Who holds the whip hand? From a young mother stealing back her child to a disillusioned lover seeking revenge with a potion, from house cleaners contemplating a life of crime to a woman parting ways with Jesus, these are stories of people living on the edge. In their collections 'The Returning' and 'Playing Dead', Mihaela Nicolescu and Nadine Browne illuminate the complexity of the everyday with compassionate but unflinching accounts of the ways in which people gain, lose or reclaim control of their lives.