Anthologies & Short Stories

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Book SynopsisA man lies in a newspaper-lined room dreaming an other life. Bob Marley's spirit flew into him at the moment of the singer's death. A woman detaches herself from her perfunctory husband and finds the erotic foreplay she longs for in journeying round the island. A man climbs Blue Mountain Peak to fly and hear the voice of God. Sonia paints her new friend Joan and hopes that this will be the beginning of a sexual adventure. Dawes's characters are driven by their need for intimate contact with people and with God, and their need to construct personal myths powerful enough to live by. In a host of distinctive and persuasive voices they tell stories that reveal their inner lives and give an incisive portrayal of contemporary Jamaican society that is unsparing in confronting its elements of misogyny and nihilistic violence. Indeed several stories question how this disorder can be meaningfully told without either sensationalism or despair. For Dawes, the answer is found in the creative energies that lie just the other side of chaos. In particular, in the dub vershan episodes, which intercut the stories, there are intense and moving celebrations of moments of reggae creation in the studio and in performance. Dawes has established a growing international reputation as a poet and these are stories that combine a poetic imagination with narrative drive, an acute social awareness and a deep inwardness in the treatment of character. In the penultimate story, 'Marley's Ghost', Dawes's imagination soars to towering myth.Kwame Dawes is the author of over thirty five books, and is widely recognized as one of the Caribbean’s leading writers. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and a Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. His next book of poetry from Peepal Tree Press will be 'A New Beginning', a cycle of poems written with John Kinsella. He has been elected as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

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Book SynopsisWhen E.A. Markham writes a story about the Other World Cup (Montserrat loses 4-0 to Bhutan - the volcanic eruption has destroyed all the football pitches in Montserrat) and a few months later is actually invited to a literature festival in Bhutan, this chimes in with his fiction. In 1972, his alter ego, Pewter Stapleton, invented the island of St Caesare (next door to Montserrat, but more independent-minded) as part of an elaborate scam to enjoy the rich perks of a UN conference. Since then, the island has been pencilled in on a couple of maps; and a handful of people claim to have been there.Nothing is straightforward in Markham's fictive world. His stories constantly deny conventional expectations and make us rethink both how we interpret experience and what we expect of fiction.Conventional narrative could never convey the complexities of the recurrent and entertaining cast of mainly Caribbean characters as they make sense of their remembered and reinvented lives. Digression becomes an art form both in Pewter Stapleton's narration and in their stories. It is the rich web of words they weave that leads Markham to his image of the drawing room as a repository of the talk of family and friends as perhaps the most valuable possession taken by Caribbean people through Customs.This collection brings together new and uncollected stories and selections from E.A. Markham's two previous collections, Something Unusual (1984) and Ten Stories (1992). Each of the stories has its own crafted completeness, whether in the observant humour of 'The Pig Was Mine', the bleakness of 'Skeletons', the audacious mythologizing of 'A Short History of St. Cesaire', or the absurdist magical realism of 'Digging.' They confirm him as one of the most original users of the short story form in both British and Caribbean fiction.E.A. (Archie) Markham died unexpectedly in Paris on 23rd March, Easter day. Born in Montserrat in 1939, E.A. Markham worked in the theatre, in the media and as a literary editor.

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Book SynopsisCovering more than four decades in the lives of Guyanese at home or in Britain and Canada, these stories have an intensive and rewarding inner focus on a character at a point of crisis. Harold is celebrating the victory of the political party he supports whilst confronting a sense of his own powerlessness; Jacob has been sent back to Guyana from Britain after suffering a mental breakdown; Chuni, a worker at the university, is confused by the climate of revolutionary sloganizing which masks the true situation: the rise of a new middle class, elevated by their loyalty to the ruling party. This class, as the maid, Vera, recognises, are simply the old masters with new Black faces.The stories in the second half of the collection echo the experience of many thousands who fled from the political repression, corruption and social collapse of the 70s and 80s. The awareness of the characters is shot through with Guyanese images, voices and unanswered questions. It is through these that their new experiences of Britain and North America are filtered. One character lies in a hospital in London fighting for her life, but hears the voices of her childhood in Guyana – her mother, African Miss K, the East Indian pandit and the English Anglican priest. Once again, they 'war for the role of guide in her life'. In 'The Godmother' and 'Hopscotch', childhood friends reunite in London. Two have stayed in Guyana, while one has settled in London. The warmth of shared memories and cold feelings of betrayal, difference and loss vie for dominance in their interactions. These stories crystallize the shifts in Guyana's uncomfortable fortunes in the post-colonial period, and while they are exact and unsparing in their truth-telling, there are always layers of complexity that work through their realistic surfaces: a sensitivity to psychological undertones, the evocative power of memory and a poetic sense of the Guyanese physical space.Jan Lowe Shinebourne was born in Guyana and now lives in Sussex, U.K. She is writing her fourth work, a family saga spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; set in China, Europe and the Caribbean.

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Book SynopsisCaribbean Passion is feisty, sensuous and thought provoking -- everything one expects from Opal Palmer Adisa. Whether writing about history, Black lives, family, or love and sexual passion, she has an acute eye for the contraries of experience. Her Caribbean has a dynamic that draws from its dialectic of oppression and resistance; her childhood includes both the affirmation of parents that makes her 'leap fences' and the 'jeer of strange men on the street/that made your feet stumble'; and men are portrayed both as predators and as the objects of erotic desire.This vision of contraries is rooted in an intensely sensuous apprehension of the physical world. She observes the Caribbean's foods and flora with exactness; makes them emblematic metaphors that are often rewardingly oblique; and uses them as starting points for engagingly conversational meditations on aspects of remembered experience. There is a witty play between food and sexuality, but counterpointing her celebration of the erotic, there is a keen sense of the oppression of the female body. In her poem 'Bumbu Clat', for instance, she explores the deformation of a word that originally signified 'sisterhood' to become part of the most transgressive and misogynist curse in Jamaican society. In this doubleness of vision, the term 'womanist' was invented to describe Opal Palmer Adisa's work.Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaica-born, award-winning poet, educator and storyteller. Anthologised in over 100 publications, she is a regular performer of her work throughout the USA and presently lives in Oakland, California, when she is not traveling.

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Book SynopsisThe stories brought together in Foreigners, Drunks and Babies cast the slanting light of a poet's sensibility on the Imperial Academy of an ancient Eastern empire; detail the musical education of a northern realist parish priest and his sons; travel through the West of Ireland with a couple facing various extinctions; spy on the shadowy private life of a Cold War warrior; engage in hand-to-hand fighting with a classroom full of Soviet teachers; follow the adventures of an Italian girl visiting her sick boyfriend in hospital; discover how hard it can be to get a passport for your first-born; find out why everyone pretends you're not there; investigate a seemingly victimless crime; reveal reasons for a Japanese girl's committing suicide; and realize that there's no need to be forgiven for things you didn't know you hadn't done. In this first collection of his imaginative fiction, Peter Robinson, winner of the Cheltenham Prize, the John Florio Prize, and two Poetry Book Society Recommendations for his poems and translations, brings a characteristic perceptiveness, rhythmical accuracy, and vividness of evocation to these eleven examples of what he's been doing in the gaps between his other writings. His new and returning readers may be both surprised and entertained.

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Book Synopsis‘The devil was going around again and everyone knew because it was in the papers. An usherette in the Metropole saw him at An Apartment for Peggie, eating oranges in a brown trilby; two women in Clery’s Bargain Basement came upon him fingering cups in a highly suspicious manner; and The Evening Mail said pretty draper’s assistant, Lily Shine, nineteen, from Cabra West, was dancing with a fellow in a brown suit when she felt something funny, looked down, and fainted.’ In these unsettling tales of late 1940s Dublin, young Eily Doolin encounters the gentle foot-fetishist next door, the ‘Argentinian tango-dancer’ from Ballybough, the Jewish couple who introduce her to the delights of carrot cake and Chopin, the ‘simple’ boy who carries a secret hatred, and, in the climactic closing story, the devil himself. Along the way there are two murders, a suicide, and more illicit sex than Eily can comprehend. Ena May’s post-Emergency Dublin is at once recognizable and utterly unlike all previous literary versions of the city. Her gimlet-eyed narrator inhabits secret childhood places as well as the grown-up kitchens and parlours of ‘Blarney Park’, twitching the veil between public and private, street and home. Ena May has created a remarkable narrative voice, perfectly pitched between the knowing and the naïve, the compassionate and the sarcastic, the intrepid and the bewildered. A Close Shave with the Devil, fables of adults at play in a child’s world, is a tour de force of storytelling, and a remarkable début collection.Trade Review‘Magical fiction – these times past move at a racy pace and scrutinise an all-but-departed Dublin.’ – Jim Clarke, Sunday Independent ‘Very refreshing and thoroughly hilarious – Her stories wonderfully evoke the atmosphere of postwar Dublin.’ – Basil Miller, The Sunday Business Post ‘A wonderfully written book, full of rich subplots – exquisite, entertaining and engrossing.’ – The Event Guide

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Book SynopsisThe 12 stories collected here represent some of the best work of Martin Healy's short career. They are set in the city, the suburbs and the country, and they are peopled by the young, the middle-aged and the old.

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Book SynopsisThe Country Road’ moves heartbreakingly through the days of Cathy, a lonely eight-year-old in a Northern Ireland populated by her elderly neighbours and the vague menace of the security forces. In ‘Bronagh’, the eponymous heroine is wrenched from an idyllic sojourn in Andalucia when her mother falls ill, embarking on a homeward journey of oblivion along the western flank of Europe. ‘A Banal Stain’ tells the story of a graduate student lodging in a once-grand house in Lyon and confronting the ghosts of France’s colonial and Vichy past. In ‘A Recitation of Nomads’ an English painter and her American writer boyfriend, slouching through their twenties together, light out for Morocco to mend their dreams. And ‘The Marriage at Antibes’ is an arranged one between a political refugee, long settled in France, and his newly arrived bride. These stories of travel, unbelonging and otherness, related with the poised eye of a young Elizabeth Bowen, and with remarkable emotional power, announce a compelling voice in Irish fiction.

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Book SynopsisShort stories from the award-winning, bestselling and acclaimed Michael Arditti'[These stories] simply and elegantly break your heart. They deserve a wide audience, and will create a wiser one' Amanda CraigArditti imbues his stories of loneliness, confusion and the uncertainties of sexual neophytes with genuine pathos and . . . humour' The TimesA young boy discovers the ambiguity of adult affection. A camp comedian cracks up on stage. A picture-restorer learns to accept her husband's true nature. A travel agent tastes the mysterious power of the Internet. A honeymoon couple take an unconventional route to love . . .These stories employ a spectrum of different voices to explore all aspects of experience - friendship, family, misunderstandings, frustrations, griefs and joys. They will appeal not only to the author's loyal readers, but also to a broad new readership for their assured style, humour, compassion and insight.Trade Review[These stories] simply and elegantly break your heart. They deserve a wide audience, and will create a wiser one -- Amanda Craig * Literary Review *Arditti imbues his stories of loneliness, confusion and the uncertainties of sexual neophytes with genuine pathos and . . . humour * The Times *At his best when he . . . allows his characters to seduce us with nothing more than the ordinariness of their lives * Times Literary Supplement *The diverse, urbane stories here ARE good, some of them are fun, and others are far from clean -- Shena MackayThese are grown-up stories for grown-up people . . . presented in often extreme and dramatic narratives -- Michael Langan * Attitude *A simply outstanding collection . . . Elegant, tender, shocking, full of wit and insight - these stories are never less than beautifully executed * Manchester City Life *

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Book SynopsisBreathe explores the heart of Fidel Castro-era Cuba; an outsider’s look balanced by a heft of empathy to illuminate truths that lie couched between the island’s propaganda and the Western media’s skewed portrayals. The protagonists in Swimming, Taxi and Sabbatical seem to want to hold on to the indulgences that their countries offer them, while praising Cubans for the more abstemious lives they lead; in Siempre Luchando, I Never See Them Cry and The Party, romantic liaisons weather or buckle under the strain of mundane cultural assumptions; the seedy sexual aggression of Luca's Trip to Havana is undercut by the subtle yet intense lust of Breathe; while Leaving Cuba, with its haunting closing image of Havana’s night sky, is as eloquently balanced a tale of the lives of everyday Cubans as you will read - whichever path one takes, something is lost. As Cuban writer, Aida Bahr, puts it: “relying more on subtleties than on drama, [Segal] portrays the tensions and struggles, but also the joy and warmth, that fill Cubans' lives.”Trade Review"A stunning debut" — The Jewish Chronicle; "relying more on subtleties than on drama, [Breathe] portrays the tensions and struggles, but also the joy and warmth, that fill Cubans' lives." — Aida Bahr; "[a] poetic, philosophical collection" — John Lavin, Wales Arts Review; "intimate and subtle, you'll respond at the level of breathing in the same way the characters do." — Mechanics Institute Review; "[a] wonderfully observed collection." — Jacob Ross; "[These] stories... are at once exotic and familiar... shining a spotlight on our perceptions" — Ian McMillan, The Verb; "rich and evocative." — LA Jewish Journal

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Book SynopsisThe Remarkable Everyday is something different - it offers a bridge between the short story and the novel, combining the unique qualities of both. Each story is fully developed with the novel''s classic beginning, middle and end and as separate entries they provide a fantastic range, each one offering something very different. The publication is made up of eight stories written by different authors with each one portraying a character for a single day (the story is named after that day: Thursday, Tuesday etc). Complete with an insightful introduction by leading short story scholar Nena Skrbic, "The Remarkable Everyday" is entertaining, powerful and thoughtful all rolled into one. It takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through different lives with their events, thoughts and changes - all contained within a single day. It offers something for every reader to identify with and enjoy. The stories range from a transsexual coping with her new body, prejudice and literary agents, to a cheating husband finding everything catching him up too quickly for comfort, to a widow dealing with age, her memories and a kilo of peaches. In addition, the reader is offered a glimpse into the life of a young black girl uncovering a hidden past, a woman looking back on a relationship slipping away and an advertising salesman turning a swanky meal to his advantage. Not only this but a moving story depicts a mother is slowly coming to terms with the worst form of tragedy and on a different day commuters packed on their morning train are thinking very different things.

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Book SynopsisSir Walter Scott (17711832) is chiefly remembered as one of the great historical novelists, with his best-known works including Waverley (1814), Ivanhoe (1819), and Redgauntlet (1824). His experiments in short fiction, however, began before he published his first novel and throughout his career he returned to the short story form, writing tales which often contained elements of Scottish supernaturalism or the macabre.As It Was Told to Me, introduced by Daniel Cook, collects three of Scott's short stories in one volume. My Aunt Margaret's Mirror', mixes a tale of reckless romance with supernatural theatrics; The Two Drovers' offers a slow-burn exposé of national conflict; and Wandering Willie's Tale' weaves a yarn around the grisly death of a despotic laird and a trip to hell.

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Book SynopsisBest British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume. Neither genre nor Granta shall be overlooked in the search for the very best new short fiction.The first book of the series includes stories published in 2010 by the following authors: David Rose, Hilary Mantel, Lee Rourke, Leone Ross, Claire Massey, Christopher Burns, Adam Marek, SJ Butler, Heather Leach, Alan Beard, Kirsty Logan, Philip Langeskov, Bernie McGill, John Burnside, Robert Edric, Michèle Roberts, Dai Vaughan, Alison Moore and Salley Vickers.Trade ReviewSlip this lightweight but nourishing anthology into your holiday bag. Editor Royle has selected 20 published stories from British writers. His own (excellent) taste means that little explosions of weirdness or transcendence often erupt amid much well-observed everyday life. -- Boyd Tonkin * The Independent *It's so good that it's hard to believe that there was no equivalent during the 17 years since Giles Gordon and David Hughes's Best English Short Stories ceased publication in 1994. The first selection makes a very good beginning … Highly Recommended. -- Kate Saunders * The Times *The collection illustrates just how vibrant and varied the UK short story writing scene is ... each is well crafted and there’s much breadth in terms of style, tone and theme – running from love to war and covering everything in between. -- Sarah-Clare Conlon * Bookmunch *Table of Contents Flora – David Rose Winter Break – Hilary Mantel Emergency Exit – Lee Rourke Love Silk Food – Leone Ross Feather Girls – Claire Massey Foreigner – Christopher Burns Dinner of the Dead Alumni – Adam Marek The Swimmer – SJ Butler So Much Time in a Life – Heather Leach Staff Development – Alan Beard The Rental Heart – Kirsty Logan Notes on a Love Story – Philip Langeskov No Angel – Bernie McGill Slut’s Hair – John Burnside Comma – Hilary Mantel Moving Day – Robert Edric Tristram and Isolde – Michèle Roberts Looted – Dai Vaughan When the Door Closed, It Was Dark – Alison Moore Epiphany – Salley Vickers

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Book SynopsisThis is a collection of eleven short stories whose common theme is the heroism of our flawed lives. It explores the arduousness of people's lives and covers such diverse subjects as human solidarity, generational change, single parenthood, domestic violence, the tragic complexity of revolution, police brutality, artistic hubris, and the limitations of rationalism. In "The Hat", a polish Jew on the run in Eastern Europe goes down to a town in search for food and, noticing the large number of German soldiers on patrol, hides himself in a funeral procession. But he stands out as the only mourner without a hat. As he walks along, another man places his hat on the fugitive's head: an example of man's humanity to man. In "Living with the Polish Count", the young Soviet Republic struggles to keep foreign and reactionary forces at bay and in so doing loses the morality that initially inspired them. In "The Selfish Geneticist", lunch in a smart restaurant exposes the rift between two academics, both dogmatic and contemptuous of others, but one more strictly rational and the other more influenced by his human emotions.Trade ReviewOn The Golden Menagerie: "It is consistently fascinating and readable, the work of a writer of high intelligence who has a stylish way with words." - Eric Hobsbawm On The Berlusconi Bonus: "A profound, intelligent novel that asks serious adult questions about what it means to be alive." - The Herald On In Praise of the Garrulous: "A deeply reflective, extraordinarily wide-ranging meditation on the nature of language, infused in its every phrase by a passionate humanism" - Terry Eagleton On Can the Gods Cry: "His dozen stories are bracingly different, weaving changes in tone and format, and in varieties of language, ranging from street-smart to the quasi-academic. - the reader's reward is often to hear the distant rumble of the Gods of rational discourse - crying out, inciting passion, and sometimes laughing as they go." - The Scotsman

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Book SynopsisKlaus is a novella that recounts the last days of Klaus Mann's life, while referring back to the trials of the Mann family (Klaus being Thomas Mann's son) and Klaus's own autobiographical novel, Mephisto, one of his better known works partly because it was banned in West Germany for decades. This unlocks his relationship with both his father and his former lover, Gustaf, who was a communist before collaborating with the Nazi regime and becoming one of its most celebrated actors. On his return to Germany after the war, Klaus was outraged to see that Gustaf had now switched seamlessly to the post-war regime, and was once more the darling of the theatre world. Klaus, who had been isolated as both a homosexual and an anti-fascist, felt that Germans or rather those Germans in prominent positions were refusing to acknowledge their culpability. His isolation was now complete.Trade Review"Allan Massie is a master storyteller, with a particular gift for evoking the vanishing world of the European man of letters. His poignant novella about Klaus Mann bears comparison with his subject's best work." - Scottish Review of Books

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Book SynopsisStories take us into other worlds so that we may experience our own more deeply. Master storyteller Geoff Mead brings the reader inside the experience of telling and listening to a story. He shows how stories and storytelling engage our imaginations, strengthen communities and bring adventure and joy into our lives. The narrative is interspersed with consummate retellings of traditional tales from all over the world.Trade ReviewThe power of Coming Home to Story lies in Mead's passion and adventure, his faith in stories and storytelling as a source of creativity, healing and sustenance. -- Bristol Review of BooksIf you didn't believe before that the storyteller can be both healer and magician, you could hardy not believe it after reading this book. I feel the better, and the wiser, for having read this inspiring text. -- Fact & Fiction magazineTable of ContentsPrologue: Swimming in the Sea of Stories. Section 1: Being & Becoming a Storyteller. 1. Falling in Love with Story. 2. Joining the Company of Storytellers. 3. Master & Servant. 4. A Moment of Grace. Section 2: Healing Fictions. 5. In Bed with the Bear. 6. Stories all the Way Down. 7. Storied Lives. 8. Living Stories. 9. Telling the Untold Story. 10. Hermes in the Gorge. Section 3: Men & Storytelling. 11. We Band of Brothers. 12. Fathers & Sons. 13. Sons & Fathers. Section 4: Widening Circles. 14. Some Enchanted Evening. 15. Storytelling in Organisations. 16. Water on the Rock. Epilogue: Coming Home to Story.

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Book SynopsisLongisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize 2015 "Powerful stories." - Marina Warner. Obsession, longing, deceit and even murder feature in this quartet of provocative novellas, which gives a modern twist to tales of women for whom all is not necessarily as it seems. Drawing on history, culture and lore, this is a riveting exploration of the complexities of motherhood: edgy and engrossing, moving, yet at times, disturbing.Trade Review"Powerful stories about the lives and deaths of women" * Marina Warner *"In sinuous prose the past shimmers to life through the present. The Four Marys is a tremendous achievement." * Zoë Wicomb *Rafferty shows all the vivid hues ... gutsy and red-blooded ... the titular fourth tale is superb - -- Alan Bett * The Skinny *A strong collection of tales ... Rafferty s ability to honestly represent the deep love and passion of motherhood, and also the desires of women, is a testament to her writing. - -- Rebecca Dark * We Love This Book *“Each of the four tales is almost spellbinding in its own right. Through her skillful use of language and attention to detail Rafferty brings her settings, characters and ideas to vivid life, each feeling as wild and primal as reproduction itself.” -- Joanna Kolber * Dundee University Review of the Arts *Engrossing, thought-provoking, moving and disturbing are all words to describe these stories, but they are also a thoroughly good read, well imagined and beautifully told.” -- Atkinson Pryce Books * Book of the Moment *

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Book SynopsisOriginally published twenty years ago, the sixteen short stories in Mosaic of Air reflect and explore Lesbian life in the 1980s through myth, history, fantasy and science fiction. Delving into lecturing spiders, Helen of Troy, seaside libraries, computers that fall in love, murder and memory; but most of all humour, and a delight in all that women can be. Praise for the first edition: Cherry Potts writes with economy, punch, panache. - Ellen Galford Definitely about women in space, not the usual glossy tomboys of standard sf. - Gwyneth Jones Delightful ... both a hilarious spoof of one-man-and-his computer myths such as 2001, a Space Odyssey; and a reflection on the limits of love and power. - Zoe Fairbairns"

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Book SynopsisA showcase for authors Arachne Press has published previously in anthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing. The collection as a whole has tendency towards fantasy and magical realism, with Cassandra Passarelli’s (Liberty Tales) Guatemalan stories taking on a more gritty reality, and Katy Darby’s (London Lies, Stations, Shortest Day, Longest Night) engrossing SF and historical stories alongside Joan Taylor Rowan’s (London Lies, Lover's Lies, Stations) acid humour and modern desperation and Sarah James’ (Longest Day, Shortest Night) elliptical poet’s sensibility brought to flash fiction and Helen Morris’ (Liberty Tales, Solstice Shorts) ability to get to the heart of a story, and make you laugh out loud or weep inconsolably.

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Book SynopsisStory Cities explore ways in which stories respond to, reflect and re-imagine the city. Explore new short fictions in multiple genres that address the city. A guide book to the fictional city, all cities, any city: its markets, squares, cafés, hotels, parks, stations and ports; the main streets, side streets, back alleys dead ends and the crossroads. Never identified, the city has a voice of its own.Includes work from writers in Australia, Eire, Indonesia,Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, USA, and right across the UKAnnabel Banks, Melaina Barnes, Laura Besley, Maja Bodenstein, Jayne Buxton, Sarah-Clare Conlon, Rosamund Davies, Roland Denning, Liam Hogan, Cath Holland, Belinda Huang, Catherine Jones, Aisling Keogh, Jess Kilby, Jasmin Kirkbride, Stuart Larner, Wes Lee, Emma Lee, Cathy Lennon, Ash Lim, C.A. Limina, Máire Malone, David Mathews, Nicholas McGaughey, Rachael McGill, Dave Murray, Pedro Basso Neves, Alexandra Penland, Cherry Potts, Matthew Pountney, Arna Radovich, Kam Rehal, Jane Roberts, Reshma Ruia, Jesse Sensibar, Shamini Sriskandarajah , Miriam Sorrentino, Stuart Larner, Patty Tomsky, Evleen Towey, Nic Vine, Rob Walton, Steven Wingate,

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Book SynopsisTackling conflicts both internal and external, The Blink That Killed the Eye is a moving reflection on how those rendered invisible by society struggle to regain control over their lives.While each story stands affectingly on its own, Anthony Anaxagorou also weaves an affecting chronology - the lives of the characters overlapping and intertwining as they develop individually.Exploring themes of invisibility, alienation, abuse, and loss, this brave and touching short story collection shows the poet-playwright at his soul-stirring best.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Saboteur Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Jhalak Prize. A startling debut short story collection from the award-winning author of Butterfly Fish. Okojie's collection of stories are captivating, erotic, enigmatic and disturbing. Irenosen Okojie's gift is in her understated humour, her light touch, her razor-sharp assessment of the best and worst of humankind, and her unflinching gaze into the darkest corners of the human experience. Okojie has created a world with errant Londoners caught between here and the hereafter, where insensitive men cheat on their mistresses and can only muster enough interest to fall for one- dimensional poster girls and where brave young women attempt to be erotically empowered at their own peril. Sexy, serious and at times downright disturbing, this brilliant debut collection sizzles with originality.Trade ReviewEach story featured is original, dark and with a witty but dark humour which disturbs and forces the reader to question exactly what a social norm is. This is fiction at its best, enacting change, driving the reader to act and it is spectacular. * The Reading Passport *Speak Gigantular is a work of rare confidence, luminous imagery and full of hidden sharp edges. There are few things that bring greater joy in reading than coming upon a talent so delightful, so penetrating, so scandalous. Okojie's stories are magical in all the most interesting senses of that word: devious, enthralling, unexpected. * Nina Allan, winner of the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire *A beautiful, sombre collection with deep shadows and dazzling highlights. * Mslexia *Okojie delves into the painful, the unsayable, the unknowable. Her prose is precise and illuminating: love and loneliness are recurrent themes. * Bernardine Evaristo, The Guardian *A liberatingly odd, seductive and fearless talent. * Laline Paull, author of The Bees, shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction *

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Book SynopsisA lonely woman invites danger between tedious dates; a station guard plays a bloody game of heads-or-tails; an office cleaner sneaks into a forbidden room hiding grim secrets. Compelling and provocative, Annabel Banks's debut short fiction collection draws deeply upon the human need to be in control - no matter how devastating the cost.

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Book SynopsisSitting by her window with a glass of cranberries in sugar syrup bought from a woman in the market who assured her they came from Karelia, she muses “Perhaps they have some other kind of effect when you eat them. Spiritual maybe? So I eat and wait for the Karelian cranberries to work their magic on me.” Skarynkina is impelled to spend the last of her money on a trip to Krakow to meet Czeslaw Milosz but never finds his address, so he remains to her an idol like Elvis Presley dressed in gold lame. Each story has a charm and imaginative flight of its own.Trade Review‘She writes as if penning a letter to a close friend, loosely, intimately, but never less engagingly…’ -- Alan Taylor * The Herald *Country Life wrote of Skarynkina’s essays that they ‘exist at the very edge of what we can imagine.’ * Country Life *Table of ContentsNote on language Introduction by Maryja Martysievič Smarhoń the Magical Hugs Death and the Panama Hat The Real Brodsky My God! Angels on the Frontier The Silver Screen, an Old Church and a Cinema called `Cosmos’ On First Name Terms with Borges, Tolstoy and Nabokov Post Mortem Maryja and Japan Winter Camp Three Generations of Domestic Porcelain Figure Skates and Dead Classmates A Window on Another Life Talking about The Brothers Karamazov When Writers appear in Dreams Rabbit Meat, Gypsies and the Ocean Four Sisters and the Cornflower Blue Dress A Large Dose of Czesław Miłosz with a Dash of Elvis Presley The Restaurant that gave us a Foretaste of America Two Film Stars Pork Knuckle and Stuffed Camel Onegin and the Surgeon Time to have Your Hair Done Do you remember the Hypnotist? A Farewell to Pugachova The Face is not Right Greetings that waft from my Childhood Days Notes on the Text

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Book Synopsis"The stories have a steely rectitude and an uncompromising determination to face down humiliation and inequality...economical, moral and compassionate."—The Guardian Dilys Rose has been compared to Katherine Mansfield. Stories include one of two musicians in an airport watching a bombing of the home town they have left; restless teenagers running riot during lockdown, with disastrous consequences. In others Albert Einstein's reputation grows, as does his absence as a father; a cantankerous ninety-nine year old contributes to the chaos of a night ward. Rose conjures the essence of a situation with insight, economy and dark wit, and vividly presents an uncompromising view of the world where everyone is searching but few find what they hope for. Each story vividly creates the inner world of a compelling yet disparate cast of characters, and these brief glimpses into the lives of others leave a lasting afterglow.Trade ReviewThe stories have a steely rectitude and an uncompromising determination to face down humiliation and inequality...economical, moral and compassionate. -- Elizabeth Young * The Guardian *The author's eye is so sharp, her hearing so acute, her imagination so lively. This is a very good collection indeed. Even some of those who say they don’t care for short story collections might well set their prejudice aside and find much to delight them. -- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *Many of Rose's characters face impossible choices, but her unity of vision does not lead to a narrow or repetitive collection. On the contrary, the stories are wonderfully far-ranging. -- Margot Livesey * Times Literary Supplement *

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