The stories, which are sophisticated fairy tales, focus on the power of women and are set in the same alternative history as Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), in which magic has returned to England.

[1][2][3] The volume's focus on "female mastery of the dark arts" is reflected in the ladies of Grace Adieu's magical abilities and the prominent role needlework plays in saving the Duke of Wellington and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Written in the same postmodern style as Jonathan Strange, the "introduction" to the collection by fictional Professor Sutherland speculates on the "sources" for the stories.

While working on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, she enrolled in a writing course co-taught by Colin Greenland and Geoff Ryman, which required each student to submit a completed short story before the course began.

Clarke learned of these events when Hayden called and offered to publish her story in his anthology Starlight 1 (1996), which featured pieces by well-regarded science-fiction and fantasy writers.

[9] The story is set in early 19th-century Gloucestershire and concerns the friendship of three young women, Cassandra Parbringer, Miss Tobias, and Mrs. Fields.

[11] Victoria Hoyle in Strange Horizons writes in particular that "there is something incredibly precise, clean, and cold about Clarke's portrayal of 'women's magic' in this story (and throughout the collection)—it is urgent and desperate, but it is also natural and in the course of things.

[6] As Hoyle explains, in order to avoid "imprisonment, murder, dismemberment, or sexual slavery", Miranda must defeat not only her captor but also the man attempting to save her.

[17] Simonelli must propose to each of the five Gathercole sisters, who resemble the Bennetts from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,[3] in order to save them from John Hollyshoes.

[17] In his review of the collection, Steven H. Silver writes that "the story is diverting, made even more interesting by the copious asides explaining fairy culture.

"[13] "Antickes and Frets" is a fictionalized version of the detention of Mary, Queen of Scots, by Bess of Hardwick and George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury.

[19] Hoyle notes that this story, the only one not previously published, was used to sell the volume, but that it is not as "sinister" as the others and lacks "Clarke's usual imaginative feeling".

[12] Vess's black-and-white line drawings are "reminiscent of the great Arthur Rackham, harking back to the early 20th-century golden age of children's book illustrations".

Hoyle notes that the hardback was "embossed rather than jacketed, shaded in a discreet grey and black palette with flashes of a lively petunia pink; inside the paper is thick and creamy, the font is bold and each story has its own title page, provided by Vess.

"[12] Published in October 2006,[21][22] the collection received many positive reviews, though some critics compared the short stories unfavorably with the highly acclaimed and more substantial Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004).

They continue to play on the riffs—of Faerie, power, and gender—that were established in her novel, but really, they're something else, a sideline in storytelling and representative of Clarke's much wider interests as a writer of English mythology and folklore.

In her review of the recording in The Boston Globe, Rochelle O'Gorman writes that: narrator Davina Porter has one of those pretty, well-trained British voices that one could listen to forever.