The Black Bitch and Other Stories, a collection of twenty three short stories, presents a kaleidoscope of strange sights and impressions that P. Raja observed and felt. He crafts his stories in such a way that life appears in his short stories in all its vastness and mystery. He writes with no trace of false modesty. The real-life incidents that sneak in are always the things that disturb us enough to wind their way into the space of P. Raja's stories. True, our daily lives are mostly a mixture of drab routine and unpleasant surprises. However, from time to time, something unexpected happens, which makes life worth living. This is precisely what P. Raja's stories portray. He inhabits a very familiar cosmos and his stories almost always bubble with a socio-cultural undercurrent. He always thinks of people and places familiar to him because that is his own experiential base. Rarely do some stories chart an unknown territory and the reader simply journeys with a certain lesser known reality where ghosts are staring us in the face. His stories, his words, the wonderful characters, offer us the surprise, the excitement, the sense of wonder that kindle the fire of human imagination. Collection of must read heart touching stories.