A luminous collection of short fiction from Nancy Springer, award-winning author of the Enola Holmes mysteries, celebrating women’s lives, quiet transformations, and the strength found in everyday moments.

From Nancy Springer, the award-winning author best known for the Enola Holmes mysteries, comes a moving collection of stories about the quiet triumphs and heartbreaks that shape everyday life.

In these pages, grief takes on unexpected colors, valleys hold their own secrets, and love appears in surprising places. Springer introduces us to unforgettable characters—women and girls, sisters and mothers—each facing moments that change them: a widow who channels her sorrow into art, a child whose kindness to a stray dog forces difficult choices, a sister fighting to protect the wild landscape she loves.

Told with the same sharp wit and compassion that made Enola Holmes a worldwide favorite, these stories reveal what it means to endure, to hope, and to find beauty even in loss. Springer captures the strength tucked inside ordinary lives, weaving tales that are tender, magical, and deeply real.

For readers of literary fiction and coming-of-age stories—or for anyone who has ever yearned for a fresh start—this collection is both comforting and unforgettable.

Nancy Springer has always had a gift for seeing the extraordinary in the everyday. These stories will stay with you, echoing long after the last page is turned.