Jeanette Winterson is one of literature's most inventive writers, and in her first collection she demonstrates her mastery of the short story. With language as dazzling as the wondrous visionary landscape they evoke, these seventeen works transport the reader to worlds in which sleep is illegal, the lives of lonely department store clerks are transformed by fairies, the rich wear coal jewelry on an island of diamonds, and the living laminate their dead. Here is a universe where rooms go missing, women hive birth to their lovers, and the young contemplate God's creative powers through pet tortoises. These beguiling stories, by turns startlingly passionate and cannily satirical, chart an extraordinary writing career. They are cause for celebration among her readers, and a wonderful introduction for everyone else.