It takes Jasmin years to remember how to be alone again after her children are grown, removing all the coats she’d accumulated one by one. How did she get to be wearing so many of them? A lifetime of coats. Sensible dark woollen coats, heirloom fur coats, bulky padded winter coats. Spring coats thrown over shoulders just in case of rain. Coats made of ‘should’, coats made of ‘ought to’, coats made of duty and obligation and responsibility. Heavy, cumbersome coats.

She peels them from her body and stuffs them in the spare room until she’s removed enough to feel a silvery tug, pulling at her. It pulls her down to the beach and along the pier, it pulls her onto the silver-gold path that stretches across the water to the full, rising moon. The water is shimmery under her feet and Jasmin feels like dancing.

What happens when the moon goes behind a cloud and the path disappears?

What happens when the moon rises out of the water? Will the path stop beneath it? Will there be a ladder?

On the moon, Jasmin meets a rabbit who asks her a riddle she doesn’t know the answer to.

On the moon, Jasmin meets the Moon herself, and Jasmin is a child again, asking impossible questions.

The Moon doesn’t answer in words, but Jasmin receives answers nonetheless…

Back at The Complaints Department: Laurie’s life feels meaningless. Every time she grasps at meaning, every time she tries to decide what her life should be about, meaning evaporates. Hope is like an hourglass and the sand keeps ticking through.

Late one night, Laurie pushes her complaint through the Complaints Department letterbox and keeps hoping.

Laurie doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t Sadie, the young, annoyingly effervescent woman who takes her by the arm and leads her into the carnival, challenging everything Laurie thought she knew to be real...

Annie lives with a demon on her shoulder, criticising everything she does. Mostly, she agrees with it. She’s 42. Shouldn’t she have done more with her life? Shouldn’t she be more than she is, by now?

Until her fairy godmother arrives, running a bit late.

Will Annie be granted the wit and beauty and charm she should have received at birth? Will her fairy godmother be a match for the demon? Will Annie finally be able to stand up straight, without the weight of the demon stamping its feet on her shoulder?

Emilie Underhamer plans on living forever. Those plans are ruined when she wakes up dead, so to speak, to find a thief with his hands in her safe.

It's safe to say she is not amused.

The thief has troubles of his own - he's being played by the ruthless head of the Scoundrel's Quarter, who, coincidentally, is also planning on living forever. His plans are also foiled, as the plot thickens and then thickens some more...

Ghosts, thieves, alchemists, talking parrots and Lady Luck herself - who will come out on top?

There's an unexpected knock at Alma's door.

It's a suit, with a man in it.

A smooth, smiling man, whose words run rings around her and whose teeth are too white. This is new magic, a kind she hasn't seen before.

Can Alma, with her old, twisty, earth magic, outwit him and save her house?

In this story, we return to the Complaints Department and meet Silas.

Silas is brooding, mysterious, and does it on purpose. He’s a field officer at the Complaints Department, a mysterious organisation that resolves complaints of an existential nature. The Complaints Department endeavours to address all complaints within 30 days.

Mr Cotton (having looked over the wall and seen the Complaints Department letterbox goes nowhere) isn’t sure the Complaints Department is even real, and yet something keeps him writing reams of petty and contradictory complaints every day, trying to provoke a response.

Today is the twenty-ninth day.

There’s a knock on the door.

It’s Silas.

Anne met a woman with no teeth, and she was smiling. Somehow, having no teeth made more room in her face for joy. Anne’s afternoon winds its way through roses, a bowl of peas, a hungry cat and many tears… at the end, nothing has changed and yet everything feels different.

Two girls drive into the desert in a car that's seen better days. They’re going to summon a fire spirit to grant them their heart’s desires.

This is not what happens.

Perhaps they shouldn't have listened to the crazy bee woman – she’s not all crazy, but what she says often isn’t what you think she means, and what they get isn’t what they bargained for.

Elodie is eight. She goes next door to wish Mrs Daisy a happy birthday (mostly because she wants Mrs Daisy to give her a chocolate chip cookie), but the inside of Mrs Daisy’s house isn’t there anymore.

Elodie enters another world, makes friends with someone who talks as much as she does, and together they go to find the party.

Vera is on her way home from the funeral of her last living friend. She's not sure what one does, when one is the last, and when her child has grown into a man she can’t like. When she accepts an unexpected invitation from the wide blue sky, she leaves her familiar belongings and escapes her horrible son and steps into a very different kind of life...

June is lonely. Her parents are dead, she hasn’t a partner. She’s thinking about getting a dog. Then, she finds a letterbox in an alleyway with ‘Complaints Department’ written above it. She pushes her complaint through the flap and second guesses herself all the way home.

Her complaint reaches the Complaints Department, a mysterious organisation that resolves complaints of an existential nature. Enter Simone, clairvoyant and kind. How will she arrange events so that June doesn’t spend her days feeling desperately lonely?

Can I tell you a story? It's a love story about a man, a woman, a river...

Ginny, a river spirit, needs adoration to survive. She meets a boy who’s not yet sure of the man he’ll be. Will he willingly give her his life for hers, surrender his whole heart so she won’t become just water, falling over rocks?

Joke (don’t ask him why his name is Joke) is the ruthless pirate captain of the finest sky ship in all the eight worlds. When he tries to double cross the pirate queen, she sends him on a quest (call it exile if you want) to find the ninth world.

He hopes he finds dragons out there, because he intends to tame one. He hopes the partner he’s been lumped with falls overboard. He hopes his ship’s shape changing figurehead turns into something more dashing than a penguin, which rather spoils the effect of the majestic galleon cutting through the stars...