The Right Sort Of Stuff To Make A Man

From debut author Allison Montclair comes an engrossing historical mystery novel set in post-war London, The Right Sort of Man. In a London slowly recovering from World War II, two very different women join forces to launch a business venture in the heart of Mayfair—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Miss Iris Sparks, quick-witted and impulsive, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, practical and widowed with a young son, are determined to achieve some independence and do some good in a rapidly changing world. But their promising start is threatened when their newest client is found murdered and the man arrested for the crime is the prospective husband they matched her with. While the police are convinced they have their man, Miss Sparks and Mrs. Bainbridge are not. To clear his name—and to rescue their fledgling operation’s reputation—Sparks and Bainbridge decide to investigate on their own. Little do they know that this will put their very lives at risk. *BONUS CONTENT: This edition of The Right Sort of Man includes a new introduction from the author and a discussion guide

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon

The little chapel had been so close and hot during the morning service that in spite of the interest Lucy Josling felt in the occasion—it was the first appearance of her betrothed, John Baines, as a preacher in his native place, and the delivery of his farewell sermon before starting for Africa—she could not repress a sigh of relief as she detached herself from the perspiring throng of worshippers and stood for a few moments in the bright sunlight, inhaling the perfume of distant hayfields. "You look a trifle pale, Lucy," said Mr. Baines, senior, a stumpy red-faced man with light sandy hair and a long upper lip. "It's precious warm. I s'pose you'n John'll want to walk back together? Well, don't keep dinner waiting, 'cos that always puts me out. Now then, Sarah, come along: it's too hot to stand gossiping about. Let's get home as quick as we can." Mrs. Baines, a gaunt, thin woman with a long parchment-coloured face and cold grey eyes, looked indignantly at her husband when he talked of gossiping, but said nothing, took his arm and walked away. Lucy put up her parasol and leant against the ugly iron railings which interposed between the dusty chapel windows and the pavement. The congregation had not all dispersed. Two or three awkward-looking young men were standing in a group in the roadway, and, while pretending to carry on a jesting conversation amongst themselves, were casting sheepish looks at Lucy, who was deemed a beauty for ten miles round. They evidently alluded to her in the witticisms they exchanged, so that she had to restrict her angle of vision in case her eyes met theirs when she wished to ignore their offensive existence. Mrs. Garrett, the grocer's wife, who had been inquiring from Miss Simons, the little lame dressmaker—why were village dressmakers of that period, in life and in fiction, nearly always lame?—how her married sister progressed after a confinement, walked up to Lucy and said: "Well, Miss Josling, and how d'you like the idea of parting with your young man? Ain't cher afraid of his goin' off so far, and all among savages and wild beasts too, same as 'e was tellin' on? It's all right and proper as how he should carry the news of the Gospel to them pore naked blacks, but as I says to Garrett, I says, ''E don't ought to go and engage 'isself before'and to a girl as 'e mayn't never come back to marry, and as 'll spend the best years of 'er life a-waitin' an' a-waitin' and cryin' 'er eyes put to no use.' However, 't ain't any business of mine, an' I s'pose you've set your heart upon 'im now, and won't thank me for bein' so outspoken....? "I'm sure 'e's come back from London quite the gentleman; and lor'! 'Ow proud 'is mother did look while 'e was a-preachin'. An' 'ecan preach, too! 'Alf the words 'e used was Greek to me.... S'pose they was Greek, if it comes to that"—she laughed fatly—"Though why th' Almighty should like Greek and Latin better'n plain English, or even 'Ebrew, is what I never could understand....