Anita Diamant's The Red Tent is an epic celebration of womanhood, written for women everywhere, regardless of their status, creed or colour. It is the story of a woman whose life was blessed by great love and torn by tragedy, of the lessons she learned through her own experiences and those of the women, and men, whose lives she touched. Diamant has chosen as her leading lady a woman whose name alone conjures up echoes of mystery, passion and betrayal. The Red Tent is the fictional tale of Dinah, whose life, like the majority of women in the Old Testament, merits only a passing mention. It is the men in Dinah¹s life that history has remembered: her famous father Jacob, his dozen sons and especially her brother, Joseph and his technicolour dreamcoat. Not religious? Don' t worry, this biblical character and the story Anita Diamant has woven from the merest hints, will appeal to all.

 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. JIGS & REELS is Joanne Harris' first collection of short stories, As she says in her Foreword, a good short story can startle, ignite, and illuminate...giving you vivid, anarchlc glimpses into different world, different people. Here, she proves she is as good as her word by creating an eclectic selection of tales for our times that will delight, surprise, entertain and horrify in equal measure. Sly, funny, sometimes provocative but always personal, JIGS & REELS shows a side to Joanne Harris you have never seen before. So go on, be tempted. After all, it's only dancing.

Find an extract from this book in the FILES section of SFBC ONLINE