In this superlative anthology, Fay Weldon introduces readers to a cast of mothers, children, wives, and lovers – all of them unforgettable, timeless female characters.

In Subject to Diary, a successful forty-ish career woman sits in an abortion clinic pondering motherhood.

In The Year of the Green Pudding, a woman who seems to doom everyone and everything she touches vows never to fall in love again. And an analyst's office is the setting for a series of stories that feature four female patients – including a murderer – who lay bare their souls.

Now in her ninth decade, Fay Weldon is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children's books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.