First, I'm going to copy a request from a friend who is a librarian. This person has a patron who wants books (preferably good ones) with the following characteristics
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Oh, and re books - I think the Miss Read suggestion someone made above is brilliant. No romances except a few peripheral characters, no sex or violence except in innocuous offscreen ways. But they don't suck at all. (IMO - I know you hated Miss Clare Remembers.) For a strong female protagonist, I'd recommend the Fairacre series rather than the Thrush Green ones; the former have a more consistent POV in its heroine.
It's a hard set of requirements, because the first two no-romance books that came to mind are Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment and The Deeds of Paksenarrion and given that the heroines of both are soldiers some violence is inevitable. Since you just said no "graphic" violence, the field of mysteries opens up - Miss Marple, Tey's Miss Pym Disposes, Sister Carol Ann O'Marie's mysteries centering around a nun (a secondary character has some romantic scenes but nothing graphic and with her own husband). And there are the Hilary Tamar mysteries, whos protag *might* be female.
I suggest your librarian friend ask that question on the project-wombat mailing list. See http://project-wombat.org for details. Non-members can send queries.
It's mostly for librarians faced with questions they can't answer from their own resources; though there are non-librarians on the list, including me. Its predecessor, the Stumpers list, found answers for questions ranging from the name of the German ambassador to New Zealand in 1934(?) to where to buy clothing for plaster geese.
If the patron wouldn't mind mysteries with little or no violence (there are mentions, for example, of someone being stabbed, but it's a detective telling someone it happened, not direct narration, nor detailed), Heron Carvic's Miss Seeton mysteries might suit. The first is called Picture Miss Seeton. There are five by Carvic; apparently he then died, and the estate has hired other writers, who in my opinion do not do justice to the character. The title character is a spinster in her sixties, who has no interest whatsoever in marriage or romance, though she thinks it's a fine and suitable thing for young people to fall in love and get married.
I've just been through my bookshelves and there seems to be precious little that isn't disqualified under one category or another. The only genres I can think of are cozy mysteries (if that doesn't involve too much violence) and biographies of women whose lives might not produce too many reports of violence, romance, or swearing.
The only thing (apart from Miss Read) on my shelves that might qualify is Joyce Grenfell's wartime journals. There's violence in that the reader knows what happens to soldiers in wars but you don't see any of it. Interesting accounts of someone with an interesting social background touring the world performing to soldiers, often in hospitals. There's a surprising amount of social scene rather than soldier-y stuff, if that makes sense. The book is The Time of my Life: Entertaining the Troops - Her Wartime Journals, Joyce Grenfell, ed. James Roose-Evans.
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It's a hard set of requirements, because the first two no-romance books that came to mind are Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment and The Deeds of Paksenarrion and given that the heroines of both are soldiers some violence is inevitable. Since you just said no "graphic" violence, the field of mysteries opens up - Miss Marple, Tey's Miss Pym Disposes, Sister Carol Ann O'Marie's mysteries centering around a nun (a secondary character has some romantic scenes but nothing graphic and with her own husband). And there are the Hilary Tamar mysteries, whos protag *might* be female.
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It's mostly for librarians faced with questions they can't answer from their own resources; though there are non-librarians on the list, including me. Its predecessor, the Stumpers list, found answers for questions ranging from the name of the German ambassador to New Zealand in 1934(?) to where to buy clothing for plaster geese.
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I went straight from "Don't call me cute while I'm holding this hydrogen torch" to dealing with similarly macho city and law enforcement officials.
Luckily, most people weren't a problem.
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The only thing (apart from Miss Read) on my shelves that might qualify is Joyce Grenfell's wartime journals. There's violence in that the reader knows what happens to soldiers in wars but you don't see any of it. Interesting accounts of someone with an interesting social background touring the world performing to soldiers, often in hospitals. There's a surprising amount of social scene rather than soldier-y stuff, if that makes sense. The book is The Time of my Life: Entertaining the Troops - Her Wartime Journals, Joyce Grenfell, ed. James Roose-Evans.
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