"So many snatches come back to him, little moments which are big moments in hindsight. At eight, a TV program - Hiroshima blast: men, women, children, their shadows caught and appliqued to walls. At twenty-five, the collapsing accordion of detonated buildings. And at thirty-two, sitting at a barbecue, Kerrie kneels beside him." Rex has always fostered a bleak view of humans. He suspects the world would be better off without our species. So when a virus, designed to make pests develop an insatiable appetite for their own kind, affects humans instead, it is as though Rex's wish has come...

As her life in the U.S. dissolved into rivers of remorse, Pamela's paintings impregnated the seed of her most creative self. The rebirth was not without pain, yet it led to her brilliant painting mentor, and then by a twist of fate, to Greece. "What can I paint there?" she asked herself. After a swim in the Aegean Sea and an extraordinary epiphany, she was inspired to relaunch her life's journey. But to leave family and friends, move to a foreign country, and face possible failure? Yes, it was tempting the Fates for a middle-aged woman, on her own with minimal resources, to believe that she...