‘Surely you can sit on a seat for a few minutes without getting into conversation with a perfectly strange young man!’

Julia smiled. ‘It isn’t as easy as you seem to think.’

While waiting in Kensington Gardens for her stuffy fiance, Julia Harburn, at a loose end following the remarriage of her father, encounters Stephen Brett, a young mining engineer just back from Africa on exciting business involving an abandoned mine and a perfect blue sapphire. It’s a brief meeting, soon forgotten in her fiance’s irritation and her own relocation to a boarding house run by the theatrical (and lovable) Miss Martineau, who also finds her congenial work in a hat shop. But Julia has little time to settle in before a letter arrives from a hitherto unknown uncle in Scotland, inviting her to visit as his health is failing and he hopes to heal the rift between himself and Julia’s father. She knows her father, traveling in Europe with his new wife, would disapprove, but she sets off for Scotland anyway. Her decision, naturally, reaps all sorts of complications, and Stephen reappears to dramatic effect.

The Blue Sapphire, first published in 1963, is justifiably a favorite of D.E. Stevenson fans. A spirited heroine, an array of delightful characters both irritating and adorable, romance and comedy in equal parts, and the wanderlust-inducing beauty of Scotland-all mixed here in one of Stevenson’s most satisfying and entertaining confections. This new edition includes an autobiographical sketch by the author.

Miss Stevenson has her own individual and charming way of seeing things. Western Mail