Miss Mole

Hannah Mole is poor, plain, and past forty, a sharp-tongued woman who has spent years drifting between posts as a companion and housekeeper around the provincial town Young calls Radstowe. Taken on to keep house for a self-important widowed minister and his repressed daughters, she brings wit, warmth, and a stubborn independence to a household that badly needs them, all while guarding a secret from her past that could undo her hard-won respectability. Young writes with dry humor and real tenderness about a woman the world is inclined to overlook. The novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and remains her best-loved book. This free PDF and EPUB edition restores a quietly subversive comedy of English domestic life.