The Love-Child by Edith Olivier

Title: The Love-Child
Author: Edith Olivier
Publication: The Richards Press, hardcover, 1927
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 20th century England

Description: Lonely after her mother dies, Agatha recognizes she wasn’t much happier when her mother was alive and thinks back, remembering the childhood fun she had with an imaginary friend, Clarissa, until her governess shamed her out of harmless fancies.

Catching Up with Miss Hargreaves, Poppy, and Summer in Cape Cod

Miss Hargreaves (1939) by Frank Baker

This book is a warning to anyone who ever embroidered a story or made something up that seemed hilarious to him (or her) but perhaps not so much to other people.  Norman Huntley and his friend Henry Beddow are on vacation chatting to a sexton when they make up an eccentric older lady called Miss Hargreaves.  Carrying on with their silliness, Norman sends a letter inviting her to visit his family in the Cathedral town of Cornford.  When he gets home, he is horrified to find someone named Hargreaves has sent a telegram stating she will arrive on Monday!  No one believes Norman when he says he doesn't know her and did not invite her, and once she arrives Norman is torn between pride in his creation, embarrassment at her behavior, and a strange affection for her that comes and goes. Miss Hargreaves' visit to Cornford threatens to destroy his life - unless or even if it is Norman who is behaving irrationally.  This is an amusing story, recommended by Simon at Stuck in a Book.