Novels

First published in 1979, Benefits is a feminist dystopia in which a patriarchal British government uses the social security system to persecute rebellious women.

Benefits is now available as an e-book, with a new introduction for the 21st century. Click here to read the introduction.

Benefits is available from bookshops and libraries, from Five Leaves Press 
or click here to buy from Amazon

Stand We At Last

his family saga, first published in 1983 and still available through print-on-demand, follows five generations of women, from the mid-19th century to the 1970s. “Travels a long way in time and space. gives a resume of the last hundred years of women’s struggle for emancipation, while telling a rattling good tale.” (Times Literary Supplement)

Stand We At Last is available from bookshops and libraries or click here to buy as an ebook or in print from Amazon

Here Today

This crime novel is set in London in the early 1980s, when most offices still clattered to the racket of manual typewriters, and new technology was only a rumour. A temp goes missing, and another tries to find her. Winner of the 1984 Fawcett Book Prize, it was described by Tribune as “racy, crisp and yes, very thrilling”, and by the New Statesman as “witty, provocative, ironic and lots of fun.”

Here Today is available from bookshops and libraries or click here to buy from Amazon

Closing

The story of four women who went on a sales training course, and the men they left behind. Spare Rib magazine described it as “a subtly feminist version of the power-sex-and-money sagas… highly enjoyable.” Fay Weldon wrote in Books Magazine: “Such a pleasure to read, such fun, so intelligent, so perspicacious, so well-plotted, so unobtrusively moral, so elating, I find myself in danger of writing an extended quote rather than a proper review.”

Closing is available from bookshops and libraries or click here to buy from Amazon

Daddy’s Girls

The story of three sisters growing up in a marriage where the father is violent and unfaithful, and the mother covers up for him. The Sunday Times said: “Fairbairns writes with zest and wit. The cumulative drama is fascinating, as lies spawn more lies, and the women show themselves increasingly handicapped by their failure to register reality.”

Daddy’s Girls is available from bookshops and libraries or click here to buy from Amazon

Other Names

The story of one woman who is about to lose all her money through the collapse of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market, and another who never had any money in the first place. They meet through their shared love for a slick charmer called Boniface Bennett, who has his own plans for both of them. This novel was shortlisted for the 1998 Romantic Novelists’ Association award.

Other Names is available from bookshops and libraries or click here to buy from Amazon