Whether cooking for solace, scrounging for food, concocting medicine, or brewing poisons, the feisty women in these stories will keep you thirsting for more. Twenty-five tales will transport you far afield in time and place: third century Ireland, medieval Europe, twentieth-century Australia. Read your way from a hippie commune to a WW II internment camp in the Philippines; from a Renaissance palace to a Polish village wracked by war, the hills of Appalachia, and a sleepy Ontario town. Mixtures to soothe, heal, and thrall are prepared in these pages, where lovers take revenge, mothers protect their children, and feisty women make choices in a challenging world.