The Girl in the Flammable Skirt.

"Aimee Bender’s debut short-story collection shows a writer ready to flirt with the fantastical. Largely concerned with the love lives of young metropolitans and desperate housewives, her cheerily bizarre scenarios give romance a fresh twist ... Bender is a writer with a very incendiary turn of phrase." (Independent)

"These stories are unusual, certainly and they take you inside people’s feelings. Bender gets you to see the world in very particular ways. Beautifully done; you won’t forget this." (Evening Standard)

"Hilarious, deep and a little bit dirty" (Harper's Bazaar)

"Many of the stories in The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, begin with a premise just on the fringe of the familiar, then give it a tantalising twist ... Bender's stories are powered be voice - by pleasure of an electric simile and a restrained sauciness" (New York Times Book Review)

"Fierce and true ... Fantastic!" (Los Angeles Times Book Review)

In The Girl in the Flammable Skirt Aimee Bender has created a world where nothing is quite as it seems. From a man suffering from reverse evolution to a lonely wife who waits for her husband to return from war; to a small town where one girl has a hand made of fire and another has one made of ice. These stories of men and women whose lives are shaped and sometimes twisted by the power of extraordinary desires take us to a place far beyond the imagination.