In his dazzling collection of stories, Shena Mackay conjures up nightmares of the unexpected from the everyday world: murder in country villages; bizarre happenings in a seaside town; a decaying hotel where a colony of elderly eccentrics live out their days. A lonely child in a small Kent village finds warmth and community in a bohemian hilltop cottage; a writer who feels she has lost her gift dreams of a submerged handbag, its contents spilling onto the ocean floor; when a mother tries to wash 'the most beautiful dress in the world' for her daughter, its disintegration is the beginning of her own. Written with Mackay's distinctive richness of language, offbeat view, and blend of humour, compassion and sharp observation, these are stories from a master of the form.