WELCOME TO THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIMENT Mary is out of options. Estranged from her family and beset by phantom pain, she signs up for 'The Girlfriend Experiment' - a mysterious project masterminded by a famous Hollywood actor who hires a collection of women to fulfil the different roles of a relationship. Mary is to play the Emotional Girlfriend, alongside a Maternal Girlfriend, a Mundane Girlfriend, an Angry Girlfriend and, of course, an Intimacy Team. Each woman has her debts and her difficulties, her past loves and her secrets. As Mary and the actor are drawn ever closer together, the...

Certain states are hard to shake, or so Catherine Lacey's characters find in these twelve tales of love, loss and longing. A grieving wife gives away the shirts her husband has left behind. A flirtatious widow takes a honeymooning couple to see her husband's grave. A businessman working for a shadowy organization known as 'The Company', checks-in to a room in a strange and remarkable hotel.