Secret visions and unwelcome realities, individual desires and family restrictions. In this immensely readable selection of stories by modern women writers, several, including Grace Paley and Joyce Carol Oates, portray the adult world through a child's eyes. Another enduring theme is a their powerful sense of place, with stories by Anita Desai, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Elizabeth Jane Howard combining rich local detail with glimpses of the world beyond the secret self. Includes stories by Alice Walker, Alice Munro, Muriel Spark, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Katherine Mansfield, Willa Cather, Doris Lessing, Jean Rhys, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Taylor, Ruth Prawer, Janet Frame and Ahdaf Soueif.