On the morning of her release from prison, the hottest day on record in England, Janice Bailey makes her way to a boarding house in London, and discovers a bizarre new world.

This moving collection of linked short stories begins with ‘When Janice Bailey Walked’, an award-winning story first published in the Connecticut Review, and continues with six more stories as told by the eccentric residents of Number 17, London Road, thus illuminating a little-known side of the most beautiful city in Europe.

During the course of one day, we meet Bitty, a college drop-out now working in an antique shop, waiting nervously in an Italian restaurant to find out if her American boyfriend is about to dump her. And Nora, the landlady of the boarding house, a romance novelist obsessed with the Queen, who finds herself hotly pursued by Len, landlord of the local pub. Then there's Anna, Nora's teenage daughter, waiting all alone at netball camp because her mother, otherwise engaged, has forgotten to collect her, and Isobel, daughter of a Shakespearean actress, in the aftermath of a crisis. Finally there's Mandy, who must choose between a life of crime or an alternate path.