Kaeti & Company

A collection of linked short stories.

Long acclaimed as a master storyteller, Keith Roberts is equally renowned for the creation of a gallery of spirited, totally believable heroines. Lady Eleanor in his classic Pavane; Anita, the raunchy teenage witch; the plucky. defiant Molly Zero; and many more. But with Kaeti, the young East Ender made good (or sometimes bad) he surpasses himself.

Kaeti and her companions inhabit a strange world; a "theatre of the mind" where the unexpected is commonplace, where ghosts, vampires and even the odd goddess may be encountered at any turn. It is a tribute to the author's skill that Kaeti's world seems, at all times, as real as our own, sometimes uncomfortably so. Whether satirizing the mores of the Thames Valley or exposing the curious antics of the publishing world, Roberts is equally at home. He explores the gamut of human emotions; high comedy alternates with terror, the most delicate of love scenes are set against the iron dreariness of Death Row. Always though, at the focus, is Kaeti; witty and resourceful, resilient and vulnerable by turns.