An older couple remove all the mirrors from their lake house to lose sense of time; two girls are cast as Romeo and Juliet in their college play; a woman bargains with God to let the man she loves telephone her. Women writers of the twentieth century had a complex relationship with romantic fiction, at once a denigrated genre yet also often considered their only legitimate domain by the male literary establishment. The women in this collection complicate our over-simplified understanding of the ‘love story,’ crafting multifaceted, touching and vividly real stories of romantic love and loss. From chance meetings on trains to honeymoon bliss, tentative young love, doomed love, and settled love, this collection brings together some of the best short stories on romantic connection by women writers of the twentieth century. This new anthology brings together the creative minds of: Margaret Atwood Virginia Woolf Elizabeth Taylor E. M. Delafield Ling Shuhua Dorothy Parker Malachi Whitaker Richmal Crompton