Every day people come to Mason's store - old people, young people, men and women. From his office, and in the store, Mark watches them. And when they leave the store, he forgets them. Then one day a girl with red hair comes to the store, and everything changes for Mark. Now he can't forget the beautiful face, those green eyes, and that red hair . . .

The room was on the fourth floor, and the door was locked - with the key on the inside. The windows were closed and fastened - on the inside. The chimney was too narrow for a cat to get through. So how did the murderer escape? And whose were the two angry voices heard by the neighbours as they ran up the stairs? Nobody in Paris could find any answers to this mystery. Except Auguste Dupin, who could see further and think more clearly than other people. The answers to the mystery were all there, but only a clever man could see them.

Oh, how delightful it is to fall in love for the first time! How exciting to go to your first dance when you are a girl of eighteen! But life can also be hard and cruel, if you are young and inexperienced and travelling alone across Europe... or if you are a child from the wrong social class... or a singer without work and the rent to be paid. Set in Europe and New Zealand, these nine stories by Katherine Mansfield dig deep beneath the appearances of life to show us the causes of human happiness and despair.