Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star's palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

A wedding is planned between two innocents at a crumbling mansion of a grand Hudson Valley estate, while among the white-socked convent girls of post-colonial New Delhi a mixed-race couple contemplate their son's alienation and the failure of hope. A young English girl infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty and a lovely Broadway starlet exacts a clever, protracted revenge against her nemesis.

Speaking of ... Read moremortality and family rivalry, of the transfer of power from old to young, of love and the loss of innocence, this is a delicious assortment of fairytales and parables.