If you like your pulp fiction short, dark and with a kick arse female lead then this collection is for you.In 'Depravity Lane'(Donna Moore)and 'Her name was Lola' (Bernadette Russell),which are the bookends to the collection we have the old broads with a past,everyone loves a broad with a past don't they?
In between are the younger protagonists; Lily (Stations' Evangeline Jennings)a cold, calculating young woman out for revenge in Camden(incidentaly, a sort of prequel to this is in the Pankhearst title'Heathers');The freaky Niki in 'Strawberries'by Mihaela Nicolescu who gets revenge on an even bigger monster than herself;Ali, a mixed race young woman in the midst of the uncertainty of teenage life;Mary Franklin , an xeonbiologist who receives messages from the future from a far of planet which she is fated to fix;The terrifying Polly in 'Dollhouse'by Clare Rowland is no short of a horror parable for the 'playa's'; A post apocalyptic figure whose only wish is to settle the score before she dies; The everywoman Lisa, adjusting to the world populated by Zombies in 'Their last Holiday' by Zoe Lambert.
'One Woman Cure' by Icy Sedgwick was however the crowning jewel in this collection, the writing is mesmerising as we follow the modified 'Artemis Hyde', discover who she is and what she is in this steampunk-esque /x-women its easy to imagine this story being presented in a graphic novel.
Pulp fiction? Woman Writers do it better.