These stories are different from the other three volumes in having all been written for Argosy, a "magazine for men" that Joan Aiken worked and wrote for (with an all-female staff, ironically enough.) They generally have a dash of romance, or rather insta-love, which is there not for realism but  for the sake of comic reconciliation. Aiken's boundless imagination gets full play and she somehow manages to make each brief scenario into a vivid, complete world. "It is possible, she seems to say, that just around the corner is an alternative version of the day to day," writes Lizza Aiken -- and that can lighten up our daily burden and take our own leap into a regenerative vision, the true spirit of comedy.