Award-winning novelist Lesley Glaister introduces a showcase of four accomplished writers – with two exceptional stories each from Mandy Sutter, Sidura Ludwig, Polly Wright and Myra Connell.

One of my favourite occupations is to dawdle along a street at dusk, just as the lights come on but before the curtains are drawn – for the tantalizing glimpses of other lives – teasing, intriguing, suggestive of so much more. And it is with a similar pleasure that I pick up a collection of short stories by new writers, wondering what glimpses of life they will give me, what they will have lit up within their frames.

Short stories demand attentive reading. I find it best not to gorge on too many, but to read one at a time and allow it space to settle in the imagination. A slim volume such as this one, which gives a taster of the work of just four writers, offers each story the space for the considered reading it deserves

— Lesley Glaister