Not since Mary Flanagan took the lid off female misbehavior in the short stories of her triumphant literary debut Bad Girls have human quirks undergone such fresh, ironic, and avid scrutiny.In this delectable new collection of stories that move sequentially through the ages of woman, dramatic twists surprise and unnerve the reader. A young girl frightened by her disintegrating grandmother cannot understand the ties that bind her mother to this impossible character. An eighteen-year-old innocent down on her luck is offered her first taste of high life in a fashionable restaurant, not suspecting the ghastly unjust desserts that await her.From childhood violence to romantic ruin in a retirement home, mayhem and magic are never far away in this Flanagan collection. A wedding day becomes the occasion for sartorial outrage. Serial soap-opera romance erupts at a laundromat for one aging woman, while another falls for an unreliable drinking man. A rebellious old artiste in a nursing home lusts after the resident Lothario with wickedly funny consequences. Deliciously conceived, highly flavored, and subtly blended, Mary Flanagan's short stories are a feast for lovers of literature. Read Less