Here are rarities: seven stories by a writer known best for work in long forms, a writer who hasn't often turned his hand to stories. Here are stories from every period of his career, in an array of genres: here are a little legend from the middle ages, a parody of those beloved Edwardian travellers' tales, an imagined moment from the life of an English poet and a visit from an English novelist. Here are a ghost story about memory, and an SF story, also about memory. And a final fable about how only the brave deserve the fair. The seven stories here collected for the first time are distinct pieces with different ambitions -- some bright gems, some dark -- but read them and discover the subtle lights that link them, the obsessive themes of twenty years in a writer's life: memory, time, loss, and the hope in writing.