'Life provides infinite shades of light and dark...'

Victoria Hislop, bestselling author and champion of the short story, has chosen her favourite short stories by women writers. Here are prizewinners, famous wits, well-known feminists, national treasures and rising stars.

All the stories in this volume are about life – happy, sad, mundane and extraordinary – it is captured here in all its rich variety.

CONTRIBUTORS: Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Ellen Gilchrist, Dorothy Parker, Doris Lessing, Penelope Fitzgerald, Margaret Atwood, Penelope Lively, Anita Desai, Alice Munro, Elspeth Davie, Penelope Fitzgerald, Alice Walker, A. M. Homes, Anne Enright, Elizabeth Jolley, Jane Gardam, Alison Lurie, Nicola Barker, Jennifer Egan, Muriel Spark, Hilary Mantel, A. S. Byatt, Maggie Gee, Ali Smith, A. L. Kennedy, Polly Samson, Helen Simpson and Stella Duffy.