A dozen stories- a dozen ways of looking at love, or the lack of love. Over five previous collections, A. L. Kennedy has shown herself to be a master of the short form, with a perfect way with sentences and a voice so distinct as to be instantly recognisable.

The dazzling new collection from the Costa Prize-winning author of Day and The Blue Book.

She doesn’t ever lie to him unless it’s for the best.

A husband and wife wait for a train as their relationship unspools silently around them. A woman contemplates the idea of her lover dying as she queues in a bank. An almost impossibly uncomfortably lunch culminates in a passionate kiss. In this dazzling collection of stories lies the battlefield of the heart, where characters who have suffered somehow emerge - haltingly, awkwardly - into the astonishment of intimacy.