This final collection of Joan Aiken’s stories, taken from nearly sixty years of her writing career, is rooted in the classic fables and fairy tales familiar to us all, but which she has brought up to date by adding her own voice, and a touch of that mysterious added ingredient that makes you return to them again and again, at any age. They range from fantastic fairy tales to science fiction, from a future where the sun no longer shines thanks to human folly, to one where all the best words are kept locked away in a forbidden forest . . . they take us to lands that could be from our own past, where we can call upon magical friends like the mysterious Miss Samphire, or long lost magic spells to save a castle from Viking attack. These are absolutely timeless tales, for as she said:’They come from nowhere, and they are aimed at nobody’s ear; or rather they are aimed at the ear of anybody who happens to pass by just at that moment’