Little Back Room begins with the sojurn of country teacher Cinderella Marvelous Green. "Teacher Green has arrived in one piece, praise God and God Save the Queen." The book continues with the short story, Shape a Stone, in which the local constable asks young Elah, "So you here fe see baby killah?" In the entertaining Zanesville Dot Com, Selma doesn't let her mother know she is sending her - and her young daughter's - photo to a man she met in a chat room. As soon as she meets the man, she thinks, "When he smiled, I knew right away why they called him Bucky." In Roommates, we discover the book's namesake, as Elah moves into her her own independence, and her cousin, Nell, moves into the little back room. Elah's new found independence, however, comes with a price.