1922. Vivien is 24 and a spinster. She wears fashionably droopy clothes, but she is plain and --- almost worse --- intelligent. At nearly six feet tall, she is known unkindly by her family as “the giantess.” Fortunately, Vivien is rich, so she can travel to London and bribe a charismatic gentleman publisher to marry her. What he does not know is that Vivien is pregnant by another man and will die in childbirth in just a few months. Fay Weldon, with one eye on the present and one on the past, offers Vivien’s fate, along with that of London between World War I and World War II. This is a city fizzing with change, full of flat-chested flappers, shell-shocked soldiers, and aristocrats clinging to history.

THE NEW COUNTESS is the final novel in Fay Weldon's trilogy that began with HABITS OF THE HOUSE and continued with LONG LIVE THE KING. The bestselling novelist and award-winning writer of the pilot episode of the original "Upstairs Downstairs" lifts the curtain on British society, upstairs and downstairs, under one roof.

Your writer, in conjuring this tale of murder, adultery, incest, ghosts, redemption and remorse, takes you first to a daffodil-filled garden in Highgate, North London, where, just outside the kitchen window, something startling shimmers on the very edges of perception. Fluttering and chattering, these are our kehua---a whole multiplying flock of Maori spirits (all will be explained) goaded into wakefulness by the conversation within.

As 1901 comes to an end, there is much to be grateful for: The Dilberne fortune has been restored, and the grand Dilberne Court has been saved. Lord Robert's son, Arthur, is happily married to Chicago heiress Minnie, who is pregnant and trying to come to terms with her new role as lady of the manor, and her charming but controlling mother-in-law, Lady Isobel. While Lord Robert and Lady Isobel debate the future of their recently orphaned niece, Adela, she runs away and joins a travelling group of spiritualists and has a life-saving run-in with the king.

As the Earl of Dilberne faces serious financial concerns, the ripple effect spreads to everyone in the household. Lord Robert can see no financial relief to an already mortgaged estate, and his thoughts turn to securing a suitable wife (and dowry) for his son. The arrival on the London scene of Minnie, a beautiful Chicago heiress with a reputation to mend, seems the answer to all their prayers.