An anthology of fourteen stories by the author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series imagines the rich lives and loves behind everyday people featured in pictures from the London Sunday Times photograph archives. McCall Smith invites readers, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. We look again at the photograph in a new light, and say Yes, it might have happened just like that. -- adapted from back cover

"Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh in 2019"--Title page verso of regular print edition.

Pianos and flowers --I'd cry buckets -- Sphinx -- Maternal designs -- The dwarf tale-teller of the Romanian Rom -- Duty -- Iron jelloids -- Students -- Zeugma -- Urchins -- St. John's wort -- Blackmail -- Pogo sticks and man with bicycle -- La plage.