Jane Duncan

"My Friend Flora is set in the 'Reachfar' country-the Black Isle in Rossshire-where the narrator, Janet Sandison, spent her childhood and which was the setting for the first of Jane Duncan's enchanting books, My Friends the Miss Boyds. The same marvellous sense of the countryside and its people gives its colour and warmth to the story of Flora 'Bedamned' and her family."

The 9-year-old daughter of a prosperous farmer tells of the arrival of six frivolous old maids and how they disrupt the life of a Scottish highland village.

A bereaved widow sailing back to Scotland meets three women on the ship who draw her out and renew her interest in others.