Drawing on the age-old appeal of folklore (and a good ghost story), this new collection of short fiction is centred around the act of collecting and recovering the past. As the rich, haunting stories unfold, there are dangerous obsessions with iconic, sacrosanct objects, and puzzling and poignant conversations with the other side.

Then, in the central novella 'The Collectors', two doctors and a folklorist meet in northern Brittany in 1898, determined to prove that the scourge of leprosy still exists. But their search soon draws them into a dark, watchful landscape where superstition is rife.

"A considerable achievement."
Stevie Davies, New Welsh Review on The Breathing

Mary-Ann Constantine is a research fellow at Aberystwyth, specialising in Welsh and Breton Romanticism. Her short stories have appeared over a number of years in the New Welsh Review and Planet, and her first collection, The Breathing, was published by Planet in 2008.