Featuring kleptomaniacs, convicts, roof-walkers and homicidal hippies, this work is populated with lives both ordinary and extraordinary. It tells stories that pull at the sinews of the strange until the strangeness shapes itself into something familiar. At the same time, they mould the day-to-day into something new and wholly unexpected.

Fiction. Kleptomaniacs, convicts, roof-walkers and homicidal hippies: populated as they are with lives both ordinary and extraordinary, Heather Birrell's stories pull at the sinews of the strange until the strangeness shapes itself into something familiar. At the same time, they mould the day-to-day into something new and wholly unexpected. This is a lucid, dextrous collection that marks the ascension of a writer to watch. "Heather Birrell's sentences conjure worlds. These stories scintillate. Smart, sharp, alluring, they're full of the chance encounters, mysteries, missed connections and unexpected tenderness of contemporary life"--Catherine Bush.