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Cora Caley - A woman of fantastic beauty and wealth. A woman who had been denied nothing. Now her most incredible enterprise had been completed. She had transformed acres of Australia' hot and arid desert into lush greenery and in its midst had built The House - a house of unequalled grandeur. And to crown her latest and most splendid achievement she was going to be hostess for the perfect party. She had spared nothing to ensure absolute elegance and lavishness for her guests.

Yet, as the party began Cora felt a tremendous sense of failure (she knew Plan X would most assuredly have to be instituted). The party was failing, but only because it somehow seemed to culminated the terrible vacuum of Cora's own life. She was doomed to emptiness and she was terrified.

As the party progresses she is confronted by ex-husbands, former lovers, her sister, her daughters, servants and to all she seems on the verge of madness. Maybe she is, but then again maybe her own realization of the sterility of her life is her one sane thought - maybe it is her lifeboat.

Weaving through reality and fantasy, Cora reveals herself as Everywoman struggling not only for happiness and love, but for the certainty of her own definite and meaningful character.

New readers will be amazed at Jane Saint's bizarre adventures on her journey through the sticky Quagmire of patriarchal ideas, and those who followed her in earlier travails will be delighted to meet up again with Mr Rochester the cat, the loyal demon Zip and Agatha Hardcastle the witch of Hepstonhall.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Jane Saint and the Backlash) - essay
• 9 - The Consciousness Machine (revised) - novelette
• 43 - Jane Saint and the Backlash - [Jane Saint] - novella

Josephine Saxton is able to unravel the disturbing implications behind the most innocent and everyday activities with an acute and very witty eye for detail and brilliant prose. These stories are specifically concerned with the more macabre or stultifying aspects of eating and holidaying.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - A Little Tour of Hell - short story
• 7 - Spaghetti Halifax - short story
• 21 - The Sea Urchin - short story
• 29 - The Rabbit Pie Man - short story
• 37 - Tea and No Sympathy - short story
• 49 - Dinner at the Manse - short story
• 69 - Virginia and Bread - short story
• 77 - Souvenirs of Devon - short story
• 85 - The Cure - short story
• 93 - First Day at Herradura - short story
• 103 - The Golden Mile - short story
• 111 - Jackie Loves Food - True - short story
• 121 - Oily Foreign Muck - short story
• 137 - Falling in Love at Christmas - short story

Meet Magdalen, a woman who is on her own planet, out to lunch and on her own trip...

She moves through time and space, from a private mental hospital to an alien spaceship where she is interrogated about human behaviour and the function of sex. Is Magdalen mad, or have the aliens really landed? She weaves her way through the fantasies of those around her - husband Clive, psychiatrist Dr Murgatroyd, lovers, friends and friend's lover - until, finally, she can reclaim her own existence...

During the day a blazing and merciless sun beat down on "the boy" and at night a friendless and cold darkness enveloped him. It was a bleak and lonely countryside over which he had been wandering for ten years. A rare tree, bird or wild animal was the only life he encountered during his desolate trek through his young years of roaming. Infrequently, he was fortunate enough to find shelter and food in the shops of deserted villages; otherwise he foraged what he could from the nearly barren land. Contact with other humans was his innermost and greatest fear.

But the day came when his curiosity overcame his sensibilities of self-preservation and he was drawn to the sound of a great wailing not far from a place where he had come to rest.

Form that moment on his whole existence took on a radical change. His wanderings became a kaleidoscope of adventures, emotions, and responsibilities - never static, forever mobile, and potentially dangerous. There were moments when it would have been easier to turn his back, return to old ways, but somehow he knew this was an impossibility. He accepted his new fate, but still feared the greatest of all commitments until it was too late for him.

This fantasy adventure will not fail to excite and stir in every reader memories and emotions of seemingly forgotten times and moments.

14 science fiction shorts covering topics such as the rebuilding of Manhattan in the heart of Leicestershire, seeking help from an angel, enlivening Utopia by taking a demon lover, changing rivals into animals. A fascinating collection from one of the leading lights of feminist SF.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - The Power of Time - (1971) - short story
• 25 - Lover from Beyond the Dawn of Time - short story
• 40 - Food and Love - (1975) - short story
• 47 - Silence in Having Words: Purple - novelette
• 75 - New Aesthetics - short story
• 90 - The Triumphant Head - (1970) - short story
• 95 - To Market, to Market - (1981) - short story
• 97 - The Wall - (1965) - short story
• 105 - Dormant Soul - (1969) - short story
• 125 - Elouise and the Doctors of the Planet Pergamon - (1972) - short story
• 142 - The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky - (1981) - novelette
• 165 - No Coward Soul - (1982) - short story
• 183 - Black Sabbatical - (1971) - short story
• 201 - Living Wild - (1971) - novelette

A short story collection from one of SF's greatest authors, featuring her most successful character in the title piece. The other stories include 'Woe, Blight and, in Heaven, Laughs', 'Gordon's Women', 'The Message', 'Heads Africa, Tails America' and 'The Pollyanna Enzyme'.

Contents:

• 1 - The Travails of Jane Saint - [Jane Saint] - (1980) - novella
• 9 - A Plea to My Readers - essay
• 95 - Woe, Blight and, in Heaven, Laughs - (1978) - short story
• 109 - Gordon's Women - (1976) - short story
• 121 - The Message - novelette
• 165 - Heads Africa Tails America - (1971) - short story
• 181 - The Pollyanna Enzyme - short story

"...and they all moved to the true start, the true airport, the place that was written on the tickets, the place they should all have been at, the place that would lead them to what they expected, the place with speeding planes; the place with organization behind it; the place where officials walked around in splendid hats with badges on; the place where the beginning of their journey was, and perhaps if they had known they would have jumped off the bus screaming or would have bitten ff their own tongues in order to bleed to death or they would have looked at one another merely in doubt and horror, but as they knew nothing of the future, and no person on earth knows anything much of the future which accounts for the extremely low suicide rate, they all sat and moved forwards to the point in time and space which could only logically and positively be called the start of their journey which was called Super Tour."