Everyman's Library P G WODEHOUSE

When George, Viscount Uffenham turns the entire family fortune into diamonds and squirrels them away, naturally he forgets where he has hidden the loot and finds himself compelled to let the family seat to stay afloat. So it is that Mrs Cork’s health colony comes into being, providing the perfect setting for crime and young love to flower.

More stories about the incredible Mulliner clan, following on from Meet Mr Mulliner. This volume includes such classic Wodehouse tales as ‘The Man Who Gave Up Smoking’, ‘The Awful Gladness of the Mater’, ‘Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court’ and ‘The Passing of Ambrose’.

The first of the Blandings Castle novels, introducing Lord Emsworth, his family, his secretary – the Efficient Baxter – and the mandatory Wodehouse cast of butlers, aunts, younger sons, detectives, lovers and imposters. Take the 4.15 from Paddington Station to Shropshire and arrive in heaven.

Frederick, Earl of Ickenham, is not the man to run away from other people’s romantic problems, not even when faced with the tangled relationships of his godson, Johnny, Johnny’s girlfriend, Belinda, butler Albert Peasemarch and Peasemarch’s beloved, Phoebe, who happens to be the sister of his employer, bad-tempered Sir Raymond ‘Beefy’ Bastable. Sir Raymond is himself in pursuit of Barbara Crowe. Everything turns on the fate of the script for a film called Cocktail-Time by Bastable’s nephew, Cosmo Wisdom – but just to stir the mixture a little further, Wodehouse throws in American con-artist Oily Carlisle. Now read on...

This sparkling story of transatlantic manners follows the fortunes of playboy Jimmy Crocker in England and America. When Jimmy falls for a girl in London and vows to reform himself as a result, the quest for love leads him to his Aunt Nesta’s house in New York, where his escapades involve impersonating himself and attempting to kidnap Nesta’s odious son Ogden – with the boy demanding a cut of the ransom money. A full flush of minor characters – pretentious poets, butlers, boxers, put-upon husbands and Wall Street businessmen – make the comedy crackle as only Wodehouse knew how.

When a man needs only two hundred pounds to marry his cook and buy a public house, one would expect his life to be trouble free, but the fifth Earl of Shortlands has to reckon with his haughty daughter, Lady Adela, and Mervyn Spink, his butler, who also happens to be his rival in love. Mike Cardinal offers to sort out the problem by pretending to be Stanwood Cobbold but his way is blocked by Spink and reformed burglar, Augustus Robb. Confused? Let P.G.Wodehouse untangle the complications in this light-hearted comedy which ends happily – for almost everyone.

These are strange times for the English aristocracy. When hard-up William FitzWilliam Delamere Chalmers, Lord Dawlish – otherwise known as Bill – sets off for America to make a fortune, he does not expect to be left one by an American millionaire with whom he strikes up a passing acquaintance. Honour demands that Bill Dawlish should restore this unexpected windfall to the rightful heirs, but this involves him in complicated adventures with greedy relations, haughty dowagers, dogs, chickens and an angry monkey. Calm is eventually restored but not before Bill has met the woman of his dreams and married her in the church on Fifth Avenue.

When rich and imperious American widow Beatrice Chavender eats a forkful of inferior ham at her sister's country house near London, it affects the lives of everyone around her - her sister, her brother-in-law, her sister's butler, her sister's poor relation Sally, Sally's fiance Lord Holberton, and, most of all, Mrs Chavender's own one-time fiance, 'Ham King' J. B. Duff, whose rotten product spoils her breakfast.

Pongo Twistleton is in a state of financial embarrassment, again. Uncle Fred, meanwhile, has been asked by Lord Emsworth to foil a plot to steal the Empress, his prize pig. Along with Polly Pott (daughter of old Mustard), they form a deputation to Blandings Castle, bent on doing a "bit of good".

It all starts with an umbrella, the best to be found in the Drones Club. From such an innocent beginning Wodehouse weaves a comic tale of suspense and romance involving one of his most distinctive early heroes, Ronald Eustace Psmith, monocled wit and devil-may-care boulevardier. Unusually for Wodehouse, this is not only a light comedy but also an adventure story in which crime and even gun-play drive the plot.

Always to be found in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest where he is a favourite with the accomplished barmaid, Miss Postlethwaite, Mr Mulliner, the narrator of Meet Mr Mulliner, returns for another series of stories about his extraordinary relations, including Lancelot, Adrian, Cyril, Sacheverell, Eustace, Egbert and Augustine Mulliner. In a text teeming with tipsy bishops, angry baronets, lady novelists and haughty dowagers, the Mulliner boys always manage to come out on top.

While pursuing the love of his life, American heiress Pauline Stoker, Lord 'Chuffy' Chuffnell borrows the services of Jeeves, the perfect gentleman's gentleman. But when Chuffy finds out that Jeeves's employer, Bertie Wooster, was once engaged to Pauline himself – until the engagement was broken by her tough-egg father, abetted by loony-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop – such fearsome complications ensue that even Jeeves has difficulty securing a happy ending.

A damsell in distress - an Almost Blandings novel set in Belphi Castle, Hampshire and a two week house party for the son-and-heir's 21st.

The titles of the first story in this collection – 'Jeeves Takes Charge' – and the last – 'Bertie Changes His Mind' – sum up the relationship of twentieth-century fiction's most famous comic characters. In between them, the various feeble-minded men and lively young women who populate Wooster's world appeal to Jeeves to solve their problems and are never disappointed.