Since she was a little girl, the wind has dictated every move Vianne Rocher has made, buffeting her from place to place, from the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes to the crowded streets of Paris. Cloaked in a new identity, that of widow Yanne Charbonneau, she opens a chocolaterie on a small Montmartre street, determined to still the wind at last and keep her daughters, Anouk and the baby, Rosette, safe.

Seven o'clock on a Monday morning, 500 years after the end of the world, and goblins had been at the cellar again...Not that anyone would admit it was goblins. In Maddy Smith's world, order rules. Chaos, old gods, fairies, goblins, magic, glamours: all of these were supposedly vanquished centuries ago. But Maddy knows that a small bit of magic has survived. The "ruinmark" she was born with on her palm proves it.

Maddy Smith, born with a rusty-coloured rune shape on her hand, has always been an outsider in her village. For the good folk of Malbry believe a ruinmark to be a symbol of the old gods, a mark of magic. And that, as everyone knows, is the road to Chaos. Dangerous. But Maddy enjoys working magic, even if it is just to control some pesky goblins.

The place is St Oswald's, an old and long-established boys' grammar school in the north of England. A new year has just begun, and for the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork, and information technology rule the world, and Roy Straitley, Latin master, eccentric, and veteran of St Oswald's, is finally, reluctantly, contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes, and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs.

Disillusioned by adulthood, and longing for the past, Jay Mackintosh's memories are revived by the mysterious delivery of a home-brewed bottle of wine, from long-vanished friends.

When an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, arrives in the French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock especially as it is the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-denial. War is declared as the priest denounces the newcomer's wares as the ultimate sin.

Set on a small, blustery fishing island off the coast of France, Coastliners is the story of Mado, a young woman who returns to her childhood home to find the local community torn apart by family feuds, bad tides, and murky political machinations.

When the widowed Framboise moves back to the village of Les Laveuses, where she grew up, she is pleased to discover that no-one recognises her. She soon forges a new life for herself there, and before long has established a profitable creperie.

Take your partners, please. Suburban witches, defiant old ladies, ageing monsters, suicidal Lottery winners, wolf men, dolphin women, and middle-aged manufacturers of erotic leatherwear. In these twenty-two short stories from the author of Holy Fools and Five Quarters of the Orange, the miraculous goes hand-in-hand with the mundane, the sour with the sweet, and the beautiful, the grotesque, the seductive, and the disturbing are never more than one step away.

For generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than 30 years. But this year the wind of unwelcome change is blowing, and Straitley is finally contemplating retirement. He is joined this term by five new faculty members, including one who holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Oswald's ways and secrets.