<p><em>The Angel House</em> is the third in the remarkable series of free-standing novels that cemented Kerstin Ekman''s reputation in her native Sweden during the 1970s, long before she achieved world-wide success with novels like <em>Blackwater</em> and <em>The Forest of Hours</em>. It follows the fortunes of the inhabitants of a provincial Swedish town familiar from the previous two books in the sequence, <em>Witches'' Rings</em> and <em>The Spring</em>, from the late 1920s to the Second World War, when events beyond the boundaries of neutral Sweden threaten to disrupt the regular rhythms of life.</p><p><br></p><p>With this sequence of novels focussing primarily on the lives of ordinary women, Kerstin Ekman provides an alternative, subversive history of the community in which she grew up, and gives a finely-drawn portrait of a town in transition. </p>