I first discovered the Lucia series 20 years ago. The only books that I love enough and lose myself in enough to read over and over every few years are Pride and Prejudice and the Lucia series. I know exactly what's going to happen, but I anticipate it and enjoy it no less for knowing. E. F. Benson perfects social gamesmanship and sets it in a stereotypically quaint English town (watch "Hot Fuzz" for an incredibly funny, very bloody, send up of quaint olde england). Mapp and Lucia is easily in my top ten all time favorite books.