobiography, Recollections consists of a series of sketches on and selections from Mitford's favourite authors, stemming from her desire 'to make others relish a few favourite writers as heartily as I have relished them myself'. The collection is arranged according to Mitford's own eclectic system of categorization including 'fashionable poets', 'cavalier poets', and 'poetry that poets love'. Mitford wears her immense literary skill lightly and Recollections is masterfully written, full of lively wit and fascinating biographical detail. Published just three years before Mitford's death, it was based on earlier articles and letters. Authors included range from Chaucer to Sir Walter Scott and Mitford's friend Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

A weekend trip, a sexy billionaire, and my fragile heart. Chance Easton shields me when my dress rips off during an elevator ride. It’s heated in the garden between us later. I think it’s over until... He offers me a PA job and tells his brother I’m his girlfriend. I don’t refuse either. Three weeks couldn’t hurt. Then I discover he’s mega-rich and his family runs the entire Island. I’m growing attached to my fake boyfriend who is also my boss. He is dark, handsome, and ripped. But I’m in worse trouble than I could have imagined. Someone’s stalking me and they carry a gun. Chance is my only protection. Three weeks can’t run out fast enough.

A portrait of rural Nebraska life, following the bond between an orphan boy and an immigrant girl as they navigate communities and hardships on the 19th‑ and early 20th‑century plains.