Claustrophobic, intense, troubled, these twelve astonishing stories hold a flare to the strange, elusive corners of our world, past and present; from the United States of the Gold Rush era to the Berlin of today, from Victorian England to the dusty border towns and high cities of modern South America. A young couple's passionate affair unravels as they wait anxiously in their hotel room for news of a recklessly conceived drug deal. An academic inherits a set of diaries detailing her great-grandfather's development of a bizarre new field of science; an endeavour which has shocking implications for his young daughter and unfaithful wife. And in Greenfly, a housebound woman is driven to distraction by the insects infesting her house - putting strain on an already fractured relationship with her partner. Lee's stories announce the arrival of a writer whose vision is razor sharp, blackly funny and startlingly original.