Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful

Part novel, part fantasy, part social history, this collection of short stories set in the valleys of South Wales follows the lives of two sisters, Grace and Tamar. As these dark, universal stories detail their volatile sibling rivalry—on several occasions they almost kill each other—their disruptive coming of age, and dubious maturity, they express how utterly strange it is to learn to become human. While each story is complete in its own right, together they form a continuous and powerful sequence

Deborah Kay Davies taught Creative Writing at Cardiff University, where she earned her PhD. After the publication of her debut novel True Things About Me (Canongate, 2010), the BBC TV Culture Show named her as one of the 12 best new British novelists. Lionel Shriver in The Wall Street Journal chose it as her personal Book of the Year. Dr. Becky Munford is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University.