From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession comes a short story collection that transports the reader to a world where opposites--passion and loneliness, betrayal and loyalty, fire and ice--clash and converge. 'A wonderful book--complex, amusing, clever, and thought-provoking--a reader's dream.' --The Plain Dealer A beautiful ice maiden risks her life when she falls in love with a desert prince, whose passionate touches scorch her delicate skin. A woman flees the scene of her husband's heart attack, leaving her entire past behind her. Striving to master color and line, a painter discovers the resolution to his artistic problems when a beautiful and magical water snake appears in his pool. And a wealthy Englishwoman gradually loses her identity while wandering through a shopping mall. Elegantly crafted and suffused with boundless wisdom, these bewitching tales are a testament to a writer at the height of her powers.