Anthologies & Short Stories

Book Synopsis?Her fiction is a breath-taking piece of a cinematic art itself. Reminiscent of the world we experienced in Matrix, Inception, and Dark City, still it leads us to this entirely original structure, which is a ground-breaking, mystic literary and cinematic experience. Indeed, powerful and graceful.??Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of ParasiteIn this mind-expanding work of speculative fiction, available in English for the first time, one of South Korea?s most treasured writers explores the driving forces of humanity?love, hope, creation, destruction, and the very meaning of existence?in two pairs of thematically interconnected stories.Two worlds, four stories, infinite possibilitiesIn ?I?m Waiting for You? and ?On My Way,? an engaged couple coordinate their separate missions to distant corners of the galaxy to ensure?through relativity?they can arrive back on Earth simultaneously to make it down the aisle. But small incidents wreak havoc on space and time, driving their wedding date further away. As centuries on Earth pass and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together. In two separate yet linked stories, Kim Bo-Young cleverly demonstrate the idea love that is timeless and hope springs eternal, despite seemingly insurmountable challenges and the deepest despair.In ?The Prophet of Corruption? and ?That One Life,? humanity is viewed through the eyes of its creators: godlike beings for which everything on Earth?from the richest woman to a speck of dirt?is an extension of their will. When one of the creations questions the righteousness of this arrangement, it is deemed a perversion?a disease?that must be excised and cured. Yet the Prophet Naban, whose ?child? is rebelling, isn?t sure the rebellion is bad. What if that which is considered criminal is instead the natural order?and those who condemn it corrupt? Exploring the dichotomy between the philosophical and the corporeal, Kim ponders the fate of free-will, as she considers the most basic of questions: who am I?

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Book SynopsisA playful and deeply affective short story collection about the histories, technologies, and generational divides that shape our relationships—from the award-winning writer of Days of Distraction Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants. A woman known only to her neighbors as “the Asian recycling lady” collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity. These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as “a writer to watch” (New York Times Book Review). 

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Book SynopsisA landmark new collection of stories from Richard Ford that showcases his brilliance, sensitivity, and trademark wit and candorIn Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love and loss.“Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant who recklessly tries to solace the narrator’s sorrow after his father’s death.  “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life.  “The Run of Yourself,” a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death.  And “Nothing to Declare” follows a man and a woman’s chance re-meeting in the New Orleans French Quarter, after twenty years, and their discovery of what’s left of love for them.Typically rich with Ford’s emotional lucidity and lyrical precision, Sorry for Your Trouble is a memorable collection from one of our greatest writers.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists. . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.” — The New Yorker “Charming and sly, these 12 far-flung stories—from a Texas water park to a rugged Scottish island—share McCracken’s tender appreciation for flawed people (struggling lovers, a grieving mother, a puppeteer) just trying to communicate.” — People “Elizabeth McCracken’s impressive third story collection evoke moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness…A steady stream of exquisite writing.” — The Boston Globe “The Souvenir Museum is McCracken's third story collection, and her understanding of how we stumble up against these painful realities unfurls on every page. Tuned into absurdities and disasters, she knows our losses are calamitous, our connections precarious…McCracken's prose is wry and exquisite, a good companion to her generous, comic observations.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “You know how Aaron Sorkin tilt-shifts reality to bring idealism to the forefront? McCracken is like that but for humor. In her realm, everything is funny — to somebody, if not always to the protagonist. Even the darkest and saddest moments may be laced with sweet, tall-tale absurdity. Her new collection The Souvenir Museum has more of what made her 2019 novel Bowlaway such a hit. It’s full of stories set in the real world but just cockeyed enough to pass as apocryphal family folklore told at a Thanksgiving dinner table once everybody’s full of pie and wine.” — Philadelphia Inquirer “McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.” — San Francisco Chronicle “If you’re tired of trying to pick something to watch on one of your half a dozen streaming services, maybe it’s time to read a short story instead. They may just be the perfect antidote to binge watching. Elizabeth McCracken’s latest collection ‘The Souvenir Museum,’ is a good place to start….Do yourself a favor and read the book. McCracken has delivered a lovely collection of stories.” — Associated Press “Deftly melding tragedy and comedy, McCracken displays her signature wit while examining how the bonds of family are tested and transformed over time.” — Austin Monthly “McCracken, herself, is a hard-working performer, an acrobat who dazzles with her verbal flexibility and lands the end of each tightly composed story with incredible skill — and feeling. Her inimitable images heighten the delight…McCracken's writing is never dull…[a]fantastic collection.” — NPR.org “Elizabeth McCracken’s latest (and best, so far) collection…there is, in these stories, a kind of compulsive noticing, and the resultant prose is so plush that it may be read happily for the language alone, though there is much more at work here….a novel’s worth of humor, tension, love, sorrow, and irrationality.” — Harvard Review “Wry, emotionally complex family stories. . . . McCracken is a tremendously sharp, soulful, and witty writer, rightfully considered one of finest American short story practitioners at work today.” — Literary Hub "I love short stories, I think that we’re not reading enough of them . . . [Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorites . . . her stories are about family and redemption, intimacy…Dive into this collection.” — Harlan Coben (on Today) “The master stylist and author of Bowlaway rolls another strike with this magnificent array of idiosyncratic love stories.” — Oprah Daily “Elizabeth McCracken is a master of the short story and each of the stories in this gem of a collection shows a different facet of the human experience, shining all the brighter for having had McCracken's attention paid to it for a little while.” — Refinery 29 “[A]n assured collection… McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.” — Booklist “McCracken’s sly, emotionally complex collection (after Bowlaway) focuses on characters uprooted from their usual surroundings. . . . Each story opens to reveal a whole life spent within the web of a family, chosen or not. Full of gems, this collection is a winner.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “McCracken . . . proves her mastery of short fiction with these 12 tightly structured, searingly realistic stories. . . . Enduring love—along with the urge to resist it—is this volume’s common theme, whether in relationships between parents and children, lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and even in-laws. . . . An astonishingly powerful collection worth multiple readings.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “The 12 stories collected in Elizabeth McCracken's The Souvenir Museum are skillfully crafted miniatures that feature unfailingly ordinary characters whose lives she uses to illuminate truths about love, longing and the elusive search for connection…The personal discoveries unearthed by characters like these may seem inconsequential, but they are anything but that. They're the stories of choices, turning points and epiphanies that are the stuff of life itself, and of indelible moments Elizabeth McCracken preserves in these unpretentious tales…In a dozen stories, Elizabeth McCracken excels at capturing the kinds of moments that often escape our notice.” — Shelf Awareness “There’s good reason a new Elizabeth McCracken book is cause for celebration: everything she writes—her short stories, her novels, and, hey, also a memoir—is consistently brilliant. Her work is the perfect amount of odd, witty, tender, and deceptively heart-splitting. I can’t wait.” — The Millions

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Book Synopsis“Fiercely intelligent, warm in their own way, and absolutely absorbing. . . . Excellent excellent excellent.”—Roxane Gay“Ladee Hubbard is a true original, and this book is a unique beauty.”—Mary GaitskillThe critically acclaimed author of The Rib King returns with an eagerly anticipated collection of interlocking short stories including the title story written exclusively for this volume, that explore relationships between friends, family and strangers in a Black neighborhood over fifteen years.The thirteen gripping tales In The Last Suspicious Holdout, the new story collection by award-winning author Ladee Hubbard, deftly chronicle poignant moments in the lives of an African American community located in a “sliver of southern suburbia.” Spanning from 1992 to 2007, the stories represent a period during whichTrade Review"Keenly observed, both in exterior details and interior psychological realities, Ladee Hubbard’s short stories capture the absurd, charming, brave, beautiful, and grotesque acts that are the pivot points of specific Black lives. With prose bone spare and elegant, she reveals the swagger required to keep seeing and to be seen." — Alice Randall, author of Black Bottom Saints "I loved these interconnected stories. They are fiercely intelligent, warm in their own way, and absolutely absorbing. Hubbard has a deft sense of character and community and I really enjoyed piecing together the connections between the collection’s characters. Excellent excellent excellent." — Roxane Gay “For sheer reading pleasure Ladee Hubbard’s original and wildly inventive novel is in a class by itself.” — Toni Morrison on The Talented Ribkins

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"You're going to laugh, you're going to gasp, you're going to wonder if you're allowed to enjoy this book and then you're going to be laughing all over again. This is Black satire with bite, like Zora Neale Hurston used to do, with a smile and a sharp elbow. A touch of Paul Beatty, a dose of Dolemite, and a serving of Dorothy Parker, too. Give My Love to the Savages announces Chris Stuck as a fearless talent, a debut that'll make your sides and your heart hurt." — Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling “Give My Love To The Savages is a wildly inventive collection of provocative stories about navigating the minefield of black masculinity in America. Stuck’s fresh and fearless perspective overturns assumptions about race and identity to reveal complex layers of absurdity. At times merciless, always darkly funny, these are stories of unexpected communion, connection, and compassion.” — Chanelle Benz, author of The Gone Dead “Stuck’s debut collection, Give My Love to the Savages, is both hilarious and harrowing. This is a collection full of movement, of intelligent people traveling to new places or returning to old ones, leading to discoveries about themselves, about family and about the places they call home. Chris Stuck is a writer who has spent much time pondering the human condition, and we are the beneficiaries of his labor.” — New York Times “With these sharp and searching stories about black people adrift in America, Chris Stuck makes invisible men feel seen. In this great book, I saw myself through many lenses.” — Chris L. Terry, author of the novels Black Card and Zero Fade “Stuck brings uncompromising humor and judicious characterizations, offering piercing insights on the complexity of his characters’ experiences. The author’s perfect balance of absurdism and realism makes these stories shine.” — Publishers Weekly "Stuck presents us with a strong, focused debut collection. He creates nuanced characters, crafts varied perspectives on race and gender in America, and shows off his talent for economy of words and sharp dialogue throughout the book." — Chicago Review of Books “Stuck is unafraid to tackle and illuminate the absurdities that accompany how we perceive and react to race.” — Time magazine “At once absurd and shot through with startling reality, Chris Stuck’s Give My Love to the Savages will rattle around in your head and your heart long after you finish reading it.” — Essence “Chris Stuck's short-story collection comes together as a harrowing portrait of race relations in America, as beautiful as it is urgent.” — Entertainment Weekly

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Book SynopsisA powerful reckoning over the people we might have been if we’d chosen a different path, from a master of the short storyIn this stirring, reflective collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices.Trade Review"Trenchant and moody." — New York Times Book Review "...A series of well-written stories about the what-if wonders of a life that’s been, well, lived...Oates is a master of tension and form, her writing dashing across the page to an often devastating conclusion. Her singular style works well here, fueling the stories even as you oftentimes dread them." — USA Today "Oates delivers a dark, moody collection permeated by themes of obsession, remorse, and violence. . . . Oates's mastery of the form remains fierce and formidable in this unsettling collection of lamentations and missed opportunities." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Crackling with pent-up emotion and deadly devices, a suite of neatly intertwining stories by a masterful storyteller. . . . Few short story writers do as much in so few words as the economical, enigmatic Oates.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This posthumous collection of stories and essays affirms [So's] versatility, secures his legacy, and bittersweetly reminds us of what could have been." — The Millions "Anthony Veasna So’s talent for evoking the anxieties, longings, and memories of diasporic Cambodian Americans — on voluptuous display in his posthumously published short story collection “Afterparties” — is put to vivid use in this new collection of delicately hinged essays that address everything from “deep reality TV” to So’s stint as an art student." — Boston Globe “It seems impossible to read these excerpts without wishing for more—from these characters, from this narrative, for this author. . . .Another posthumous publication from a writer who was only just discovering his brilliance.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Before his death in 2020 at 28, Cambodian American writer So was poised for greatness on a number of fronts: He was an irreverent writer about immigrant enclaves, queer life and the Bay Area’s nether reaches. [Songs on Endless Repeat]. . .demonstrate[s] he was also a stellar cultural critic in the making.” — Los Angeles Times “So’s essays resonate with vulnerable eloquence, but his potency lies in storytelling, effortlessly creating immersive worlds animated by familiar, vital characters, their vibrancy further magnifying the poignant loss of what could have been.” — Booklist "So’s distinctive voice blends mordant cultural criticism with a striking combination of humor, compassion, and insight. This is a bittersweet testament to an astounding talent." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “In both his fiction and nonfiction, So’s generous writing spirit shines through, capturing a community of people in flux, all of whom are trying to make space for themselves—and each other—in a sometimes-claustrophobic world.” — Daneet Steffens, The Boston Globe “Pieces originally published in the New Yorker, n+1 and elsewhere seamlessly integrate his Cambodian American family, California upbringing, queer identity and personal relationships both romantic and platonic. So’s work defines a life of longing — and will leave you longing for more.” — Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times “Following up his award-nominated collection of stories is this fantastic anthology of essays (with a few stories mixed in) about queer life, race, family, his refugee parents, growing up in California, culture, and more.” — Liberty Hardy, BookRiot “This posthumous collection of stories and essays includes already published pieces and new fiction, all written with razor-sharp wit. Mining his youth in California and the lives of his refugee parents, Songs on Endless Repeat is full of vivid explorations of family, queer desire, pop culture, race and more.” — Sarah Stievfvater, Purewow “Shrewd, funny, inviting, and enlightening.” — Arianna Rebolini, Bustle “Magnificent. . . . So’s distinctive voice blends mordant cultural criticism with a striking combination of humor, compassion, and insight. This is a bittersweet testament to an astounding talent.” — Publishers Weekly “Songs on Endless Repeat. . .displays many of the same coruscating traits as Afterparties: a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, a knack for pungent prose and a large-hearted capacity to commune with people across what So calls the ‘Cambo proh racial complex spectrum.’. . . So was that rarest of species: not just a novelist, but a formidable critic.” — Los Angeles Times “The late Anthony Veasna So was capable of so much more literary brilliance, a fact made abundantly clear by this posthumously published collection of essays and fiction. It’s impossible to not grieve the loss of So, a San Francisco writer and Stockton native who died at age 28 in 2020, months before the publication of his debut story collection, but this book leaves readers with a lasting impression of the Cambodian American author’s wicked sense of humor and wide-open heart.” — San Francisco Chronicle “An emotional, incisive collection.” — New York magazine “Terrific. . . . So's novel recaptures all the elements that made Afterparties a bestseller. He observes his characters with a sharp eye and deep affection. His turns of phrase are brilliant, hilarious, at times profane and always whip-smart. . . . Songs on Endless Repeat is not to be missed.” — Star Tribune “[T]he essays and short fiction in this second collection have the same crisp humor and edgy vulnerability that made his first an instant best seller…So’s true art lives on inside his books, now an everlasting loop that will never get old." — Elisabeth Egan, New York Times

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Book SynopsisFrom #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, an outstanding array of short fiction that surveys the terrain between the illusory and the ordinary and reveals the terrors and wonders reflected in the funhouse mirrors of our dreams―one of ten classic Gaiman works repackaged with elegant original watercolor art by acclaimed artist Henry Sene Yee“He is a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him.” —Stephen King Spanning the realms of dark imagination, Smoke and Mirrors surveys the terrain between the illusory and the ordinary, treating readers to a gift of wonder and delight from one of the most unique literary artists of our time.The miraculous inventions contained herein - stories, novellas, and poems - reveal Gaiman to be a writer of immense talent and sophisticated invention. In his deft hands, magic is no mere illusion, but a powerful means of illumination, revelation, and reflection on what it means to be human. Poignant and haunting, humorous and unorthodox, Smoke and Mirrors is an outstanding array of short fiction from one of the world’s most distinguished literary masters.

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Book SynopsisA debut, interlinked collection of stories exploring the primal nature of women’s grief—offering insight into the profound experience of loss and the absurd ways in which we seek control in an unruly world.Seamlessly shifting between the speculative and the blindingly real, balancing the bizarre with the subtle brutality of the mundane, A Manual for How to Love Us is a tender portrait of women trying their best to survive, love, and find genuine meaning in the aftermath of loss.In these unconventional and unpredictably connected stories, Erin Slaughter shatters the stereotype of the soft-spoken, sorrowful woman in distress, queering the domestic and honoring the feral in all of us. In each story, grieving women embrace their wildest impulses as they attempt to master their lives: one woman becomes a “gazer” at a fraternity house, another slowly moves into her otherworldly stained-glass art, a couple speaks only in their basement’s black box, and a thruple must decide what to do when one partner disappears.The women in Erin Slaughter’s stories suffer messy breaks, whisper secrets to the ghosts tangled in the knots of their hair, eat raw meat to commune with their inner wolves, and build deadly MLM schemes along the Gulf Coast.Set across oft-overlooked towns in the American South, A Manual for How to Love Us spotlights women who are living on the brink and clinging to its precipitous edge. Lyrical and surprisingly humorous, A Manual for How to Love Us is an exciting debut that reveals the sticky complications of living in a body, in all its grotesquerie and glory.Trade Review“Slaughter admirably conveys a heightened awareness of how we harbor within our tamed lives an undeniable wildness.”— — Library Journal “[A] gritty debut fiction collection…[readers] will appreciate Slaughter’s storytelling chops.”— — Publishers Weekly "A Manual for How to Love Us is a collection that reads like a wolf howl, every page alive with longing and hunger and desire and rage. Erin Slaughter writes with tenderness—capturing the sweet intimacies of friendship, of kindness in unexpected places—but also with an unflinching eye for the pain that connects us, shapes us, makes us who we are. This is prose from a poet’s heart." — Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria "This deeply imagined, brilliantly ferocious debut collection sits perfectly among the fiction of Danielle Lazarin and Kelly Link. A Manual for How to Love Us lays bare the power and wildness of grief. It is unequivocally one of the best debut collections I’ve read in years." — Peter Kispert, author of I Know You Know Who I Am “The stories in A Manual for How to Love Us read like a cold ocean swim: salty and refreshing and sincere, each a bracing exploration of the particular blessings and burdens of womanhood in all its ugliness and glory. I couldn’t ask for something stranger or more beautiful. Erin Slaughter is a masterful sentence writer in firm command of her craft, and this book is an inspiration and a gift.” — Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild “Erin Slaughter’s debut collection, A Manual for How to Love Us, is an evocative mix of strange realism and Bachelardian obsession. Slaughter is a gifted stylist who can instill the most mundane objects with profound meaning and depth. In her world, a tongue is never only a tongue, a thorn far more than a thorn, and even a fly–buzzing alone in a bedroom–harbors the impact of a father.” — Isle McElroy, author of The Atmospherians and People Collide “Stunningly fierce … Slaughter intentionally blurs the line between real and unreal and ghosts and people, creating a spellbinding tilt across stories and worlds. This dark but whimsical collection is perfect for fans of magical realism and strong female characters." — Booklist "With a poet’s lyricism, Erin Slaughter crafts a debut collection that is speculative, dark, and thoroughly feral." — Electric Literature

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Book Synopsis“Petry is the writer we have been waiting for; hers are the stories we need to fully illuminate the questions of our moment, while also offering a page-turning good time. Ann Petry, the woman, had it all, and so does her insightful, prescient and unputdownable prose.” — Tayari Jones, New York Times Book ReviewFrom the author of the bestselling novel The Street, comes a powerful collection of stories that captures a remarkably diverse panorama of African American experience in the 1950s and 1960s.A small-town pharmacist’s decision to take a day off leads his wife to an agonizing encounter with the police. A retired Black college professor teaching at a predominately white high school is kidnapped and forced to witness an unthinkable horror. A young Black girl watches her aunt’s suitors threaten her family’s wellbeing, with repercussions that reverberate for decades. Ann Petry wrote these and the other extraordinary stories in this collection over half a century ago, but the problems they interrogate still exist today, incisively uncovering the consequences of America’s pervasive racism, while telling timeless stories of everyday lives, of aspiration, frustration, and love. Miss Muriel and Other Stories is “a delicate, unflinching probe into African-American existence” (Boston Globe) from one of the most gifted writers of the twentieth century. Originally published between 1945 and 1971, Petry’s stories are “a delicate, unflinching probe into African-American existence” (Boston Globe) and an assertion of her status as one of the most gifted writers of the twentieth century. “I’ve recently had my brain re-wired by Ann Petry, and it’s that exhilarating feeling of falling in love with one of your lifetime writers for the first time.” —Brandon Tyler

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A dozen interlinked, music-oriented stories set in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where Garricks was raised... Each songlike story feels like a breakout hit encapsulating the brokenness and the beauty in life’s soundtrack." — Booklist (starred review) "This is a beautifully woven set of short stories, each of which are inspired by a beloved pop song.... It’s a compelling format with little margin for error and which, if executed correctly, works to magnificent effect. Thankfully, Garricks is a supreme storyteller, and he manages to take us on an absorbing tour of joy and loss. Each of his tales is to be savoured; each concept has the depth of a novel... a magical delight." — Hari Kunzru, award-winning author of White Tears "A Broken People’s Playlist is an addictive collection of authentic prose. Story after story made me stop to reflect on the complexities of life, our various loves––be it family, friendship or romance––and the way we’re all connected. Elegant, graceful and full of understanding, Garrick’s writing unwraps stories that touch the soul and make you glad to be part of the human race." — Bisi Adjapon, author of The Teller of Secrets and Daughter in Exile "These stories will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page." — SheReads - Best Book Club Pick of Spring 2023

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Book SynopsisIn the whole delightful world of Wodehouse, the English clergy offers some of the richest sources of good-natured good humour. Confronted by burglars or belted earls, they plough serenely on with the Advent sermon or the opening of the village fete - until that is, they are swept uncontrollably into fiendish plots which only a well-disposed devil or member of the Drones Club could have contrived.No bishop is more endearingly plump and pompous than a P.G. Wodehouse bishop, no vicar more a pillar of his community (provided his sermons aren''t too long), and in this collection of short stories we watch as they are plunged into one hilarious scenario after another.Trade ReviewYou don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour -- Stephen FryThe greatest comic writer ever * Douglas Adams *The funniest writer ever to put words to paper -- Hugh LaurieP.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century -- Sebastian FaulksSublime comic genius -- Ben Elton

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Book SynopsisA.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.Trade Review"Her plot is as compelling as that of a classical detective story, but it is the quality of the writing - its use and unity of metaphor, its sensuous language, its wit and intellectual playfulness - which renders it remarkable" -- Amanda Craig Literary Review "A. S. Byatt is one of our finest living novelists, who manages to tease and to satisfy both the intellect and the imagination ... I am already a convinced admirer of the works of A. S. Byatt. ANGELS & INSECTS should win over many more enthusiasts" -- Caroline Moore Daily Telegraph "Victorian and fun ... marvellous and maddening ... a display and a delight" -- Nicci Gerrard Observer "Her best work to date" Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisIn the same delectable format as The Matisse Stories, this collection deals with betrayal and loyalty, quests and longings, loneliness and passion - the mysterious absences at the heart of the fullest lives. A scholar pursues an elusive biographer, stumbling upon buried fragments of distant lives; a woman walks out of her previous existence and encounters an ice-blond stranger from a secretive world; a schoolgirl draws a blood-filled picture of jael; a swimming pool reveals a beauteous monster in its depths. The settings range from the heart of Provence in summer to the cold forests of Scandinavia, form chalk-strewn classrooms to herbscented hillsides, from suburban streets to rocky wilds.Trade ReviewRich physical details, lush sensual descriptions of people and places...Byatt's engaging message is that art, curiosity and stories and save us. Now read on -- Michèle Roberts * Independent on Sunday *Byatt weaves myth and art into bewitching fables...an astonishing display of imagination. The whole collection has a kaleidoscopic beauty -- Mark Sanderson * Time Out *Drenched in colour, spangled with optical effects, the yarns and parables in Elementals pay rapt attention to a world of light -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *"Cold", the story at the centre of Elementals is entirely fabulous...Its tenor is voluptuous and melancholy, like that of Oscar Wilde's fairy stories, with some of the erotic edge of Angela Carter's...These stories are full of colour and light -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Sunday Times *In a sparkling year for short stories, A.S. Byatt takes all the prizes...A wonderful series of reflections on the harsh realities of life (loneliness, death and betrayal) overlaid with a goassamer-light cloak of passion, mystery and ancient magic -- Carolyn Hart * Marie Claire *

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Book SynopsisDiscover Alice Munro's first mesmerising and atmospheric short story collection.A remarkable writer whose major characters emerge in shining clarity... A major talent is at work here' Los Angeles TimesAlice Munro''s territory is the farms and semi-rural towns of south-western Ontario.In these dazzling stories she deals with the self-discovery of adolescence, the joys and pains of love and the despair and guilt of those caught in a narrow existence. And in sensitively exploring the lives of ordinary men and women, she makes us aware of the universal nature of their fears, sorrows, and aspirations.Winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureWinner of the Man Booker International Prize 200Trade ReviewThe finest writer of short stories working in the English language today * The Times *The greatest living short story writer -- A. S. Byatt * Sunday Times *A remarkable writer whose major characters emerge in shining clarity... A major talent is at work here * Los Angeles Times *Munro's power of analysis, of sensations and thoughts is almost Proustian in its sureness * New Statesman *Read not more than one of her stories a day, and allow them to work their spell: they are made to last * Observer *

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Book SynopsisKurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. During the Second World War he served in Europe and, as a prisoner of war in Germany, witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired the canonic war novel Slaughterhouse-Five. He is the author of thirteen other novels, which include Cat's Cradle, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galápagos and Bluebeard, two collections of stories, and three non-fiction books. He died in 2007.Trade ReviewA brilliant wacky ideas-monger * Observer *A cool writer, at once throwaway and passionate and very funny * Financial Times *One of the 20th century's finest humorists and humanists, a writer who has inherited HG Wells's visionary imagination and his gift for social commentary * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThis collection of playful, deadly febles is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story The Argentine Ant moved Gore Vidal to declare ''if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better''.Trade ReviewItalo Calvino's Adam, One Afternoon confirms the part he has played in revitalising the art of fiction in our time. In these beautifully translated stories, the quality of the writing emerges as clearly as do the ease and range of his inventiveness. Calvino's special gift is to link the physical and immediate with an allegorical timelessness-All the characters and creatures in these stories conspire to convey a feeling of the wonder, mystery and terror of life * Guardian *Calvino's strength is his economy and subtlety. The best of his allegorical fantasies have the power of the Brothers Grimm, rollicking stories on the surface, with an underlying savagery * Listener *

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Book SynopsisThis classic collection of stories moves from England, France and Spain to the silver sands of the South Pacific. It includes the famous story ''Rain'', the tragedy of a narrow-minded and overzealous missionary and a prostitute, and ''The Three Fat Women of Antibes,'' an extravagantly sardonic tale of abstention and greed, as well as a host of other brilliant tales.Trade ReviewFascinating tales, sharply revealed characters, a fine narrative craft -- J.B. PriestleyHe was a superb storyteller - one of the very best in our language - who wrote with a wordly, sardonic understanding of the human condition. Writing was his life; everything else was secondary to it * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisAlice Munro was born in 1931 and was the author of thirteen collections of stories and the novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Who Do You Think You Are? (previously published as The Beggar Maid), and was awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro died in 2024.Trade ReviewMunro is at the height of her powers...a testimony to a great talent * Guardian *That Munro is a great writer of short stories should, by now, go without saying. She is also one of the two or three best writers of fiction (of any length) now alive. The title story of this collection is one of her masterpieces...a brilliant piece of story-telling, tautly-structured and exquisitely balanced * Sunday Times *A new collection of Alice Munro stories is a literary event that more and more of us look forward to, we are very unlikely to find a richer or rarer treat all year...the eight new stories in The Love of a Good Woman show this miraculous and truly great writer at the height of her powers...a perfect story collection * Scotland on Sunday *Alice Munro's stories...reward each pleasurable effort, as the best fiction always does...a Munro story has the depth and intricacy of a long novel, more than any other living writer in English...she can account for 20 years of a person's life in a single, telling paragraph, or even in a subtly placed phrase...The Love of a Good Woman is a superb, but unsettling, collection * Daily Telegraph *One of the finest short-story writers of our time...absorbing and brilliant * Observer *

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Book SynopsisFrom Ernest Hemingway''s Preface: ''There are many kinds of stories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like- In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining, and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.''A collection of Hemingway''s first forty-nine short stories, featuring a brief introduction by the author and lesser known as well as familiar tales, including ''Up in Michigan'', ''Fifty Grand'', and ''The Light of the World'', and the Snows of Kilimanjaro, Winner Take Nothing'' and Men Without Women collections.Trade ReviewMr Hemingway, applying that quick eye and wrist of his to the rings of the boxer and bull-fighter, achieves some unforgettable reporting of the world in which blood is argument... The author's exceptional gift of narrative quality gives the excitement of a well-told tale to what is, in fact, a simple description of a scene * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisThese slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces: apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child. Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss. As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword: ''the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness. The stories stand securely outside of fashion while reflecting deep change''. Bringing together all Alistair MacLeod''s short fiction, and incTrade ReviewA lifetime's achievement in more than one sense * Sunday Times *Startling in their simple perfection * Sunday Tribune *Provokingly singular and rare, an island of richness * Guardian *Beautifully crafted stories: elegiac, honest, proud, and both eloquent and taciturn, like their subjects...a wonderfully talented writer * Margaret Atwood *Rarely does a great writer offer himself to us with an oeuvre so complete * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisSet in contemporary Bombay and other cities, these stories reflect the kaleidoscope of urban life - evoking the colour, sounds and white-hot heat of the city. Warm, perceptive, humorous and touched with sadness, Anita Desai''s stories are peopled with intensely individual characters - the man spiritually transformed by the surface texture of a melon; the American wife who, homesick for the verdant farmlands of Vermont, turns to the hippies in the Indian hills; the painter living in a slum who fills his canvasses with flowers, birds and landscapes he has never seen.Trade ReviewAs finely written atmospheric pieces alone the stories would be memorable... As social documents they are absorbing. The volume's profound theme is the tension between convention and exploration, family solidarity and individualism... An admirable humane and responsible achievement -- Hermione Lee * Observer *One of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture * Alison Lurie *Beautifully accomplished and memorable * The Times *Absolutely first-rate…absorbing -- Hermione Lee * Observer *Desai has a gift of opening up a closed world and making it clearly visible * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisWilliam Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He spent some time at St. Thomas's Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915 and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. His fame as a short story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965.Trade ReviewA brilliant entertainer * New York Times *A formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents * Spectator *As clever a craftsman as the cleverest * Observer *

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Book SynopsisPanos Karnezis'' remarkable stories are all set in the same nameless Greek village. His characters are the people who live there - the priest, the barber, the whore, the doctor, the seamstress, the mayor - and the occasional animal: a centaur, a parrot that recites Homer, a horse called History. Their lives intersect, as lives do in a small place, and they know each other''s secrets - the hidden crimes, the mysteries, the little infamies that men commit. Karnezis observes his villagers with a forgiving eye, and creates a world where magic invariably loses out to harsh reality, a world at once universal, funny and utterly compelling.Trade ReviewKarnezis has captured the spirit of his people and spoken for them in a spellbinding, universal voice * The Times *Karnezis's robust prose, as luminous and flinty as his landscape, sharpens his focus on captive souls in a lonely place * Independent *Strikingly original... The stories in Little Infamies are extraordinary - shocking, colourful and resonant. Panos Karnezis is an entirely individual writer in full command of his material * Sunday Times *A deeply impressive collection of short stories * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisIn this entrancing first collection of stories, a master storyteller focuses on a fresh and fascinating range of human behaviour, revealing himself as an even more versatile and accomplished writer than his acclaimed novels have shown. As with all Russo''s characters, we warm to these newcomers almost in spite of themselves. In the title story, a septuagenarian nun resolutely invades the narrator''s college writing workshop with an incredible saga; a seasoned Hollywood moviemaker uncovers a 25-year-old flame he never knew he''d harboured; a precious fifth-grader puzzles over life, love and baseball as he watches his parents'' marriage dissolve; another child is forced into a harrowing cross-country escape; and an elderly couple rediscover the power - and misery - of their relationship during a long-awaited retreat to a hurricane-swept resort island.Trade ReviewA master at examining subtly, from a different angle each time, the tensions that arise in long-term relationships * The Times *Russo here confirms that he is equally skilled at shorter fiction that engagingly and shrewdly achieves through subtle humour exactly what it sets out to do * Irish Times *Russo has more than a dash of style and an almost infallible technique * Times Literary Supplement *This volume is the work of a consummate storyteller...his writing displays a warmth of wit and humour, along with an ability to inject drama into a narrative * Irish Independent *

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. After his death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). These first novels show the development of Virginia Woolf's distinctive and innovative narrative style. It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press with the publication of the co-authored Two Stories in 1917, hand-printed in the dining room of their house in Surrey. Between 1925 and 1931 VirginiaTrade ReviewHere is the precursor of the experiments which are to fill her future novels, where the writer will evaporate and condense solid objects over her literary Bunsen burner in solutions of time or light -- Helen Simpson, from her introductionWith Joyce and Eliot, Woolf has shaped a literary century -- Jeanette Winterson * The Times *They seem as perfect, and as functional for all their beauty, as spider webs. Indeed they were made for like purpose: to trap and dissect living morsels in the form of palpitating moments of time, instantaneous perceptions, brief visions of others -- Eudora Welty * New York Times Book Review) *Virginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realisation of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition * New York Times *Virginia Woolf was one of the great innovators of that decade of literary Modernism, the 1920s. Novels such as Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse showed how experimental writing could reshape our sense of ordinary life. Taking unremarkable materials - preparations for a genteel party, a day on a bourgeois family holiday - they trace the flow of associations and ideas that we call "consciousness" * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisTales of upheaval and confusion, longing and love in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake.For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago.Trade ReviewIn a dance with the delights of Murakami's imagination we experience the limitless possibilities of fiction. With these stories Murakami expands our hearts and minds yet again * The Times *Ushers the reader into a hallucinatory world where the real and surreal merge and overlap, where dreams and real-life nightmares are impossible to tell apart...this slender volume, deftly translated by Jay Rubin, may serve as a succinct introduction to his imaginative world...Lewis Carroll meets Kafka with a touch of Philip K. Dick * New York Times *Dazzlingly elegant...In a world where even the ground beneath our feet can't be relied on, imagination becomes less of a luxury and more of a duty. It's an obligation that Murakami is busily making his raison d'etre, to our very great advantage * Guardian *In the world of literary fiction, Haruki Murakami is unquestionably a superstar...Many critics have touted Murakami for the Nobel Prize. If he can stay on this kind of form, he could be in with a chance * Scotland on Sunday *Murakami is a unique writer, at once restrained and raw, plainspoken and poetic * Washington Post *

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Book SynopsisTRANSLATED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT AND ELIZABETH CHANDLER''For the mind, everthing is in the future'' Platonov once wrote; ''for the heart, everything is in the past''. The protagonist of Soul is a young man torn between these opposing desires, sent as a kind of missionary to bring the values of modern Russia to his childhood home town in Central Asia. In this strange, haunting novella, as well as in the seven stories that accompany it, a rediscovered master of twentieth century Russian literature is shown at his wisest and most humane.WITH AN AFTERWORD BY JOHN BERGERTrade ReviewI squint back on our century and I see six writers I think it will be remembered for.They are Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, William Faulkner, Andrey Platonov and Samuel Beckett…They are summits in the literary landscape of our century -- Joseph BrodskyRarely does literature come this close to music * Observer *Soul towers above anything else I have read this year. Translated beautifully... It is dark, ascetic, innocent, humane and mystical -- George Szirtes * Irish Times *Andrey Platonov is the most exciting Russian writer to be rediscovered since the end of the Soviet Union. Born in 1899, one of a railway worker's 10 children, he was an engineer, a party member and a model proletarian writer before doubts about Communism, and his literary imagination, landed him in trouble with Stalin. His work stopped being published in the early 1930s and only resurfaced 40 years after his death in 1951...The Foundation Pit will stand out as his masterpiece * Independent *'The Chandlers have brilliantly dealt with the challenges of rendering into readable English the extraordinary quality of Platonov's prose... Overall it is hard to see how we could get a better English version of Platonov's prose-nor one more likely to win him the readers he deserves' -- New York Review of Books * Orlando Figes *

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Book SynopsisTHE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe characters who populate an Alice Munro story live and breathe. Passions hopelessly conceived, affections betrayed, marriages made and broken: the joys, fears, loves and awakenings of women echo throughout these twelve unforgettable stories, laying bare the unexceptional and yet inescapable pain of human contact.Trade ReviewShe has a touch of genius * Mail on Sunday *Only a few writers continue to create those full-bodied miniature universes of the old school. Some of her short stories are so ample and fulfilling that they feel like novels. They present whole landscapes and cultures, who families of characters -- Anne TylerThe writer's questioning memory gives us sharp flashes of reality that are so vividly recalled they permit us to live another life for a moment. * Publishers Weekly *Witty, subtle, passionate, The Moons of Jupiter is exceptionally knowledgeable about the content and movement - the entanglements and entailments - of individual human feeling. And the knowledge it offers can't be looked up elsewhere * New York Times *Munro is in a class of her own.... No other writer working today is able to invest the humble story with more power, grace or breadth.... Munro has been compared to Chekhov... She has the haunting lyricism and the indulgent wisdom to qualify. * Los Angeles Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisAlice Munro was born in 1931 and was the author of thirteen collections of stories and the novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Who Do You Think You Are? (previously published as The Beggar Maid), and was awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro died in 2024.Trade ReviewBrilliant at evoking life's diversity and unpredictability, [Alice Munro is] an unrivalled chronicler of human nature * Sunday Times *A superb collection... Marriage, gambles, disappearances, motiveless vandalism - it is the stuff of unremarkable lives, conveyed in a remarkable fashion * Independent *Alice Munro excites the writer in me - there is something new to learn from her in every sentence * A. S. Byatt *Alice Munro's stories are miraculous -- Lucy Hughes-Hallet * Sunday Times *Open Secrets by the wonderful Alice Munro, is a collection of short stories, written with exquisite style -- Joanna Trollope

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Book SynopsisA.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.Trade ReviewA. S. Byatt's three-tale sequence hits the imagination's retina with all the vibrant splatter of an exploding paintbox... Everywhere, scenes sizzle with chromatic intensity * Sunday Times *Full of delight and humor...The Matisse Stories is studded with brilliantly apt images and a fine sense for subtleties of conversation and emotion * San Francisco Chronicle *A writer of dazzling inventiveness * Time *Brilliant... Byatt's fiction, like Matisse's art, pays close attention to colours and contours of surfaces, then probes beneath them to reveal further suprises * Newsday *Exquisite triptych... The Matisse Stories is richly drawn and touches upon things that matter to people * People *

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Book SynopsisAffairs of honour between bucks and blades, rakes and rascals; and affairs of the heart between heirs and orphans, beauties and bachelors; romance, intrigue, escapades and duels at dawn: all the gallantry, villainy and elegance of the age that Georgette Heyer has so triumphantly made her own are exquisitely revived in these eleven stories of the Regency.Georgette Heyer''s historical accuracy and eye for a wonderful story of romance is unequalled, and in Pistols For Two we can see the skills which won her a devoted audience that continues to this day.Trade ReviewWonderful characters, elegant, witty writing, perfect period detail, and rapturously romantic. Georgette Heyer achieves what the rest of us only aspire to -- Katie FfordeMy favourite historical novelist - stylish, romantic, sharp, and witty. Her sense of period is superb, her heroines are enterprising, and her heroes dashing. I owe her many happy hours -- Margaret DrabbleA writer of great wit and style - I've read her books to ragged shreds -- Kate Fenton * Daily Telegraph *Every girl, whatever her age, needs her own complete set of Heyer titles. More than romantic they are witty, elegant, stylish and the best comedies of manners since Jane Austen. Required reading for everyone -- Diane PearsonGeorgette Heyer is unbeatable -- India Knight

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Book SynopsisI Wish Someone Were Waiting For Me Somewhere explores how a life can be changed irrevocably in just one fateful moment. A pregnant mother''s plans for the future unravel at the hospital; a travelling salesman learns the consequences of an almost-missed exit on the motorway in the newspaper the next morning; while a perfect date is spoilt by a single act of thoughtlessness. In those crucial moments Gavalda demonstrates her almost magical skill in conveying love, lust, longing, and loneliness.Someone I Loved is a hauntingly intimate look at the intolerably painful, yet sometimes valuable consequences that adultery can have on a marriage and the individuals involved. A simple tale, yet long in substance, Someone I Loved ends like most great love affairs, forever leaving you wanting just one more moment.Trade ReviewHer books have both wit and a whimsical charm * Sunday Telegraph *Gavalda sees through ordinary appearances to people's hidden longings... A gifted literary stylist * Vogue *A distant descendant of Dorothy Parker * Voici *A collection as tender as it is scathing * Le Monde *

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Book SynopsisRichard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America''s post-war generation. Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers or the heartbreak of a single mother with artistic pretensions, Yates ruthlessly examines the hopes and disappointments of ordinary people with empathy and humour.Trade ReviewYates was the most perceptive American writer of the twentieth century * The Times *A major literary event...a remarkable achievement * Independent *His short stories...are absolutely wonderful -- Joseph O'Connor

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Book SynopsisKurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. During the Second World War he served in Europe and, as a prisoner of was in Germany, witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. He is the author of thirteen other novels, three collections of stories and five non-fiction books. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.Trade ReviewVonnegut is masterful at quickly sketching a character who you instantly recognise and immeadiately are willing to follow... no matter the plot, you as the reader know that by the end of the story, you will get somewhere. That Vonnegut will tell you something with candour and clarity -- Dave EggersA cool writer, at once throwaway and passionate and very funny * Financial Times *A satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion, a cynic who wants to believe -- Jay McInerneyUnimitative and inimitable social satirist * Harper's *A laughing prophet of doom * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisThis powerful collection of stories, set in the mid-West among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time, was the first by Raymond Carver to be published in the UK.Trade ReviewThe master craftsman of the modern American short story * Daily Telegraph *One of America's most original, truest voices -- Salman RushdieOne of the most celebrated American short-story writers of the 20th century * New York Times *A remarkable collection * New York Review of Books *I remember being floored by the first Raymond Carver collection I read: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love -- David Sedaris * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisRaymond Carver said it was possible ''to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language and endow these things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman''s earring - with immense, even startling power''. Nowhere is this alchemy more striking than in the title story of Cathedral in which a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see. Many view this story, and indeed this collection, as a watershed in the maturing of Carver''s work to a more confidently poetic style.Trade ReviewThe twelve stories collected in his book Cathedral are remarkable for the originality of vision which he manages to convey in scrupulously simple prose. Carver's is a considerable and an enterprising talent * Guardian *Cathedral ought to establish his reputation as one of the most original new voices in fiction to appear from the United States for many years -- Bill Buford * Times Literary Supplement *Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty, utterly free of pretence and affection, his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart * Washington Post *An important book in a unique career * New York Review of Books *

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