I See a Long Journey and On Ice, novellas that Mr. Handler considers basically perfect, originally appeared with a third, Blessed Art Though, a story that he considers to be in an entirely different tone. He felt that Friends in the Country from Ms. Ingalls’ later collection, The End of a Tragedy, was a more natural companion to the two earlier works. The author happily agreed.

I See a Long Journey introduces us to Flora who is induced by her husband, James, to take a vacation only because his chauffeur Michael, custodian of their persons and their purse, will accompany them. Things, as they so often do in Ingalls’ world, will go appalling awry.

Friends in the Country wherein a young couple drive outside of London for a Friday dinner and find themselves trapped for the weekend in a manner that surpasses Stephen King, if not in outright horror then certainly in subtlety and suggestiveness.

On Ice finds Beverley with her fiancé at an elegant hotel where she is introduced to a grande dame whose funeral Beverley’s convinced she had witnessed 10 years before.