This new volume of tales show, that show that Martin Armstrong had no intention of abandoning the short story, and it displays, besides, a breadth of treatment and sureness of touch considerably in advance of the Bazaar and the earlier Puppet Show. Like them, it contains a selection which ranges from fantastic farce, as in Aunt Hetty, to grim realism, as in The Patrol. Some listeners say they do not like short stories. This is an audiobook which will dispel their prejudice.

Martin Donisthorpe Armstrong (1882 - 1974) was an English writer and poet, known for his stories. He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He served in World War I in the British Army in France - a Private in the Artists' Rifles, he was commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1915 and promoted Lieutenant in 1916. He was included in the final Georgian Poetry anthology. He married in 1929 Canadian writer Jessie McDonald after she had divorced Conrad Aiken, making Armstrong the stepfather of the young Joan Aiken. He appears in disguised form as a character in Conrad Aiken's Ushant.