Little Red-Cap meets a poetic, wine‑drinking wolf at the edge of the woods, follows him into his lair, loses her shoes, kills him with an axe, fills his belly with stones, discovers her grandmother’s bones, and escapes the forest alone with flowers. Three enigmatic queens gather at the palace gates, prophesy a new star and command a scar‑marked chief of staff to launch a ruthless eastward raid against every mother’s son. Mrs Midas recounts a night of chaotic intimacy with a gold‑obsessed lover, their volatile interactions in a domestic setting, and her eventual decision to leave him behind. Mrs Tiresias recounts a surreal tale of a man who returns home transformed into a woman, describing the gender swap, a menstrual curse, and a glamorous encounter with a lover at a glittering ball. Pilate’s Wife recounts watching the Nazarene enter Jerusalem, dreaming of his crucifixion, sending a warning, and later seeing him crowned with thorns and taken to the Place of Skulls; she doubts his divinity while Pilate is depicted washing his hands and believing he is God. Mrs Aesop confronts a pompous suitor, mocks his futile pursuits, and silences him with a brutal fable. Mrs Sisyphus is introduced, delivering a bitter monologue that likens her own loneliness to mythic figures while condemning Sisyphus’s endless toil with the stone. Mrs Faust recounts her marriage to Faust, their affluent nomadic lifestyle, Faust’s moral decline and demonic death, and her inheritance of his vast fortune after making a pact with Mephistopheles. Delilah encounters a scar‑wounded warrior, engages in a violent sexual encounter, then binds him to a door and cuts his hair. Queen Kong, a giant gorilla queen in Manhattan, obsessively pursues a small documentary filmmaker, lives with him for twelve years, then kills and preserves him as a necklace with emerald eyes. Mrs Quasimodo, a new narrator, resides in cathedral grounds, engages in a sexual relationship with a bellringer, and later murders the cathedral’s bells, silencing them forever. Medusa, a jealous narrator, reveals her transformation into a Gorgon with snake‑filled hair, her fear of betrayal by a perfect Greek god lover, and her vivid self‑portrait as a monster confronting his arrival with shield and sword. The Devil’s Wife narrates an abusive relationship with a man she calls the Devil, describing sexual assault, burial of a doll in the woods, quitting work, and eventual imprisonment; Medusa appears as a locked narrator reflecting on her captivity. Circe is introduced, delivering a poetic monologue about pigs, cooking rituals, and youthful memories of the sea. Mrs Lazarus grieves her vanished husband, performs macabre mourning rituals, and witnesses his grotesque return from the grave in a village field. Pygmalion’s Bride recounts being animated by her sculptor, enduring his invasive affection and lavish gifts, feigning sexual response, and then vanishing. Mrs Rip Van Winkle, now middle‑aged, quits sex, takes up painting, creates watercolours of the Leaning Tower, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and Niagara, and finds her husband on Viagra. Salome awakens to a decapitated man’s head on her pillow, summons the maid for tea, vows to quit booze, cigarettes and sex, and decides to eliminate the lover. Eurydice, a dead shade in the Underworld, watches Orpheus attempt to rescue her but fails to prevent him from looking back, leaving her behind. The Kray Sisters, twin women raised by their suffragette grandmother Cannonball Vi after their mother died in childbirth, create the Ballbreakers club on Evering Road and later the famed Prickteasers on Piccadilly, becoming feared protectors and celebrity figures in London’s underworld. A nun called Sister Presley, who claims to be Elvis Presley’s living female twin, appears in a convent, tending gardens, wearing a habit with blue suede shoes, and blending rock‑n‑roll references with religious life. Pope Joan reveals she secretly occupies the papal chair, performs transubstantiation of unleavened bread and brandishes burning frankincense that creates blue‑green smoke, and describes a miraculous birth on a road that occurs without a man or pope. Penelope spends months waiting for a missing man, turns to obsessive embroidery that mirrors her grief and lost love, adopts a widow’s facade, and finally hears a too‑late familiar footstep as she prepares to stitch again. Mrs Beast, a new narrator, arrives at the Beast’s house, drinks Château Margaux ’54, and hosts a high‑stakes poker game with mythic women such as Frau Yellow Dwarf, the Bride of the Bearded Lesbian, and the Minotaur’s wife, while describing the Beast’s animalistic traits and invoking a litany of legendary female ghosts before ending with a prayer and a demand for the Beast and the wine‑cellar key.