"Jack Foley continues to grow and surprise. Add to his accomplishments in poetry, criticism, literary scholarship, and radio promotion of poetry and poets, this small, brilliant collection of tales, short plays and occasional prose pieces. Foleys unique combination of insight, originality, erudition, andhumanity, combined with a hitherto unsuspected flair for story-telling, are in full display here -- from a bittersweet faux Irish fable to a tongue-only-partly-in-cheek apologia for the Australian literary hoax Ern Malley (the intellectuals J T Leroy), from a purgatorial comedy of family manners to a Shavian satire full of pith and vinegar, set in Hell and starring the Devil and G B Shaw himself, to the collections eponymous masterpiece, an arabesque from a 21st century Scheherazade. The book is a bracing pleasure. -- Christopher Bernard, author of "Voyage to a Phantom City", "A Spy in the Ruins", "Dangerous Stories for Boys", "In the American Night" & "The Rose Shipwreck".