At once a gripping thriller and a heartbreaking elegy, this is Toni Cade Bambara's powerful final testament, a hymn to Atlanta's missing children.

Zala Spencer is barely surviving on the margins of Atlanta's booming economy when she awakens one summer's morning in 1980 to find her teenage son, Sonny, has disappeared. As she takes to the streets to track down what happened to him, Zala is drawn into the nightmare of a city stalked by fear.

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days