The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) role. The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) The Dressmaker (US title The Secret Glass) is a gothic psychological novel written by Beryl Bainbridge. In 1973, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Like many of Bainbridge's earlier works, the novel is semi-autobiographical. In particular, the story was inspired by a relationship that she had with a soldier as a teenager. The characters of Nellie and Margo were based upon two of her paternal aunts. Set in Liverpool and Lancashire during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (novel) Sat by the Door" was required reading at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Having been much rejected by mainstream publishers, Greenlee's spy novel first was published by Allison & Busby in the UK in March 1969, after the author met Margaret Busby in London the previous year, and by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Company, in the US. It was subsequently translated into several languages, including French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish, and German. The cinematic adaptation, also called "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" (1973), was directed by Ivan Dixon, and the novel's author co-wrote the screenplay. "The