The complete short stories of Beryl Bainbridge, including the novella Filthy Lucre – written when the author was only 13 years old. Bainbridge's exquisite, devastating skill for skewering characters in all their pomposity, fallibilities, vulnerability and humour, not to mention their capability for cruelty, is fully on display in this collection, accompanied by classic Bainbridge backdrops of seedy hotel rooms, dusty theatres and the twilight zone of lodging houses. Evoking brilliantly their tobacco-tinged era, these stories excavate humanity and showcase Bainbridge's sly turn of phrase, ruthless wit and pitch-black imagination.