Headful of bees -- The house of special purpose -- The possibility of water -- The very edge of things -- Growing pain -- Petrichor -- The middle of nowhere -- The other side of silence -- The mare's nest -- The age of terror -- Dark the water, so deep the night -- Where there's smoke -- Season of hope -- A lovely and terrible thing -- Blood brother -- Crying wolf -- The deep end -- The shed -- Theories of relativity -- What the darkness said.;"Around you the world is swirling. You pass through a submerged town, its steeples and trees barely visible through the thick water . . . In the distance the wreck of the gunship HMS Elizabeth lolls on a sandbank. Oil slicks the canals of the capital and even now the old men still tell tales of mermen in the shallows . . . A pool empty of water save for a brackish puddle and bones and hanks of fur on the floor - the remains of mice or possums that have tumbled in, lured perhaps by the moisture. Or perhaps by something else . . . In bestselling author Chris Womersley's first short fiction collection, twenty watery, macabre and deliciously enjoyable tales will keep you spellbound until their final, unexpected and unsettling twist."--Publisher description.