From the author of the highly acclaimed Four by Four and Among the Hedges comes a collection of unsettling, captivating stories.

The eleven stories in this collection approach themes of childhood and adolescence, guilt and redemption, power and freedom. There are children who resist authority and experience the process of growing up with shock, and loneliness; alienated young girls whose rebellion lies under the surface—subterranean,

In "The Net," a girl and her mother arrive at their secluded cabin on a frozen lake to find their fishing net has been attacked, a massive hole ripped through the middle. After the net has been mended and the night's catch eaten, the daughter sits awake playing with a bit of leftover netting string. When she was a girl, her grandmother taught her to make string figures—just as her mother had taught her—a game played

Miss Dove Meriwether is the daughter of a vicar. Prim, proper, and devoted in her faith, she isn't prepared for the way her heart flutters when a viscount suddenly appears at the church asking for absolution. He's entirely too handsome—and rakish—for her own good. She doesn't have time to entertain him when she has other duties to her father's congregation. After the vicar falls ill, Dove is thrust into a role she never imagined she