Fairy tales, myths, and history are seamlessly woven into the sophisticated plots of the stories in this collection from Whitbread Award winner Mark Haddon, author of The Mysterious Murder of a Dog in the Night-Time. Loneliness and isolation from the world become the cause of difficult experiences. And even when fragile, tenuous connections arise between the most dissimilar people, which seem to promise a glimmer of hope, something causes these connections to break - and most often this ends in disaster. In "Revolver", a man's life changes completely after an incident with a gun. In “The Island,” a princess finds herself stranded on a remote island in the midst of war. Contains strong language