Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Over the Counter #376

What book caught my eye this week as it passed over the library counter and under my scanner? Wartime I do's......

The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson.

From the publisher, Harper Collins:

"About the Book

In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined twenty-four-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London’s Bond Street and set about the delicate business of matchmaking. Drawing on the bureau’s extensive archives, Penrose Halson—who many years later found herself the proprietor of the bureau—tells their story, and those of their clients. We meet a remarkable cross-section of British society in the 1940s: gents with a “merry twinkle,” potential fifth-columnists, nervous spinsters, isolated farmers seeking “a nice quiet affekshunate girl” and girls looking “exactly” like Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh, all desperately longing to find The One. And thanks to Heather and Mary, they almost always did just that.

A riveting glimpse of life and love during and after the war, The Marriage Bureau is a heart-warming, touching and thoroughly absorbing account of a world gone by.

The Marriage Bureau is in development for TV with Carnival Film and Television Ltd, who produced Downton Abbey."

(Over the Counter is a regular feature at A Bookworm's World. I've sadly come the realization that I cannot physically read every book that catches my interest as it crosses over my counter at the library. But... I can mention them and maybe one of them will catch your eye as well. See if your local library has them on their shelves!)

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