A collection of stories funded by the Australian Bicentennial Authority to celebrate Australia's Bicentenary in 1988 and originally published in that year as 'Canberra Tales'. The authors are part of a group of writers known as the 'Seven Writers' who first met in Canberra in 1980 to support and critically encourage each other. The stories cover a wide range of experiences including a man's strange pact with his dying daughter and sadism which erupts out of the commonplaces of a broken marriage. Between the authors they have published seven books.