In her latest collection of dark, hilarious and provocative short stories, Lucy Sweeney Byrne explores women on the brink – of love, of joy, of disaster – with her signature wit, insight and daring. A newlywed grapples with the chasm that has opened up between her and her husband on the subject of children. A young mother tries to eke out a life for her family on an island named for a dead man, unaware of the psychic toll that is taken on her by the land and sea.

And a woman at a drug-fuelled house party ruminates on the dark past she shares with one of the guests. In Let’s Dance, Lucy Sweeney Byrne, in her signature hypnotic prose, explores subjects such as physicality, identity and disillusionment. Utilising forms ranging from flash fiction to novella, Let’s Dance is a glittering display of fiction’s ability to probe, startle and entertain.