Flora's Lot [Import] [Audio CD]

Katie Fforde (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2005

Flora Stanza leaves her London life in a bid to join the family antiques business. However, she is a little put out when she doesn’t receive the warm welcome she expected. But, keen to avoid a certain man back in London, Flora sets about rebuilding the crumbling business.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This 12th romance from Britisher Fforde (Restoring Grace) features a heroine as flintily naïve as she is endearing. Upon inheriting 51% of the Stanza and Stanza antique auction business from her uncle Clodio, Flora Stanza sublets her London flat for six months, packs up her pregnant kitty, Imelda, and heads for the countryside hamlet of Bishopsbridge. A chilly welcome and a partial buyout offer await her from cousin Charles, the 49% inheritor who has been running the business for years and is looking to gain operational control for himself and scheming fiancée Annabelle. Despite being banished to a remote cottage and run-ins with Annabelle, Flora decides to stick it out. Acceptance in the local church choir and a growing fascination with the antique business (enhanced by the presence of a number of interesting local men) reinforce her decision. The jejune prose has a schoolgirl quality, but Fforde brings an appealing, bumbling innocence to the age-old formula of a single woman against the vicissitudes of fortune and family, as Flora finds true love on her very own road show. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Flora, young and pretty, takes up the family country antiques business with the hope of learning a trade and shedding her lackluster London life. She knows nothing about antiques but has inherited 51 percent of the assets. When Flora insists, her uptight cousin Charles and his chilly fiancee, Annabelle, warm up enough to lend her a remote cottage to live in and assign her dogsbody work in the firm. With ready intelligence and a cheerful disposition, Flora soon earns approval from the staff, if not from Charles. In short order, she joins the local choir, gives frumpy Annabelle a makeover, and finds homes for kittens, all the while gaining expertise and developing her eye for good pieces over fakes. She discovers that she has a flair for marketing and the antiques business, but, to her horror, finds herself falling in love with Charles. Readers can only guess what happens next. Popular novelist Fforde's latest, following Restoring Grace (2006), is charming, romantic, and sweet. A pleasure to read. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Audiobooks (July 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1856868176
• ISBN-13: 978-1856868174
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,661,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Likeable and funny, August 21, 2005

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flora's Lot (Paperback)

Flora Stanza has inherited a major share in the family antiques business and is determined to prove that she is not just a pretty face and to contribute her share in making the business more profitable. She sub lets her London flat and settles into a tiny cottage in the country town where her distant cousin, Charles Stanza is presently running the antiques auction house with the aid of his horsey, dominating fiancee, Annabella. They, naturally, resent her being there, and do everything to convince her to sell her shares to them and move back to London. Flora takes to the trade at once and is determined to put up with any inconvenience to prove herself. There are lots of references to the TV shows, Antiques Roadshow and Bargain Hunt and to the real grinding slog of house clearing, including the disgusting filth of some of the premises that auctioneering firms have to endure. It's a chick lit book, light and amusing...lovely for an in-between read and I knew that I loved the author when I read her bio at the beginning of the book...."The authors' hobbies are housework and ironing, but, unfortunately, she doesn't have much time for either as she feels it her duty to keep a close eye on the afternoon chat shows!"

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charming and engaging new novel from this highly skilled author, March 9, 2007

By 

Ellen Wertheimer "British novel reader" (Bala Cynwyd, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bidding for Love (Hardcover)

Bidding for Love, released in England as Flora's Lot, is another charming and engaging novel from Katie Fforde. Her heroine finds herself deeply involved in helping to run a low-profile auction house and bring it into the twenty-first, post Antiques Roadshow, century. While her innocence is a trifle overdone, she is nonetheless delightful, impervious to insults and perhaps more crafty than she initially appears. Her adventures as she works her way towards success in love and in business have their humorous side, even as the reader knows that she will succeed in the end.

Ms Fforde is an excellent author whose works, concededly not heavy going, draw the reader in to the world of her heroines. She is a superb writer who makes her characters and their worlds come alive. The high quality of the writing, the charm of her style and her characters, and the humor place these books on a higher level than the usual chick-lit.

For reasons I do not understand, Ms Fforde seems to have remained relatively unheralded in this country. Fans of Rosamunde Pilcher and Georgette Heyer will love this author. To say nothing of fans of Antiques Roadshow.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun and lighthearted homage to Heyer's 'The Grand Sophy', July 23, 2006

By 

Helen Hancox "Auntie Helen" (Essex, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flora's Lot (Mass Market Paperback)

Katie Fforde writes lighthearted and fun romances, often with a small village theme or some other 'hook' to add a bit of interest.

Flora's Lot is about Flora Stanza, a Londoner through and through, who inherits the controlling share of an auction house business in the west country and decides to spend a couple of months working there to see how it all works. Of course she's a decidedly spare part, knows nothing about antiques or auctions and discovers that the other director, her sort-of cousin Charles, is firmly wrapped round the thumb of the horsy Arabella, to whom he is engaged. Neither Charles nor Arabella want Flora - they want her to sell a few of her shares to Arabella and trot back to London.

Flora, evidently a recalcitrant young woman, decides to stay and help out around the office as a kind of office junior, something for which she is apparently qualified. And despite her cousin and his fiancée wanting her to leave, they provide her with both accommodation (a holiday cottage in the middle of a wood in the middle of nowhere) and a land rover to use when her car is damaged.

A few more people join in the plot - Henry, a mysterious local handsome man she keeps bumping into; William who sleeps on the holiday cottage's couch occasionally; some of the staff of the auction house and the choir that Flora joins - and her cat Imelda's kittens who are born in her shoe cupboard.

What was interesting about reading this book is that it felt very familiar... And I soon realised why. If any of you have read Georgette Heyer's "The Grand Sophy" you will find that this is a modern take on that story. The hero even has the same name! The events aren't exactly the same, of course, but the overall plot is very like The Grand Sophy. I think this is probably something Katie Fforde recognised as at one point she mentions, in a scene at the auction house, that someone had a whole series of first edition Georgette Heyer novels, perhaps a little nod and wink to those of us who spotted the similarities.

Flora's Lot is of course a modern story - sex doesn't wait until marriage, people are seen wandering around in states of semi nudity, people get drunk and make improper advances. But it's a fun story with likeable characters, including the cat, and a satisfying, if slightly facile, resolution. Read and enjoy!