Coming Home (1995), authored by Rosamunde Pilcher, narrates the tale of fourteen-year-old Judith Dunbar. She remains in England at Saint Ursula’s boarding school while her mother and younger sister move to Singapore to join her father. Judith and a friend grow up under the looming shadow of World War II, a conflict that will profoundly alter their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Muriel Spark’s novel The Girls of Slender Means (1963) depicts life during World War II within a boarding house established for “the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the Age of Thirty Years.” The residents of the boarding house go about their daily jobs, dream of marriage, gossip, and maintain the illusion that life and the world remain unchanged despite the ongoing war.

Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness (1928) tells the story of Stephen Mary Gordon. Named with a traditionally male name by her father, who had fervently wished for a son, young Stephen learns to hunt, shoot, and ride horses. She forms an intimate but ultimately tragic relationship with another woman, challenging an English society that upholds conformity and acceptability. Overwhelmed by grief and isolation, she seeks solace in her work as a writer and a World War I ambulance driver.

The Last September (1929), written by Elizabeth Bowen and set in 1920, follows the life of Lois Farquar. She resides with her uncle and aunt, members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, in a “big house” modeled after Bowen’s own family estate in County Cork, Ireland. As the end of British rule in Ireland approaches, the family grapples with the imminent conclusion of an era.

Elizabeth Bowen’s Bowen’s Court (1942) is a nonfiction account detailing the history of the ancestral house where she spent her childhood summers. She inherited the estate following her father's death.