These remarkable short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked and new freedoms are embraced. Selected and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes, this collection places works from renowned women writers alongside recently rediscovered voices. Suffused with tension and longing, they form a window onto a remarkable era of writing. Contains: The Cut Finger by Frances Bellerby, Summer Night by Elizabeth Bowen, The Birds by Daphne du Maurier, The Land Girl by Diana Gardner, Listen to the Magnolias by Stella Gibbons, Shocking Weather, Isn't It? by Inez Holden, The First Party by Attia Hosain, Three Miles Up by Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Skylight by Penelope Mortimer, The Thames Spread Out by Elizabeth Taylor and Scorched Earth Policy by Sylvia Townsend Warner.