Sixteen unforgettable stories from a “beguiling writer” and the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael (The Daily Telegraph).
 
Expanding her horizons far beyond the boundaries of crime fiction, Ellis Peters offers a broad range of short stories in this collection. Two friends, cruelly torn apart when their country is violently sundered, reach a surprising understanding. An Englishwoman’s life changes in a foreign land after she accepts a young light-boy’s offer to show her “a god.” And in the bewitching titular story, an inquisitive reporter investigates the strange hidden history of an elegant London stylist after the body of the enigmatic icon is discovered, immaculately dressed, lying in the ebony coffin that he kept at the side of his bed for years.
 
Exploring life and death, opera and art, love and vengeance, grace and goodness, the poison of prejudice, and the horrors of war, these remarkable stories are as surprising and enthralling as the author’s acclaimed, award-winning novels, proving once again that “Peters writes with undiminished skill” (The Times, London).