A daughter's life is changed on discovering her adoptive father is in fact her true father; in her imagination, an elderly woman removes the blue mantle from a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, and is delighted to find black lace underneath; a senior academic, about to deliver a lecture to his students, is unsettled by memories of a passionate affair. These spare, elegant, disconcerting stories swerve between the long perspectives of memory and the abrupt questions of children running free: 'Where does the world go when I am dead?' Marjorie Ann Watts, the author of a series of books for children, brings to the ambiguities of adult relationships, and the fault-lines between generations, a rare and sharp-witted understanding of how the past remains forever embedded in the present'

CLEVER POLLY AND THE STUPID WOLF by Catherine Storr has delighted generations of young children. Twelve stories written for the author's daughter, who was scared of the wolf under the bed! Drawing occasionally on well-known fairy tales, and skilfully blending fantasy and reality, these stories are bursting with humour, originality and charm. And Polly, not scared at all, outwits the wolf on each and every occasion! Also in A Puffin Book, the sequel: POLLY AND THE WOLF AGAIN.