Just when she thought there was nothing left to live for, middle-aged underachiever Phyl is handed £65,000 and told to go out and turn her life around.

Inspired by a 1920s book on relationships by the bewitching Mrs Natalia Tempest, she sets her heart on opening an old-fashioned marriage bureau and bringing together lost souls just like herself.

But the lost souls who come to her door are about to embroil her in the strangest adventure of her life.

Though her every move is dogged by a puritanical barrister who wants her business shut down, Phyl is determined to engineer at least one lasting love-match.

If it isn’t for the sex-obsessed estate agent, then it might be the pretty City boy, or the bovine young woman whose job is to think up book titles. Surely, someone among them can find a partner!

But there are mysterious forces working against Phyl and even her beloved Mrs Tempest is not entirely what she first seemed to be.

Comic, heart-warming and as eccentric as its heroine, Mrs Tempest’s Marriage Bureau is part romantic comedy, part mystery and a big part farce. For fans of PG Wodehouse and Helen Fielding, HA Ferdinand’s books combine sharp wit with a fondness for the oddballs, misfits and cynics of this world.

H. A. Ferdinand is the author of An Evening with the Dymond Sisters, Intelligent People and The Baron. She is a Londoner who also writes under other names and you can follow her blog at haferdinand.com.