From the author of Hallucinating Foucault comes this stunning collection of stories united by the themes of pleasure, passion, jealousy and revenge. Patricia Duncker creates worlds where the apparently innocent are not harmless and no one ever turns out to be exactly what they seem. In 'The Arrival Matters' - the extraordinary novella which crowns the collection - the characters play out the sinister and atmospheric end game of a mysterious and supernatural history of love. Elsewhere, a jealous husband pursues his adulterous wife through the streets of Paris, a forbidden book subverts an authoritarian state, a TV crew get considerably more than they bargained for, and a lesbian community in uproar is described with wry humour and tenderness.