Last chance. Copies of the boxed edition are still available. Pick one up and you won't have to resort to extreme tactics to read the book in whatever order you choose.

At the bottom of the box, you’ll find a string of random words. Every single copy contains a unique set of five. No repeats. Astute readers of the box may ask: who in the story world compiled all these curiosities and kept them all together? These little word strings provide the answer.

Trocadero Dance Topics was a real newsletter published through the 1930s and 40s. The newsletter tells essentially an additional story to the collection, narrated by an unnamed local prude.

This page from a poetry anthology has been marked up by a couple of characters from the story Coda. The page contains Yeats’s lesser known poem about Byzantium, shoehorning in a reference to my favourite medieval weirdoes. On the back is part of Wilfred Owen’s poem, ‘Disabled’.

If you’re lucky your book may contain this button badge celebrating 1981 as the Year of the Disabled Person. The Braille label stuck over it reads ‘AM’, a hint at the fate of one of book’s characters.

The ticket itself would seem to relate to the story Sixpence, but the name of the ticketholder evokes a character from Blackdrifts. Also worth reading the back all the way through for some unhinged terms and conditions. They were fun to write.

This lottery ticket from 1930 is slipped inside an unsent Christmas card from 1972, again linking characters between two stories. The placement is as puzzling as it is deliberate.

Once I had the ad, though I had to figure out what would go on the other side of the page. So I adopted my best patronising mid-century journalist tone to write this partial article that serves as a kind of sequel to the story Sixpence.

Julia Favaloro’s exquisite recreation of a Soviet-era poster contains a handwritten message that links characters from two separate stories.

There’s a booklet for each story plus an extra for all the stuff that would go in the front and backmatter. In what order should you read them? Don’t ask me. The book is yours to construct however you fancy.

One last thread to show you what’s inside the box and then I’ll leave you all alone. Each story is printed to its own chapbook. @tinyowlworkshop.bsky.social and I spent far too much time debating the exact paper stock to use. We stand by our choices.