the book next door

One reason the University Library in Cambridge kicks the ass of the British Library and, from everything I hear though I've never been there, Bodleian, is that you get to roam through the bookstacks in manner of a hungry gazelle in a forest of plums. Sending for things from catalogues is all very well, but it's a strategy that will only ever find you the things that you're looking for. When I was doing my PhD, I found inordinate numbers of useful things by going to where the books I knew I wanted were and scrabbling around in the neighbouring shelves. Some people say I wasted a lot of time also, but where are those people now? I don't know.

All of which I say because I sent for a book in British Library yesterday, and the book-picker in Boston Spa sent me the book next to it on the shelf, viz. The Magnolia Lady, by Constance Smedley (1932):

A lighthearted and exciting story of the strange happenings which befall a party of English people who are staying at a beautiful Italian villa. Into the romantic setting comes a mysterious young man, a modern Shelley, with Shelley's irritating idealism about, and indifference to, his feminine friends.
Completely destitute, he becomes private secretary to the Magnolia Lady. He is soon involved, with the rest of the party, in the plots of international crooks, the operations of a Fascist Secret Society, and a ghost story connected with the pirates who once roamed the Mediterranean.
His love affairs are not the least exciting of his adventures.
The Magnolia Lady, with her fine sense of values, her generosity and surprising impulses, the provocative and shame-free Andre, and Elisabeth, indolent and witty, are most agreeable company.
The villa, the gardens and the bay of Perigi are as vivid as they are enchanting.