Rediscover the brilliance of Business as Usual in the Mermaid Collection - classic books by popular pioneering female authors republished to delight new generations of readers.
'The Mermaid Collection is so sure footed that you're unlikely to go wrong' India Knight‘
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A witty, charming and funny illustrated novel in letters about a young woman working her first job in 1930s London!
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'Pay day, my lamb. And I’m alive to claim it! No earnings have ever pleased me so much. And I’m fairly certain that the management have seldom spent a salary to less purpose....’
September, 1931: Hilary Fane – 27, university graduate, recently engaged to Basil – doesn’t need to work. But work she shall, much against the advice of her family and fiancé, when she is taking on as a clerk on the Book Floor of Everyman’s department store in Oxford Street.
And oh what work! Writing letters home to Edinburgh, Hilary tells of the scrapes she gets into with tricky customers and her even trickier colleagues – including ineffectual Miss Hopper and her nemesis rattish Miss Sparling.
Yet dashing Mr Grant, Head of Publicity, has his eye on Hilary. He moves her from subscriptions to sales to the library, where her good humour and sense aren’t entirely appreciated by all.
Hilary imagines this is just business as usual – little realising that something momentous is shifting inside her. . .
Reader acclaim:
'Charming and authentic. An absolutely delightful novel'
'A wonderful book. It made me laugh and laugh'
'Delicious. Wonderful picture of London in the 1930s.'
