Anthologies & Short Stories

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Book SynopsisThis elegant gift edition brings together Washington Irving''s five Christmas stories in a single volume, presented with a delightful gold-embossed cover design, gilded page edges and original illustrations. Originally published in 1819-20 and illustrated by Randolph Caldecott, the five stories in Old Christmas describe English traditions of Christmas and recount the festivities that Irving experienced while visiting Aston Hall, (here known as ''Bracebridge Hall''), a Jacobean mansion near Birmingham, UK. ''Christmas'' reflects on the meaning of Christmas and the ceremonies and festivities that attend it. ''The Stage Coach'' follows the protagonist as he spends Christmas eve in a small town during a coach stop. ''Christmas Eve'', ''Christmas Day'' and ''The Christmas Dinner'' recount Irving''s memories at Aston Hall, including the sumptuous banquet and joyful family time of the Christmas dinner. Featuring or

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Book SynopsisPERFECT for fans of Roald Dahl.Think you know Dahl? Think again. There''s still a whole world of Dahl to discover in a newly collected book of his deliciously dark tales for adults . . . In war, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl''s time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity.Among other stories, you''ll read about the pilot shot down in the Libyan desert, the fighter plane that vanishes inside a mysterious thick white cloud and the soldier who returns from war but has been shockingly changed by his experiences.Featuring extraordinary cover art by Charming Baker, whose paintings echo the dark and twisted world of Dahl''s short stories. Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in seven other centenary editions: Lust, MTrade ReviewThere's a whole world of Dahl still to discover in a newly collected book of his deliciously dark tales for adults . . . In war, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl's time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity. * From the publisher's description *Roald Dahl is one of the few writers I know whose work can accurately be described as addictive * Irish Times *The absolute master of the twist in the tale * Observer *

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Book SynopsisPERFECT for fans of Roald Dahl.Think you know Dahl? Think again. Discover a collection of deliciously dark ghost stories for adults, picked by Dahl himself . . . Do you enjoy being scared? Featuring fourteen classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales of ghostly goings-on will have you shivering with fear as you turn the pages.They include such timeless and haunting stories as Sheridan Le Fanu''s The Ghost of a Hand, Edith Wharton''s Afterward, Cynthia Asquith''s The Corner Shop and Mary Treadgold''s The Telephone. Featuring extraordinary cover art by Charming Baker, whose paintings echo the dark and twisted world of Dahl''s short stories. Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in seven other centenary editions featuring his own stories: Lust, Madness, Cruelty, Deception, Trickery, Innocence and War.Trade ReviewA collection of deliciously dark ghost stories for adults, picked by Roald Dahl himself . . . Do you enjoy being scared? Featuring fourteen classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales of ghostly goings-on will have you shivering with fear as you turn the pages. * From the publisher's description *Roald Dahl is one of the few writers I know whose work can accurately be described as addictive * Irish Times *The absolute master of the twist in the tale * Observer *

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Book SynopsisDuring WW2 there was a rumour that German spies were landing by parachute in Britain, dressed as nuns...Conradin Muller was an unusual spy. He was recruited in Hamburg in June 1943, much against his will, and sent on his first, and only, mission in late September that year. He failed to send a single report back to Germany, and when the War came to an end in May 1945, he fell to his knees and wept with relief.From a highly reluctant German spy who is drawn to an East Anglian nunnery as his only means of escape, to the strange tale of one of the Cambridge spy ring''s adventures with a Russian dwarf, these are Alexander McCall Smith''s intriguing and typically inventive stories from the world of espionage.''Spy-masterful storytelling'' Sunday Post''Delightfully old-fashioned and prudent of prose, McCall Smith unspools his tales'' Daily Mail''[Adds] another treasure to McCall Smith''s already glTrade ReviewSpy-masterful storytelling * Sunday Post *Marvellous... shows off Alexander McCall Smith's accomplishment as a storyteller as its very best * Undiscovered Scotland *There's nothing not to like about Alexander McCall Smith when you read his latest collection of six short stories on the business of spying... These are a half dozen beautifully shaped, delicious morsels, which I devoured even faster than McCall Smith could write them... full of character and detail * Australian *Massively entertaining and thought-provoking * Booklist (starred review) *Based on extensive research and with a fine grip on the slippery nature of the world of espionage, these underhand dealings range from Algeria in 1924 to a modern-day clerical cabal in the Vatican... Delightfully old-fashioned and prudent of prose, McCall Smith unspools his tales * Daily Mail *Taken together, the two parts echo each other. Each story provides a unique cast of characters and distinctly different plots, each offers a gentle portrait of people and society. And each is guided by the mastery of a consummate storyteller, offering another treasure to his already glittering library * New York Journal of Books *Spy-masterful storytelling * Sunday Post *Marvellous... shows off Alexander McCall Smith's accomplishment as a storyteller as its very best * Undiscovered Scotland *There's nothing not to like about Alexander McCall Smith when you read his latest collection of six short stories on the business of spying... These are a half dozen beautifully shaped, delicious morsels, which I devoured even faster than McCall Smith could write them... full of character and detail * Australian *Massively entertaining and thought-provoking * Booklist (starred review) *Based on extensive research and with a fine grip on the slippery nature of the world of espionage, these underhand dealings range from Algeria in 1924 to a modern-day clerical cabal in the Vatican... Delightfully old-fashioned and prudent of prose, McCall Smith unspools his tales * Daily Mail *Taken together, the two parts echo each other. Each story provides a unique cast of characters and distinctly different plots, each offers a gentle portrait of people and society. And each is guided by the mastery of a consummate storyteller, offering another treasure to his already glittering library * New York Journal of Books *

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Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling author of the Charlie Parker mystery series - 'the finest crime series currently in existence' (Independent) - comes a new anthology of chilling short fiction - with two award-winning stories.Trade ReviewConnolly never disappoints; his writing is always flawless, sympathetic and with beautifully drawn characters . . . Night Music is a worthy follow-up to Nocturnes, and there is much to enjoy here - and much to think about, too. A must for John Connolly's many fans. A collection of supernatural fiction to rattle your cage. -- Marie O'Reagan * Mass Movement *Connolly knows how to unsettle, chill and outright terrify his readers . . . he displays his aptitude for crafting creepy supernatural tales -- Michael Berry * Portland Press Herald *Connolly is a master of creating exquisite short stories, and Night Music is (if you'll excuse the music reference) "all killer, no filler!" The stories on offer range from charmingly whimsical to absolutely terrifying, with one or two being reminiscent of Clive Barker at his goriest best. * Starburst *

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Book SynopsisModern fairy tales of magic, outsiders and lost souls from bestselling author and acclaimed book vlogger Jen Campbell.Trade ReviewCampbell's entirely fresh reframing of classic fairytales within modern experiences...really got me thinking. The perfect autumnal read to curl up with. * Stylist *razor-sharp critique of contemporary issues and deeply moving short stories * Stylist *quietly excellent * Stylist *The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night is a gem of a book * Stylist *A darkly clever, beautifully written and deliciously twisted collection of modern fairy tales -- Sarra Manning * Red *'dark, twisted fairy tales' -- Kirsty Logan * The Herald *Full of wonder: brilliantly imaginative, with dark, unsettling undercurrents ... The characters sparkle with a sense of the surreal, but these outcasts, misfits and loners are filled with hopes and dreams, and are as believable as those in any true-life novel. * Psychologies *Interwoven with myth and fairy tale, these stories are surprising, delightful, and by turns dangerous and joyful, like walking through a mirror and discovering a world that you both recognise and have never seen before. -- Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry'Campbell's fairy tales retain a kaleidoscope quality from the first to the last page...a reality coloured by our imagination in which we are as strong as we are vulnerable, as similar as we are different.' Sanja GligoricThere are so many intriguing characters and situations to be enjoyed in The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night...Jen Campbell is clearly a writer to watch. -- Katy Goodwin-Bates * New Books magazine *Visceral, sinister and yet strangely beguiling ... her stories often explore characters, situations and settings caught in that strange area between the known and the unfamiliar, between the normal and the 'monstrous' ... Comparisons could be made to Angela Carter, but Campbell's stories have a quality completely their own; haunting in their imagery and powerful in their brevity. -- Carolyn Percy * Wales Art Review *Interesting and refreshing ... an extremely enlightening read * TN2 Magazine *Funny and poignant and unexpected. A fable for our times. -- Sarah Franklinfantasy, magic, fairy tales, with a sprinkling of reality * Irish Times *A story collection which manages to be magical and sinister at the same time * Kirsty Logan *

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Book SynopsisCompiled during a three-month stay in Granada, Spain, Tales of the Alhambra assembles descriptions, myths, and narratives of historical events. After completing a literary project in Madrid, author Washington Irving traveled to Granada, Spain. Immediately taken by its beauty and extravagance, Irving requested a travel guide and began filling notebooks and journals with his observations and description of the magnificent setting. Beginning with an expedition through the Andalusian mountains on horseback, cherishing the grandeur of the nature, Irving took his time to enjoy and observe the landscape and culture of the country. After their horseback ride through the mountains, Irving and his guide stopped at an inn for a drink. During their stay, Irving witnessed artistic culture through music and dance, noting how the locals seemed to celebrate every-day occurrences, creating a happy environment. Upon entering the city, Irving requested permission from the governor to stay at the Alhambra palace. Originally built on the ruins of Roman buildings, the Alhambra was a small fortress built in 889 CE, and had been largely ignored and forgotten by the time Irving arrived in Granada. While staying in the Alhambra, Irving explored the abandoned palace and recollected the myths set within its walls, recording every detail of its architecture, story, and mystery. The Alhambra palace had been mostly forgotten, and left unmaintained until Washington Irving’s narrative and recollections revived interest. Upon its original publication in 1832, Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra piqued the curiosity of readers who were completely engrossed in Irving’s description of the previously abandoned fortress. With delicate prose and intricate detail, Tales of the Alhambra appeal to readers’ sense of adventure, and allows its audience to explore the wonders of Granada, Spain alongside Washington Irving. This edition of Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra features a new, eye-catching cover design and is printed in a font that is both modern and readable, inviting contemporary audiences to divulge in the grandeur and beauty of a medieval fortress.

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Book Synopsis‘McCann returns to Ireland with this collection, turning his measured gaze and incisive prose to the country’s recent history with devastating effect’ Maggie O’Farrell 'McCann once again shows why he is one of the best writers in the world … Deeply moving and powerfully written, these are likely to become classics' Big Issue ___________________ One powerful novella, with two thematically linked short stories on either side of it, forms the basis of Everything in This Country Must. Although these are stories about Ireland and the Troubles, they have an almost mythical rather than a political feel. In the title story, four young soldiers help a farmer and his daughter free their horse from a stream in flood, unable to understand that their help will never be anything but an insult. In the novella, Hunger Strike, a young boy and his mother flee to Galway as the boy's uncle succumbs to a hunger strike in a Derry gaol. In Wood, a ten-year-old boy is asked by his mother to make poles for the marching season. ___________________ 'Colum McCann’s stories are brooding, meditative and lyrically controlled to that delicate point where the emotion within them intensifies with each succeeding reading and recognition. The political turmoil of Northern Ireland finds here an answering, subtly respondent voice - wonderfully skilled and deeply felt' Seamus DeaneTrade ReviewThese are powerful stories – gritty, memorable and ambitious. The novella goes straight to the heart, both in terms of its theme and its emotional punch -- Edna O’BrienExcellent – this is a powerful and moving collection * Roddy Doyle *Orwell would have been proud to journey with a writer as good as Colum McCann * Sunday Independent *McCann once again shows why he is one of the best writers in the world … Deeply moving and powerfully written, these are likely to become classics * Big Issue *Captures that peculiar nexus of hormones, deprivation and political imperative on a Northern Irish child coming of age * Los Angeles Times Book Review *Colum McCann’s stories are brooding, meditative and lyrically controlled to that delicate point where the emotion within them intensifies with each succeeding reading and recognition. The political turmoil of Northern Ireland finds here an answering, subtly respondent voice - wonderfully skilled and deeply felt -- Seamus DeaneFull of wild melancholy -- Christopher Hope

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Book SynopsisA TIME 'New Books You Should Read' A People magazine 'Book of the Week' A New York Times Editors' Choice With a foreword by Elizabeth Strout ‘Electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories’ Lauren Groff Another day! And then another and another and another. It seemed as if it would all go on forever in that exquisitely boring and beautiful way. But of course it wouldn’t; everyone knows that. In this collection, Hilma Wolitzer invites us inside the private world of domestic bliss, seen mostly through the lens of Paulie and Howard’s gloriously ordinary marriage. From hasty weddings to meddlesome neighbours, ex-wives who just won’t leave, to sleepless nights spent worrying about unanswered chainmail, Wolitzer captures the tensions, contradictions and unexpected detours of daily life with wit, candour and an acutely observant eye. Including stories first published in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s – alongside new writing from Wolitzer, now in her nineties – Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket reintroduces a beloved writer to be embraced by a new generation of readers. ‘A fascinating time capsule of womanhood, marriage and motherhood over the last century … A fabulous book’ Emma Straub ‘Immensely gratifying, poignant, funny … Breathtaking’ Elizabeth Strout, from the forewordTrade ReviewShort stories that pack a pithy poignant punch by a 91-year-old mistress of the craft … From the first page, dialogue and descriptions crackle through the quotidian and Hilma’s piquant prose illuminates scenes both prosaic and profound * Harper's Bazaar *Wolitzer’s vision of the world, for all its sorrow, is often hilarious and always compassionate. * New York Times Book Review *[Wolitzer’s writing] shines a light on the extraordinary and magical in seemingly ordinary, every day lives … Wolitzer is sure to find many new fans with this collection * Red *Wolitzer is a genius of the short story … Wolitzer is above all an observer, and she has a wonderful eye: compassionate, slightly jaundiced, erotic, urbane and often very funny * Sunday Times *Wolitzer is a champ at the closely observed, droll novel of manners. * NPR *The stories, full of references to Formica counters and Jell-O moulds, are riven with the stresses of parenting and marriage, and are incredibly funny … Her stories are disarmingly playful, but they also explore such subjects as maternal ambivalence and female desire in a way that feels radical even today * Daily Telegraph *Oh, how I loved these stories! I've been a fan of Hilma Wolitzer since my teens and this collection offers everything I adore about her novels: each story dazzles with an unflinching portrayal of a woman at a pivotal moment in her life -- Joanna Rakoff, author of MY SALINGER YEARWit, wisdom and warmth form the foundation of this sparkling collection. Wolitzer is a natural-born storyteller whose rigour, attention and generosity create miracles on each and every page -- Tayari JonesHilma Wolitzer’s skill is to capture what on the surface seems like ordinary lives, but uncovering the extraordinary that lies underneath * Living Magazine *Like its author, the stories in Today A Woman Went Mad shine as brightly, cut as deeply and entertain as deliciously as if they’d been written today * Los Angeles Times *Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is electric: with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories -- Lauren GroffWolitzer is especially strong on wise – and wisecracking – women, even in the harrowing tale of a meltdown in a supermarket ... You’ll laugh till you weep * Saga *Written over more than half a century, these thirteen stories circle themes such as love, insomnia and motherhood … [The collection is] beady-eyed and often humorous, its pages packed with details that reveal as much as entire novels * Mail on Sunday *[Wolitzer] shows us the ever-shifting alliances of family life and ways in which love can both change and endure. * New York Times *There are equal amounts of drollery and despair in these wonderful stories … Wolitzer’s take is fresh and funny and finely tuned to the carefree moments that lighten the emotional load … It’s so beautifully done, sly and spry, the perfect mixture of funny and sad * Daily Mail *Wolitzer is less well known than Tyler and Strout, though her writing is every bit as sharp, funny and insightful as her contemporaries ... Whether it’s the titular woman in the supermarket, or a wife who brings her husband to open house viewings to manage his depression, Wolitzer is observant and truthful on the tensions that exist in daily life * Irish Times *Wolitzer doesn’t just brilliantly capture what we imagine is recognisable ordinary life, she reveals the unique magic that is so absolutely transcendent, it makes us see and live in the world differently ... A fabulous collection brimming with the compassion that Wolitzer is known for -- Caroline Leavitt[A] sage collection of stories ... Throughout, Wolitzer captures the feel of each moment with characters who charm with their honesty. The result is a set of engaging time capsules. * Publishers Weekly *A fascinating time capsule of womanhood, marriage and motherhood over the last century … a fabulous book -- Emma StraubImmensely gratifying, poignant, funny … Breathtaking -- Elizabeth Strout (from the foreword)Hilma Wolitzer sees the miraculous, and the tragic, in modest lives and domestic particulars – wonders that might pass as ordinary events to the untrained eye. She magnifies the world. She insists, in one gorgeous sentence after another, that there’s no such thing as a usual hour, let alone a usual day -- Michael CunninghamWith her trademark dry wit and abiding compassion, Wolitzer explores the telling details of everyday life in ways that are unsettling, insightful and wholly original. These stories will linger in your mind and get under your skin. They shimmer with life -- Christina Baker KlineTo read Hilma Wolitzer is to laugh in a special way and to allow yourself little intermissions of sheer satisfaction in which you lay the open book facedown on your heart and snuggle with the human race. * Gail Godwin *A timeless examination of the bonds that connect us and the staying power of love * TIME *Wry, terse, full of telling detail. Think The Stepford Wives meets Samantha Bee * The Tablet *Witty and wonderful, these insightful stories are about the imperfections of everyday life … [Her characters] find the sunny, funny moments that transform the ordinary into the extraordinary * Psychologies *

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Book SynopsisFrom the Sunday Times bestselling author of Three Women and Animal comes an electric masterclass in short fiction 'Fearless . . . This summer's must-read literary thriller' EVENING STANDARD 'Showcases Taddeo’s dark imagination, confronting prose and vodka-dry humour' RED ---------------- Behind anonymous screens, an army of cool and beautiful girls manage the dating service Ghost Lover, a forwarding system for text messages that promises to spare you the anguish of trying to stay composed while communicating with your crush. At a star-studded political fundraiser in a Los Angeles mansion, a trio of women compete to win the heart of the slick guest of honour. In a tense hospital waiting room, an inseparable pair of hard-partying friends crash into life’s responsibilities, but the magic of their glory days comes alive again at the moment they least expect it. In these nine riveting stories, Lisa Taddeo brings to life the fever of obsession, the blindness of love and the mania of grief. Featuring Taddeo’s arresting prose that continues to thrill her legions of fans, Ghost Lover dares you to look away. ---------------- PRAISE FOR LISA TADDEO: 'One of my favourite writers of all time' DUA LIPA ‘A pre-eminent channeller of women's interior lives’ FINANCIAL TIMES 'A brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity' ELIZABETH GILBERTTrade ReviewFearless . . . This summer’s must-read literary thriller. The writer’s skilful depiction of female rage amid a world of predatory men will have you laughing, crying . . . and unable to put it down * Evening Standard *Showcases Taddeo’s dark imagination, confronting prose and vodka-dry humour . . . Taddeo is at her best when she’s writing about female friendship, with all its fraught nuances * Red *Taddeo can deliver turns of phrase so perfect, they feel like they’ve been on the tip of your tongue for ever . . . When it comes to describing some of femininity’s ugliest double binds, Taddeo is as brutal as the best of them. She is funny, too * i *Explores female desire and sexual power dynamics in a collection of stories that often feel shockingly true . . . Some readers will feel a shock of recognition – Taddeo has a knack for saying what women often feel they can’t say aloud * Guardian *These nine stories from the bestselling author of Three Women and Animal simmer with poisonous energy . . . Candid and caustic, these portraits are bold, bleak and entirely believable * Daily Mail *Dizzying, dripping and highly addictive * Tatler *Devastating stories of women’s pain, loss and compensatory behaviour. Taddeo is the 21st century’s more excoriating Edna O’Brien * Spectator *I’d be jealous of Lisa Taddeo if I didn’t love her so damn much * Refinery 29 *

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Book SynopsisWendy Erskine lives in Belfast. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland. She also features in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4. Sweet Home is her first collection.

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Book Synopsis‘Reminiscent of Edna O’Brien, with shades too of Jean Rhys.’ – The Irish TimesThings to Come and Go showcases the incomparable talent of Bette Howland in three novellas of stunning power, beauty, and sustaining humour.‘Birds of a Feather’ is a daughter’s story of her extended, first-generation family, the ‘big, brassy yak-yakking Abarbanels’. Esti, a merciless, astute observer, recalls growing up amid (the confusions and difficulties of) their history, quarrels, judgements, noisy love and inescapable bonds of blood.In ‘The Old Wheeze’ a single mother in her twenties returns to her sunless apartment after a date at the ballet. Shifting between four viewpoints – the young woman, the older professor who took her out, her son, and her son’s babysitter – the story masterfully captures the impossibility of liberating ourselves from the self.In ‘The Life You Gave Me’, a woman at the midpoint of life is called to her father’s sickbed. A lament for all that is forever unsaid and unsayable, the story is ‘an anguished meditation on growing up, growing old and being left behind, a complaint against time.’ (The New York Times)First published in 1984, Things to Come and Go, Bette Howland’s final book, is a collection of haunting urgency about arrivals and departures, and the private, insoluble dramas in the lives of three women.With an introduction by Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.Trade ReviewHowland's striking prose breathes life into the everyday, the domestic world sung with a lyrical note . . . reminiscent of Edna O'Brien, with shades too of Jea Rhys. -- Sarah Gilmartin * Irish Times *Beneath the bright patter and eye-catching descriptions, each story has sadness at its core . . . a flood of energetic storytelling. -- Marion Winik * Washington Post *A writer of unusual talent, power and intelligence . . . A vigorous, original voice, an incisive mind and an uncompromised lyrical vision . . . Stunning power and beauty abound in this book; it is a trove of lyric riches. -- Johanna Kaplan * New York Times *The three novellas that constitute Things to Come and Go feel, at moments, like thinly disguised autobiography. With her flexible stance toward reality, her eye for the amusing, curious minutiae of existence, and her tonal range . . . Howland recalls the short-story writer Lucia Berlin. -- Abigail Deutsch * Harper's Magazine *There is being seen, and then there is seeing. There is no seeing like Bette Howland's. On every page, catching the narrator's every glance, are observations rich in detail and delight—honest, acerbic, alert, and always dazzling in their inventiveness and wry, hard-edged wisdom. -- Amitava KumarOne of the significant writers of her generation -- Saul BellowThere’s no more interesting tale of neglect and rediscovery than that of Bette Howland. -- Lucy Scholes * Paris Review *[Howland's] rhythmic sentences and striving characters resonate as much today as they did when first written in the 1970s and early 80s . . . one of American literature’s rising stars. -- Sarah Hughes * iNews *Howland’s great theme is the shared ache of human existence, a commonality that sometimes unites us, but more often divides and isolates. She captures this paradoxical push-pull between the longing and the resistance to connect -- Diane Cole * New York Jewish Week *

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Book SynopsisAt the Bottom of the River is Jamaica Kincaid’s first published work, a selection of inter-connected prose poems told from the perspective of a young Afro-Caribbean girl.Collecting pieces written for the New Yorker and the Paris Review between 1978 and 1982, including the seminal ‘Girl’, these stunning works announced a fully-formed, generational talent and firmly established the themes that Kincaid would continue to return to in her later work: the loss of childhood, the fractious nature of mother–daughter relationships, the intangible beauty of the natural world, and the striving for independence in a colonial landscape.Powerful and lyrical, this is an unforgettable collection from a unique and necessary literary voice.Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.Trade ReviewThis book will burn on your shelf. It is too choked with love to incite envy, too humble for admiration, and still too startling to escape astonishment -- Derek WalcottWhat a writer – elegant, uncompromising, simultaneously direct and layered and complex. -- Ali SmithI’ve read everything by Jamaica Kincaid, and I’ve still never read anyone like her. If you are new to Kincaid, I envy you -- Jackie Kay

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Book Synopsis''Brilliant'' SUNDAY TIMES''Compelling and unnerving'' SPECTATORThis first collection of stories by Lawrence Osborne perfectly showcases his talent for tension, atmosphere - and characters out of their depth--------------------------------------------------------------------A deaf girl hired as a maid by a wealthy New York couple turns the tables on her obliviously abusive employers and answers blackmail with blackmail. A psychiatrist treating a girl in rural England becomes ensnared in a love affair that threatens to destroy her career. A naïve young linguist sent to the forests of Irian Jaya is manipulated into betraying her mission by a ruthless and disturbed pastor.Lawrence Osborne's stories explore characters lost in the shadowed borders between the mundane, the fantastical and the violence of the natural world.--------------------------------------------------------------------<

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Book SynopsisOne of Grossman's three great war novels - alongside Life and Fate and Stalingrad."A significant, valuable addition to Grossman's small but powerful body of work" WILLIAM BOYD"A remarkable novel that illuminates the terrible realities of Barbarossa and the banal horror of warfare with incomparable understanding and insight" JONATHAN DIMBLEBY"There are always good reasons for reading Grossman, but few times are as resonant as our own" Financial Times"At the heart of his writing lies a tireless humanity and empathy" Telegraph"Grossman combines a journalist's eye with a novelist's empathy" SpectatorSet during the catastrophic defeats of the war's first months, it tracks a Red Army regiment that wins a minor victory in eastern Belorussia but fails to exploit this success. A battalion is then entrusted with the task of slowing the German advance, and eventually encircled, before ultimately breaking out and joining with the rest of the Soviet forces.Grossman's descriptions of the natural world - and his characters' relationship to it - are both vivid and unexpected, as are his memorable character sketches: eleven-year-old Lionya is determined to hang on to his toy revolver as he walks a long distance behind German lines; his defiant grandmother slaps a German officer in the face and is shot; Kotenko, a fiercely anti-Soviet peasant who initially welcomes the Germans, hangs himself in despair when they treat him with contempt; and Semion Ignatiev, a womanizer and gifted story-teller, turns out to be the boldest and most resourceful of the rank-and file soldiers.Grossman spent most of the war years close to the front line. But The People Immortal is far from being mere morale-boosting propaganda. On the contrary, as letters included in this volume make clear, it was read as a textbook, and as a work of military education. This edition includes not only the unredacted novel itself, translated here for the first time since 1946, but also a wealth of background material.A heavily redacted English translation of The People Immortal was published in 1946. This current edition is the first that reflects Grossman's original text.Translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth ChandlerTrade ReviewYou will not only discover that you love his characters and want to stay with them - that you need them in your life as much as you need your own family and loved ones - but that at the end ... you will want to read it again * Daily Telegraph on STALINGRAD *Few works of literature since Homer can match the piercing, unshakably humane gaze that Grossman turns on the haggard face of war * Economist on STALINGRAD *There are always good reasons for reading Grossman, but few times are as resonant as our own. As a proud son of Ukraine, steeped in Russian culture, Grossman was both a chronicler of the Soviet Union's greatest victories and a clear-eyed investigator of some of its darkest crimes. -- John Thornhill * Financial Times *The People Immortal is a remarkable novel that illuminates the terrible realities of Barbarossa and the banal horror of warfare with incomparable understanding and insight. As you would expect from Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, the translation is superb. -- Jonathan DimblebyGrossman's great and enduring asset as a novelist is that - paradoxically - he didn't have to rely on his imagination. He was there . . . It gives his writing unrivalled authority . . . [A] significant, valuable addition to Grossman's small but powerful body of work -- William Boyd * Sunday Times *Grossman's future greatness is written in its pages . . . at the heart of his writing lies a tireless humanity and empathy -- Julian Evans * Telegraph *Its greatest strength lies in its authenticity . . . Grossman combines a journalist's eye with a novelist's empathy -- Michael Arditti * Spectator *Thanks to a superb translation by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, based on Julia Volohova's meticulous work on Grossman's original text, we now have the most authoritative edition of The People Immortal yet to appear in English or, indeed, Russian. -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *Grossman's expansive humanism . . . challenged standard Soviet assumptions about the duality between humans and their environment. -- Jochen Hellbeck * Times Literary Supplement *Masterful literary fiction . . . Highly recommended, and beyond doubt the best war-related piece of writing this reviewer has read to date -- Emma Muldoon Ryan * Irish Examiner *An absorbing book, without the scope and critiques of Grossman's LIFE AND FATE, but with all of its humanity and discernment -- Declan O'Driscoll * Irish Times *An indispensable companion piece to his other works . . . Grossman was one of the greatest chroniclers of the Second World War in all its inhumanity. -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *

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Book Synopsis"Stridsberg has perfected a kind of contemporary fairy tale with a bracing Scandinavian edge, here elegantly translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner" Christian House, Financial TimesA young woman becomes obsessed with her psychoanalyst's daughter. A police officer's mistress clandestinely cares for his dying wife. A boy goes missing from the Swedish town of Huskvarna after he was last seen walking with a wolf. From the inside of a dead whale's belly, to an industrial town emptied out after its factory's closure, to a Texan prison where a young man visits his sister's murderer on death row, Stridsberg approaches both the strange and the mundane with a fairy-tale sensibility that lights our world anew.Time runs through this collection like water, variously ebbing, flowing and rippling beneath the shimmering surface of Stridsberg's prose. These genre-spanning stories are held together by a sense of longing: for escape from the narrow margins of a prescribed life, for a past which promises an undiscovered future, for a place or a person that feels like home. Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-TurnerTrade ReviewThere's a dreamy quality to these death-stalked tales from Swedish author Stridsberg, which marry old-world mysteriousness to modern sensibilities * Daily Mail *Stridsberg has perfected a kind of contemporary fairy tale with a bracing Scandinavian edge, here elegantly translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner...This is storytelling with an eye for the uncanny -- Christian House * Financial Times *

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Book Synopsis'Like an artist working an empty sky into a busy cityscape, or an empty chair into a crowded family portrait, Joyce creates spaces where the reader is left to themselves' Patrick McGuinness, from his Preface to Dubliners.Set in the late 19th and early 20th-century, Dubliners is made up of fifteen stories, which all sit within the realm of realism, with easily identifiable streets and a cartographic identity of the city. Alike Joyce's other works, the collection was repeatedly rejected by publishers and he received accusations of obscurity and obscenity before it finally appeared in print on 15 June 1914. This was five years after a contract was signed, six weeks before the outbreak of World War One, and at a time when Ireland was under British Home Rule. We find an intricate account of the lives of the city's inhabitants in Joyce's haunted and bleak vision of Dublin.Discover these stories for the first time here, or read them afresh, and marvel at the unique stories that Joyce was able to capture, and make timeless, for us all.

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Book SynopsisFrom National Book Award Finalist Laird Hunt, a masterful collection of interwoven stories capturing one summer's day in Reagan-era Indiana.Candy Wilson has forgotten to buy the paprika. Turner Davis needs to get his zinnias in. Della Dorner told her mother she was going to Milky Freeze, but that's not where she's really headed on her new Schwinn five-speed.Float Up, Sing Down is the story of a single day. But in that day, how much teeming life! The residents of this rural town have their routines, their preferences, their joys, grudges, and regrets. The old-timers savor past triumphs, cast back to lives circumscribed and defined by the World Wars, wonder what might have been. Youngsters covet cars, karate moves, kissing; they writhe in the first blushes of love or pain or independence. Gossip is paramount. Lives are entwined. Retired sheriffs climb corn bins and muse on lost love, French teachers throw firecrackers out of barn windows, and teenagers borrow motorcycles to ride the back roads.Each of the fourteen stories of Float Up, Sing Down follows one character's 'day-in-the-life' in one of Hunt's most beloved and enduring landscapes. As the book unfolds these lives echo and glance off of one another with elegance and warmth, a tenderness born of strength. In the tradition of Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Elizabeth Strout, and Edward P. Jones, this is a symphony of souls, a masterful portrait of both loneliness and community by one of our great limners of American experience.Trade ReviewWhat a delight to spend a day with the inhabitants of Bright Creek, their longings and lusts, their memories. Laird Hunt writes so brilliantly about the quotidien - why a woman would leave a tin of paprika on a gravestone; why a boy would be devoted to this headband - and in doing so, he reveals so much else. Float Up, Sing Down is a shimmering, magical book. -- Margot LiveseyAn entertaining work of exceptional vitality. * Kirkus Starred Review *An ingeniously structured depiction of small-town life in rural Indiana, Float Up, Sing Down dignifies the ordinary people at the center of its stories, illuminating their secrets and desires in gently comedic ways that manage, too, to pierce us. Reminiscent of Joan Silber's work, this is a hopeful and poignant portrait of the intertwined lives that make a community. A miraculous puzzle of a collection. * Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back *One of Laird Hunt's many gifts is his ability to transport readers to small towns filled with the most fascinating, yet ordinary, characters. He has done it again in this brilliant collection, which is skillfully linked by time and place. In the pages of Float Up, Sing Down, you'll meet a retired farmer closely observing his neighbors while thinking back on war days, a woman who finds great comfort in spending time in a cornfield, and a host of other complex and memorable people. I love this book. * De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of DECENT PEOPLE and IN WEST MILLS *Hunt has mastered a style that feels both traditional and fresh. * Financial Times *An absolute delight . . . Brimming with easy-going charm, there's real heart and hurt here, too, as Hunt unspools the hopes and dreams of his beguiling characters. * Daily Mail *Prize-winning material . . . If it is first-hand experience that gives his stories such authenticity, it is his literary skills that shape them so seamlessly into such an entertaining and rewarding collection. * Irish Examiner *Brimming with charm . . . an absolute delight * Daily Mail *The stories in Float Up, Sing Down are compassionate and universal. * TLS *

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Book SynopsisGraham Greene, the great twentieth-century novelist, also wrote exceptional short stories. SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY YIYUN LITwenty-two of his very best stories are collected here, each of them bearing the hallmark themes that characterise Greene's great novels: betrayal and vengeance, love and hate, pity and violence. Writer and Greene aficionado Yiyun Li has arranged the stories in pairs to create an ingenious new collection: unexpected, surprising and wide-ranging, but always the unmistakable work of one of the twentieth century's greatest and most adored storytellers. 'One of the most important British writers of the twentieth century' Daily Telegraph

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Book SynopsisAn NYRB Classics OriginalCharacters from every corner of society and all walks of life—lords and ladies, businessmen and military men, poor clerks,  unforgiving moneylenders, aspiring politicians, artists, actresses, swindlers, misers, parasites, sexual adventurers, crackpots,  and more—move through the pages of The Human Comedy, Balzac’s multivolume magnum opus, an interlinked chronicle of modernity in all its splendor and squalor. The Human Comedy includes the great roomy novels that have exercised such a sway over Balzac’s many literary inheritors, from Dostoyevsky and Henry James to Marcel Proust; it also contains an array of short fictions in which Balzac is at his most concentrated and forceful. Nine of these, all newly translated, appear in this volume, and together they provide an unequaled overview of a great writer’s obsessions and art. Here are “The Duchesse de Langeais,” “A Passion in the Desert,” and “Sarrasine”; tales of madness, illicit passion, ill-gotten gains, and crime. What unifies them, Peter Brooks points out in his introduction, is an incomparable storyteller’s fascination with the power of storytelling, while throughout we also detect what Proust so admired: the “mysterious circulation of blood and desire.”

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Book SynopsisNo one can escape the negative impacts of social media. Written as a collection of short stories, Lifeliked captures the dark and isolating effects of social media on society and the individual. Set in various futuristic settings, which project realistic situations and character developments, readers are made to question their personal involvement with social media and find an awareness that could prevent them from falling deeper into the grasp of negative social networking. To convey an impactful narrative, Amit has included graphic imagery and sensitive information that might be triggering for some readers who have or are currently struggling with the effects of social networking.

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Book SynopsisThese remarkable short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked and new freedoms are embraced. Selected and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes, this collection places works from renowned women writers alongside recently rediscovered voices. Suffused with tension and longing, they form a window onto a remarkable era of writing. Contains: 'The Cut Finger' by Frances Bellerby, 'Summer Night' by Elizabeth Bowen, 'The Birds' by Daphne du Maurier, 'The Land Girl' by Diana Gardner, 'Listen to the Magnolias' by Stella Gibbons, 'Shocking Weather, Isn't It?' by Inez Holden, 'The First Party' by Attia Hosain, 'Three Miles Up' by Elizabeth Jane Howard, 'The Skylight' by Penelope Mortimer, 'The Thames Spread Out' by Elizabeth Taylor and 'Scorched Earth Policy' by Sylvia Townsend WarnerTrade ReviewAs well as introducing some little-known writers, Lucy Scholes offers a way of seeing women's writing differently * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisFiction Category Winner in the 2022 East Anglian Book AwardsSome of the characters in Stewkey Blues have lived in Norfolk all their lives. Others are short-term residents or passage migrants. Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.Trade ReviewFamed though it is for its flatness, Norfolk is a county of manifold aspects, many of which are captured in these sharp, subtle new stories by native son DJ Taylor. They all emerged from 2020’s lockdown, and together delineate the region’s geographical and social range, occasionally squinting back in time and tuning in to mythical echoes. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Observer *The wide variety of experiences explored keeps this collection fresh and of interest. The author writes with elan as he excavates the core of the human condition. The reader is left hoping that Norfolk avoids the encroaching homogeny of modern expansionism. Each story provides a highly enjoyable and still lingering read. -- Jackie Law * neverimitate *There's urban ennui and dead-end lives in the suburbs of Norwich, loneliness in a caravan park outside Thetford; social codes traduced in a village near Shopham; and wild shotgun-toting lawlessness in the wilds of Breckland. Taylor has a gimlet eye for the telling detail and enjoys the oddity of Norfolk's eccentrics, those born and bred among its flat farmlands, and those attracted to the place like iron filings to a magnet. -- Siobham Murphy * The Times *DJ Taylor’s Stewkey Blues is set not only in the (culturally and geographically) different territory of Norfolk, but in a different time too. Several of his tales are set in the 20th century and his tone and points of reference across the collection are redolent of this era. His characters namecheck The Wind in the Willows and Top of the Pops, PG Wodehouse and the Benny Hill Show. People dating are ‘walking out’ together; the new Bill Bryson is ‘jolly good’. The collection’s realm is the provincial domestic: the middle managers, shop owners, minor public school boys and lesser gentry of Norfolk fret over the ‘damp-course’ and bleeding the radiators, unspoken social mores and petty social interactions. -- Melanie White * Literary Review *The stories are subtly composed and elegantly written. The narrative voice is attractively wry, and particularly acute in its choice of telling detail. Its air of savouring diffidence, moreover, is curiously reminiscent of Anthony Powell, particularly in our sense that behaviour is being observed far more than judged. No one should be deterred by the Norfolk setting, for only in the most literal sense is this provincial fiction. After Stewkey Blues, I for one would happily read Taylor about anywhere: Swaffham and Snoring (Little or Great), to be sure, but also Timbuktu. -- Andrew Rosenheim * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisInspired by Giles Gordon and David Hughes’s Best Short Stories series, which ran to ten volumes between 1986 and 1995, Best British Short Stories this year reaches its thirteenth volume.Best British Short Stories 2023 showcases an excellent and varied selection of stories, by British writers, first published during 2022 in magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks and online.This new anthology contains stories by Alinah Azadeh, David Bevan, AK Blakemore, Gabriel Flynn, Jim Gibson, Lydia Gill, Miles Greenwood, Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Philip Jennings, Sharon Kivland, Alison Moore, Georgina Parfitt, Gareth E Rees, Leone Ross, John Saul, DJ Taylor, Briony Thompson, Matthew Turner, Mark Valentine and David Wheldon.

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Book SynopsisOn Stewkey Blues: In his solid, grounded, entertaining collection of stories, DJ Taylor draws out the mythical qualities of East Anglia's terrain, urban or rural or somewhere marginal in between.' Hillary MantelMost of the people in Poppyland are watching their lives begin to blur at the margins. From small-hours taxi offices, out-of-season holiday estates and flyblown market stalls, they sit observing an environment that seems to be moving steadily out of kilter, struggling to find agency, making compromises with a world that threatens to undermine them, and sometimes - but only sometimes taking a decisive step that will change their destinies.

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Book Synopsis‘Superb... These thirty-two stories inhabit the Technicolor vernaculars of taxi drivers, barbers, paper pushers and society matrons... O'Hara was American fiction's greatest eavesdropper, recording the everyday speech and tone of all strata of mid-century society’ Wall Street JournalJohn O'Hara remains the great chronicler of American society, and nowhere are his powers more evident than in his portraits of New York's so-called Golden Age. Unsparingly observed, brilliantly cutting and always on the tragic edge of epiphany, the stories collected here are among O’Hara’s finest work, and show why he still stands as the most-published short story writer in the history of the New Yorker.Trade ReviewYou can binge on O’Hara’s collections in the way some people binge on Mad Men, and for some of the same reasons -- Lorin Stein * Paris Review *Among the greatest short story writers in English, or in any other language -- Brendan Gill * Here at The New Yorker *O'Hara practices the classic form of the modern short story developed by Joyce and perfected by Hemingway... His coverage is worthy of a Balzac -- E. L. DoctorowO'Hara occupies a unique position in our contemporary literature.... He is the only American writer to whom America presents itself as a social scene in the way it once presented itself to Henry James, or France to Proust -- Lionell Trilling * The New York Times *Superb... The 32 stories inhabit the Technicolor vernaculars of taxi drivers, barbers, paper pushers and society matrons... O'Hara was American fiction's greatest eavesdropper, recording the everyday speech and tone of all strata of midcentury society * Wall Street Journal *

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Book SynopsisWhat is the secret to true friendship? Is it really love’s quieter relation or something stronger and more profound? And where does the line between the two lie? Rose Tremain looks at two unlikely lifelong friendships, which – though tested – prove unbreakable. Thought-provoking and life-affirming, this is at once an examination and a celebration of friendship in all its glorious complexity.Selected from the books Restoration and The Gustav Sonata by Rose TremainVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Love by Jeanette WintersonLanguage by Xiaolu GuoDesire by Haruki MurakamiFreedom by Margaret Atwood

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Book SynopsisA high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A bed that hasn’t been slept in is crumpled and distressed come the morning. A skeletal figure creeps closer and closer to the house where an unsuspecting family lie sleeping. In these chilling tales of the supernatural, M. R. James proves he truly is the master of the ghost story. Selected from the book Ghost Stories by M.R. JamesVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Drinking by John CheeverSummer by Laurie LeeFriendship by Rose TremainLove by Jeanette Winterson

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Book Synopsis'Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them' VogueSELECTED AND WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEYA girl shares her secret den. A couple stroll through a ruined city. A man walks into a ladies' hat shop. A teacher dreams of killing her pupil.Spanning the 1920s to the post-war years, this new selection brings Elizabeth Bowen's finest short stories together for the first time. Elegant and subtle, they showcase Bowen's ability to evoke ineffable emotions - grief, nostalgia, self-consciousness, dread - and combine remarkable psychological insight with vivid settings, from the countryside of Bowen's native Ireland to the streets of her London home after the Blitz.Encompassing characters from many walks of life and a vast array of moods, these are intricate journeys of domesticity and discovery, of the homely and uncanny, of the mind and body.Trade ReviewBowen's stories show the awesome capabilities of the English language and the surprise and mystery of the human soul * Anne Tyler *Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them * Vogue *Like Woolf, like Spark, her language is clear but her effects complex, creating shimmering reflections of reality, her world recognisable but just out of reach * Guardian *[Bowen's] fiction's uniqueness lies in its versatile, modern understanding of place as 'inner landscape'... [an] astute selection of the short stories... [Brown] write[s] fiction with the texture of history * London Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisArtificial intelligence in 100 stories. To ready us for the inevitable, here are 100 of the best short stories ever written – most of them by humans – about artificial intelligence. Simon Ings has assembled anthropomorphic cyborgs and invertebrate AIs, thuggish metal lumps and wisps of manufactured intelligence so delicate that if you blink you might miss them in the new overlord of all robot literary compendiums. It's Alive! is about inventors and their creations. Following the Money drops robots into the day-to-day business of living. Owners and Servants considers the human potentials and pitfalls of owning and maintaining robots. Changing Places looks at what happens at the blurred interface between human and machine minds. All Hail the New Flesh waves goodbye to the physical boundaries that once separated machines from their human creators. Succession considers the future of human and machine consciousnesses – in so far as we might have one. With 100 stories spanning an order of magnitude more pages, Simon Ings's We, Robots is the new overlord of all robot literary compendiums. Welcome it.Trade ReviewWe, Robots is the new cyborg overlord of literary compendiums... The scope and variety of this short story collection is impressive' * Independent *A glorious delve into the many guises of robots and artificial intelligences. This book is a joy and a triumph. Recommended most highly, and definitely one of my books of the year * SFF World *Simon Ings goes into orbit as a science fiction master * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisFrom Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture, a collection of four dark and compelling novellas about love gone wrong. The young fourth wife of a prominent intellectual thinks herself happy until the first wife comes to stay. A shy teenager meets a dazzling kindred spirit. But the first sparks of young love soon take on a darker shade... A spoiled frat boy decides to murder his parents, only to be floored by the power of his mother's love; and a fragile woman reveals deeply buried secrets to her curious lover with devastating consequences... All of these stories are about love, just not as we like to think of it. Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates: 'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express 'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review 'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times 'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' BooklistTrade ReviewPRAISE FOR JOYCE CAROL OATES: 'This collection of stories is Oates at her best – spare, swift, beautifully observed and quietly lethal' The Times. 'Both haunting and sublime' Literary Review. 'An unsettling read worth every resulting jump in the night... [Oates is a] literary goddess' Daily Mail. 'As usual with Oates, it is horribly readable, but driven by something disturbingly like genuine misanthropy' Sunday Times. 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday' Sunday Express. 'A writer of extraordinary strengths' Guardian. 'A sense of helplessness is the essence of horror, and Oates conveys that feeling as well as any writer around' * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisFrom Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of Blonde, now a major motion picture, comes a collection of darkly compelling tales. A young professor is convinced she's being followed, but when she confronts her shadow all is not as it seems. A promising student attempts to save her brother from his descent into madness, but finds there may be more to his world than hers. An elderly nun is found dead in her care home, but was it old age or dark secrets that killed her? These biting and beautiful stories force us to confront, one by one, the demons within. Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates: 'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express 'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review 'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times 'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' BooklistTrade ReviewThese "tales of darkness and dread" won't put you to sleep, but they'll give you more interesting nightmares * New York Review of Books *Oates perfectly captures the atmosphere of fear and well-meaning misunderstanding * The Times *A writer of extraordinary strengths * Guardian *Extremely compelling... We cannot look away, no matter how gruesome the sight * Spectator *Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday * Sunday Express *

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Book SynopsisIn the tradition of Poe's The Tell-tale Heart, This Way Lies Madness presents fictional interpretations of madness from some of the biggest names in the horror genre an anthology of dark stories featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror.

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Book Synopsis'The best short story writer in the world' Susan Hill 'This book is a spectacular literary revelation' Sunday Times The collected stories of an award-winning, modern classic American writer who has been compared to Alice Munro, John Updike - and even Anton Chekhov Tenderly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captured life on the page like no one else. Spanning forty years of writing, moving from tsarist Russia to the coast of Maine, from Jerusalem to Massachusetts, these astonishing stories reveal one of America's greatest modern writers. Across a stunning array of scenes-an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, an old woman's deathbed confession of her mother's affair-Edith Pearlman crafts a timeless and unique sensibility, shot through with wit, lucidity and compassion. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe Edith Pearlman (1936-2023) published her debut collection of stories in 1996, aged 60. She won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Binocular Vision. She published over 250 works of short fiction in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and online publications. Her work won three O. Henry Prizes, the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, and a Mary McCarthy Prize, among others. In 2011, Pearlman was the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, which put her in the ranks of luminaries like John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates.Trade Review'[Pearlman's stories are] meticulously made, miraculously precise, and so fully populated that you marvel one mind could invent so many distinct human beings from scratch.' - Sam Leith'One of the great discoveries of the decade was the Jewish American Pearlman, who had been writing for four decades before this collection gave her the acclaim she thoroughly deserved' - Sunday Times, Books of the Decade'This book is a spectacular literary revelation... With Binocular Vision a new fictional planet, richly populated and suffused with warm lucidity, comes into view.'' - Peter Kemp'An unsung master' - Megan Walsh'Her writing is intelligent, perceptive, funny, and quite beautiful... Maybe from now on everyone will know of Edith Pearlman.' - Roxana Robinson

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Book SynopsisA man finds a bald patch on the back of his head that looks curiously like a face, then discovers he's splitting in two. A bored student suggests digging a tunnel into the foundations of the art school. An elderly man is healed by hundreds of tiny people working on repairs inside his own head.Unlikely Stories, Mostly is Alasdair Gray's first collection of short stories. Gloriously illustrated, darkly funny, and steeped in myth and fable, they capture Gray's singular imagination.Trade ReviewUnsettling, otherworldly . . . Not since William Blake has a British artist wed pictorial and literary talent to such powerful effect * * Financial Times * *His work is masterly . . . Temperamental radicalism, militant humanism and a number of recurring sexual, linguistic and aesthetic themes are woven together into a prose full of recondite allusions and brilliant innovations * * London Review of Books * *As you'd expect from a writer as talented as Gray, there are enough idiosyncratic pleasures knocking around to make the book well worth reading * * Independent * *A series of fantastical fables, showing the influence of Kafka, Swift and Johnson's Rasselas . . . Memorable * * Guardian * *A necessary genius -- ALI SMITHOne of the brightest intellectual and creative lights Scotland has known in modern times -- NICOLA STURGEONGray is a true original, a twentieth century William Blake * * Observer * *Too clever for its own good in parts, but otherwise a damned good read -- "Colonel Sebastian Moran * * Simla Times" * *This anthology may be likened to a vast architectural folly imblending the idioms of the Greek, Gothic, Oriental, Baroque, Scottish Baronial and Bauhaus schools. Like one who, absently sauntering the streets of Barcelona, suddenly beholds the breathtaking grandeur of Gaudi's Familia Sagrada, I am compelled to admire a display of power and intricacy whose precise purpose evades me. Is the structure haunted by a truth too exalted and ghostly to dwell in a plainer edifice? Perhaps. I wonder. I doubt -- "Lady Nicola Stewart, Countess of Dunfermline * * The Celtic Needlewoman" * *

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE HURSTON/WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE MUSEUM OF AFRICAN DIASPORA AFRICAN LITERARY AWARD 2023'Witty and wistful, complex and heartbreaking' Brit Bennett'These stories unfold with an intensifying power, each of them a testament to what's possible when we move through this world insisting on the potential of hope and love' Maaza MengisteAn enterprising young man on the verge of losing his home in Addis Ababa pursues an improbable opportunity to turn his life around. A woman visiting her country of origin for the first time finds that an ordinary object opens up an unexpected, complex bridge between worlds. An intergenerational friendship forms between two refugees living in Iowa who have connections to Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.Kaleidoscopic, powerful and illuminative, the stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times expand our understanding of the essential and universal need for connection and the vital refuge of home.Trade ReviewThese stories capture lives caught between cultures and continents, past and present, truth and lies. As its displaced characters seek belonging, this collection explores the challenges of connection with empathy and nuance. A thrilling debut -- BRIT BENNETTWonderful, wise stories [capturing] the experience of dislocation and loneliness * * Daily Mail * *Shines with potent, affecting moments * * Independent * *A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times held me spellbound, riveted to the compelling characters that walk through these pages, all of them guided by Meron's revelatory and generous examinations of belonging and displacement -- MAAZA MENGISTEBrims with lives on the margins, collisions that do not fully happen, redemptions thwarted at the last minute . . . This style, which time and time again comes off the page as truly effortless, is what makes Hadero a new master of the form, and this collection a masterful one -- CHIGOZIE OBIOMADebut books don't get much stronger than this. Meron Hadero's remarkable stories explore a diverse cast of people doing their best to find acceptance or at least stability . . . Hadero is deeply perceptive; her dialogue always rings true, and the regard she has for her characters is apparent. This isn't just an excellent first book, it's an excellent book, period * * Books We Love, NPR * *Heartwarming, thought-provoking . . . Hadero tactfully shines a light on the hardships that many migrants face, those of citizenship, displacement, financial instability. But what stuck with me was the running thread of hope throughout * * gal-dem * *Memorable and engaging * * Times Literary Supplement * *Meron Hadero's dazzling short stories span the diaspora, poignantly portraying characters in search of opportunity and belonging. Rich with insight, compassion and wit . . . an unforgettable debut -- VANESSA HUAIntricate and precise . . . To say that Hadero's style is discreet would be inaccurate; these stories lull, then rip you open. A powerful, unforgettable collection -- INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS

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Book SynopsisA stunning new edition of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and other stories including Rip Van Winkle. Little treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. First published in The Sketch Book in 1819–20, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow tells the story of schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, who comes to live in Sleepy Hollow, a Dutch settlement near the Hudson River. It is a place that abounds with local superstitions, including one concerning a headless horseman. Crane’s eye is caught by Katrina van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, and he starts to court her. This behaviour provokes the ire of another would-be-suitor, Brom Bones, a renowned village prankster. At a party, Crane confesses his love for Katrina, who rejects him. On his way home, he encounters the ‘horseman’, who hurls his head at Crane. Ichabod Crane is never heard of again. The only traces that remained of him were his horse, saddle, hat and a mysterious shattered pumpkin. What did happen to Ichabod Crane that night, and who was the Headless Horseman?

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Book SynopsisIn this beautifully packaged anthology A. S. Byatt, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Bowen, Sherwood Anderson, Edith Wharton, Anita Desai, Colm Tóibín, Lorrie Moore and many others reflect upon all aspects of motherhood in stories lyrical and satirical, realistic and fantastic, hilarious and heartbreaking. Here at last is a gift-book that is neither sentimental nor 'inspirational', offering instead high-quality literary fiction which will continue to entertain long after the chocolates have been eaten and the flowers thrown away.

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Book SynopsisTrees have starred in stories ever since Ovid described the nymph Daphne's metamorphosis into a laurel, and the landscape of literature has long been enlivened by wild woodlands, sacred groves, and fertile orchards. This delightful collection ranges from Ovid to Austen and from Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest (via Thomas Love Peacock's Maid Marian) to Washington Irving's 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'. Here are forest-haunted fairy tales both classic (the Brothers Grimm) and inventively retold (Angela Carter). There is room in these woods for comedy as well as terror, in Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, and Alexander McCall Smith's 'Head Tree'. Notable writers from around the world contribute arboreal fiction-from South Africa, Finland, France, Zimbabwe, Russia, Martinique, and India, as well as Britain, Ireland, Canada and America. From Daphne du Maurier's 'The Apple Tree' to R. K. Narayan's 'Under the Banyan Tree', the sheer range of stories in these pages will leave readers refreshed and dazzled.

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Book SynopsisVariations on a musical theme by a striking range of authors, among them Flaubert, Turgenev, Proust, Nabokov, Katherine Mansfield, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Amit Chaudhuri, Bernard MacLaverty and Maya Angelou. Wesley Stace''s attractive medley embraces musical genres from Virginia Woolf''s ''A String Quartet'' to Langston Hughes''s ''The Blues I''m Playing''. Short stories are interspersed with interludes from longer works - E. M. Forster''s Howards End, Ann Patchett''s Bel Canto and Vikram Seth''s An Equal Music. Here are music lessons, solos and duets, rehearsals and performances - and a whole suite of stories demonstrating that music is indeed the food of love. The perfect marriage of the musical and the literary.

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Book SynopsisThis anthology creates a dichotomy between the comfortable and the mysterious, providing a glimpse into hidden worlds and human nature; tantalizing in its mystique and refreshing in its insight into the minds of these exceptional Black British writers. It provides us with the opportunity to see what was previously unknown and to learn from what we see; to grow from what begins as a partial view but quickly transforms into the larger perspective. Secrets are uncovered; creatures are found; bodies buckle, whisper, float. In these stories we glimpse the dark and the light.The contributors include award winning and internationally renowned fiction writers, poets and visual artists: Patience Agbabi, Muli Amaye, Alinah Azadeh, Judith Bryan, Patricia Cumper, Joshuah Idehen, Peter Kalu, Ronnie McGrath, Cedar Montieth, Chantal Oakes, Irenosen Okojie, Koye Oyedeji, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Jada Pearl, Aisha Phoenix, Akila Richards, Ioney Smallhorne, Melissa Wagner and Gemma Weekes. Ronnie McGrath is also the cover artist for Glimpse.

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Book SynopsisWhen the young salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning transformed into a monstrous insect, his shock and incomprehension are coupled with the panic of being late for work and having to reveal his appearance to family and colleagues. Although over the following weeks he gradually becomes used to this new existence confined within the bounds of the apartment, and his parents and sister adapt to living with a grotesque bug, Gregor notices that their attitudes towards him are changing and he feels increasingly alienated. One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature, ‘The Metamorphosis’ is accompanied in this volume by a selection of other classic tales and sketches by Kafka – such as ‘The Judgement’, ‘In the Penal Colony’ and ‘A Country Doctor’ – all presented in a lively and meticulous new translation by Christopher Moncrieff.Trade ReviewThe only artist I felt could be my brother was Kafka. -- David LynchTable of ContentsContains: Children on a Country Road, Exposing a Confidence Trickster, An Impromptu Walk Resolutions, A Trip to the Mountains, The Plight of a Bachelor, The Shopkeeper, Gazing Distractedly out of the Window, Walking Home, Men Running Past, The Passenger, Dresses, Mutual Rejection, For the Consideration of Gentleman Jockeys, A Window onto the Street, Oh to Be a Red Indian Trees, An Unhappy Being, The Sentence, The Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony, The New Barrister, A Country Doctor, Up in the Gods, An Old Manuscript, The Door of Justice, Jackals and Arabs, A Visit to the Mine, The Next Village, A Message from the Emperor, The Concerns of a Father, Eleven Sons, Fratricide, A Dream, A Report for and Academy, First Sorrow, The Little Woman, The Hunger Artist, Josephine the Singer or the Mousefolk, The Great Wall of China, The Bridge, The Truth about Sancho Panza, The City Coat of Arms, Poseidon, The Silence of the Sirens.

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