A fine, fierce, incandescent talent, Scotland on SundayBurning Your Boats brings together her four volumes of short fiction...They testify to Carter's range, daring and her invention. An important book, Irish TimesA writer cultured in every sense of the word, whose syntax is ever artful, whose vocabulary is zestfully arcane, whose erudition manifests itself in her work in a shimmering play of parody and illusion. She was one of the century's best writers, and her stories are among her finest works, Sunday TimesThis is the voice the young generation are flocking to read and study, and these marvellous collected stories wonderfully explain why no pigeon-hole could ever contain her creator. When you read all the stories collected together, a sense of joy erupts that such writing can exist, Daily TelegraphWorld-class stories, woven from their author's high humour, glittering imagination, vital erudition and warm intelligence, IndependentAngela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.