Seven women and three men leave the city to avoid a pandemic. They isolate together in a local farm, where they pass the time working, flirting, eating, drinking, making music and above all telling stories. It happened in Florence in 1351, during the Plague, and gave us Boccaccio's Decameron.

Seven hundred years later, in Australia, it happens again. The stories are very different, but they're still bawdy, satirical, funny and sometimes sad, and they celebrate human cleverness, love, courage and imagination.

"Alan Whelan brings us a clever, sensual and sometimes poignant collection of stories that would make Boccaccio proud"

• Tangea Tansley, author of A Question of Belonging

"An old frame for a sharp new snapshot of contemporary Australia"

• Leigh Swinbourne, author of Shadow in the Forest