Inspired by words marked as "rare" in the Oxford English Dictionary, this A-Z showcases the imaginative, characterful, and inventive possibilities of short fiction.

From a woman trapped in her cul-de-sac to a pilot with a pig gristle nose, the collection travels through small-town Northern Ireland and feuding museums in Malta, encounters a girl who has befriended a taxidermied deer, a man who sells fake chameleons, and an expectant father who loses himself in jazz music. Often weird and wonderful, the thousand-word stories in this collection take on the rare words which sparked them from a slant and, in doing so, produce a series of entertaining and darkly-humorous snapshots of contemporary life.