European Regional Settings
This is a collection built less on genre than on a certain quality of light and social texture that comes from very specific European places -- the damp stone of English country houses, Scottish coastlines, Cornish cliffs, and Yorkshire moors keep surfacing as more than backdrop, shaping the moral and emotional weather of each story. Whether it's class warfare in a London townhouse, a queen's downfall in Scotland, or an otter and a man forging a household in the Highlands, the setting presses in on the characters, breeding secrecy, repression, or unlikely tenderness in equal measure. There's a recurring undertone of institutions -- church, aristocracy, empire, police -- quietly shaping private lives, so that even the warmest or funniest entries carry a trace of history's weight.
