From the septuagenarian prostitute exposed in a tabloid sting to the Queen Bee of a local dramatic society upstaged by her cleaner; from the nine-year-old girl caught in the crossfire of her parents’ divorce to the widow stranded on an Antarctic cruise during the COVID pandemic; from the doctor’s wife confronting the enormity of her husband’s online dealings to the forgotten musical comedy star yearning to return to the spotlight; these twelve captivating and compelling stories explore a diverse range of female experience. By turn humorous and poignant, whimsical and provocative, they make for richly rewarding reading.

The tone and the mood of the stories are richly varied: at times, his writing verges on dark comedy; at others, it feels mythical and dramatic. I hope that people will enter into Arditti’s world — and I suspect that the lives and faces that linger for each reader will reflect the stories that resonate most deeply with our lives and stories. Part of the beauty of what Arditti does is to invite us to find our full self and our true meaning in the lives that he creates and opens up for us.

I think these are brilliant. They are a mix of the everyday and the remarkable – quite dark in places and really cleverly assembled.

Michael Arditti is an acclaimed novelist, short story writer and critic. His novels are The Celibate (1993), Pagan and her Parents (1996), Easter (2000), Unity (2005), A Sea Change (2006) The Enemy of the Good (2009), Jubilate (2011), The Breath of Night (2013), Widows and Orphans (2015), Of Men and Angels (2018), The Anointed (2020), The Young Pretender (2022) and The Choice (2023). He was awarded an Honorary D Litt from the University of Chester and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.