Second Fiddle

Mary Wesley. Penguin Books, $7.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-14-011947-3

Beautiful, independent and brazenly manipulative, 40-ish Laura Thornby plays muse to 23-year-old aspiring novelist Claud Bannister in ``Wesley's mordantly humorous take on upper-middle-class British life,'' remarked PW. (July)

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