The Birling family are celebrating their daughter's engagement when Inspector Goole calls to report the suicide of a young girl. We realise that one by one, each member of the family is implicated in the girl's breakdown. But who is really responsible for her death?

Here are eleven short stories by Anton Chekhov, one of the finest masters of what is acknowledged to be a difficult genre. There is the richly comic Oh! The Public, about a hassled ticket inspector, a wry look at morals and manners in The Chorus Girl, and the melancholic tale of a cab driver in Misery. Perhaps the finest of all is the novella In The Ravine, a minutely observed look at life in a village through the eyes of one family. All the characters come to life with their foibles, their strengths and their hopes.