Such visitors

The characters in Angela Huth's marvellous collection of stories are all winners or losers in the game of love: from the two friends competing in a gruelling cross-country marathon for the man they both wish to marry, to the lonely Cheltenham widow abandoning all decorum after too many Irish Coffees; from a seaside donkey owner giving away his favourite animal for the sake of a pair of sad grey eyes, to the husband taking up secret dancing lessons to please his dance-mad wife.

A shrewd observer of human foibles with a fine sense of the comic and absurd, Angela Huth has written a blissfully entertaining, poignant and funny book of stories, which explore the nature and difficulties of love.