Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star"s palace by way of bohemian New York, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala"s new stories are as wide-ranging, rich, multi-layered and subtle as their well-travelled author. An Indian poetess exerts an artistic and sexual dominion over her English translator; a middle-aged man is found dead in mysterious circumstances in a shabby Indian guesthouse, leaving an assortment of women to reassemble the pieces of his secret life; a young English girl with a beautiful voice infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty; and a beautiful Hollywood film star exacts a clever, protracted revenge on her nemesis. Speaking of mortality and family rivalry, of power, of love and the loss of innocence.