Alice Thomas Ellis (Anna Margaret Haycraft) has written eleven novels, a collection of short stories, and several nonfiction works. Her novels, all of which are short, are peopled largely by middle-class characters whose mores and manners are the butt of the mordant wit that is often noted by reviewers. Most of the novels contain at least an element of the mystical or the supernatural. Ellis's novels are not simple social comedies; she shares with Iris Murdoch a preoccupation with the nature of good and evil that is informed by her conservative Catholicism. Her fiction has been compared to that of another contemporary Catholic-convert writer, Muriel Spark. Her heroines--male characters are generally of lesser importance--tend to be acquainted with the deadly sin of pride but often possess a spiritual awareness that is contrasted with the hypocrisy of her more sanctimonious but less moral characters, and they frequently act as...