ELEVEN lively, original, but rather black short stories that have a link with a particular animal.

These include a zoo worker who considers his co-workers' lives while washing an elephant, giraffes that demand better living conditions from their keeper and stage a mock group suicide, a boy who plays "parachute" jump games with his pet rabbit, an artist's eerie experience with a large stuffed black bear in the natural

history museum and a woman's unnatural close relationship with her boyfriend's snake.

Every story has an animal's head printed on the top of each facing page.

Not a book for the faint-hearted.

Michaela Horsfield