Adults and children. The misfit and the outcast. The genteel poor. The English seaside. The sad ghost of a young woman. This new compilation of some of Susan Hill's classic short stories brings together so many of her distinctive characters. The stories are affecting, unusual and haunting in every sense, unnerving accounts of the displaced, the dispossessed and the vulnerable, old and young Susan Hill writes with sharpness, a vivid sense of place and great compassion.

‘The Albatross is a most wonderful story and I was tremendously moved by it.’ The composer Benjamin Britten on the long story included here and set in his native Aldeburgh.

‘One sees why Susan Hill's writing has been compared to that of Tolstoy.’