A
science-fiction novel - or, rather, a
logical fantasy - by
John Wyndham. First published 1957, currently published by
Penguin,
ISBN 0-14-001440-3.
It's one of those books that's rather difficult to reduce to blurb form. Maybe you should just read it. If it helps, it was made into a film, entitled Village of the Damned.
Again, it's quintessentially British in nature. The village of Midwich, and the nearby Trayne, Stouch and Oppley, are bastions of mid-twentienth-century England... if they actually existed, I'm sure I could go there now and they'd be exactly the same. The novel even has the reclusive English author living in the big old house at the bottom of the hill.
Unlike most Wyndham novels, this one has a twist at the end. Ooh! I wasn't expecting that. 1950s Britain may not have been resting on its laurels so much after all.