中文简介：

一位女士离婚数十年后，回到了她动荡婚姻所在的村庄。一节火车车厢里发生了一场学生之间的冲突。一桩谋杀案引起了人们对勒索的恐惧。一个女人在私奔到巴黎之前在咖啡馆里焦急地等待着。一个人偷了朋友的菜刀。

在这些苦乐参半的故事中，《洛莉·威洛斯》的作者展示了她对短篇小说的精通，几十年来她一直受到《纽约客》的赞扬。Sylvia Townsend Warner是一个悲喜剧小说家，记录了从婚姻、婚外情到丧偶的心灵纠葛；也是外来者的拥护者，无论是单身女性、老年人还是战时难民。

她的故事诙谐而具有颠覆性，融合了传统与叛逆，隐藏的罪恶和恋物癖就像古怪的阿姨、乡村别墅和教区教堂一样，是英国生活的一个特征。

英文简介：

Decades after her divorce, a lady returns to the village of her tumultuous marriage. A railway carriage hosts a charged schoolboy encounter. A murder raises fears of blackmail. A woman waits anxiously in a café before eloping to Paris. Another steals a friend's kitchen knife.

In these bittersweet tales, the author of Lolly Willowes reveals her mastery of the short story, celebrated by the New Yorker for decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner is a tragicomic chronicler of the heart's entanglements, from marriages and affairs to widowhood; and a champion of outsiders, whether single women, the elderly or wartime refugees.

Witty and subversive, her stories meld tradition and transgression, with secret sins and fetishes as much a feature of English life as eccentric aunts, country houses and parish churches.