Unlikely Stories is the first book-length study of the full range of causal issues in narrative, and explores the neglected question of just what brings about events in a fictional text. This book focuses on causality as a foundational element of all narratives, and as a distinguishing feature of many of the most compelling works of distinctively modern fiction and drama.

Richardson draws on a wide range of literary texts: seminal ancient and early modern works, the classics of high modernism, and numerous avant-garde and postmodern pieces, as well as narratives by recent postcolonial and U.S. ethnic authors.

This study brings together a number of related critical issues, including the causal laws that attempt to govern fictional worlds, the reader's implication in the causal dilemmas that confront major characters, and the philosophical and ideological ascriptions of cause that are variously embodied, interrogated, or parodied.

One of the most significant features of this study is its disclosure of just how fundamental and widespread causal issues are in complex narratives - and how insistently they are thematized in twentieth-century works.