Anthologies & Short Stories

391 products


  • Queenie

    Profile Books Ltd Queenie

    1 in stock

    'Read not more than one of her stories a day, and allow them to work their spell slowly: they are made to last' Guardian When her father marries his second wife, Chrissy gets a new step sister. Three years older than her, Queenie is beautiful and kind, someone everybody wants to be friends with. Chrissy worships her. But when Queenie runs away at eighteen, their lives quietly diverge. Joyce Carol Oates has described Alice Munro's work as 'tales of domestic tragicomedy that seemed to open up, as if by magic, into wider, deeper, vaster dimensions.' Queenie is Munro at her subtle, heart-breaking best. 'One of the great short story writers not just of our time but of any time' New York Times Book Review

    1 in stock

    £5.17

  • Rimal Publications,Cyprus A World Not Our Own

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £7.04

  • The Good Immigrant: 21 writers reflect on race in contemporary Britain

    Unbound The Good Immigrant: 21 writers reflect on race in contemporary Britain

    1 in stock

    First published in 2016, The Good Immigrant has since been hailed as a modern classic and credited with reshaping the discussion about race in contemporary Britain. It brings together a stellar cast of the country’s most exciting voices to reflect on why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a place that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms. This 5th anniversary edition, featuring a new preface by editor Nikesh Shukla, shows that the pieces collected here are as poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking and important as ever.

    1 in stock

    £9.37

  • The Things They Carried

    Houghton Mifflin The Things They Carried

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £12.64

  • The Best Japanese Short Stories: Works by 14 Modern Masters: Kawabata, Akutagawa and More

    Tuttle Publishing The Best Japanese Short Stories: Works by 14 Modern Masters: Kawabata, Akutagawa and More

    1 in stock

    An anthology of the greatest stories by modern Japanese masters (including previously overlooked women writers)!Fourteen distinct voices are assembled in this one-of-a-kind anthology tracing a nation's changing social landscapes. Internationally renowned writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Junichi Watanabe are joined by three notable women writers whose works have not yet received sufficient attention—Kanoko Okamoto, Fumiko Hayashi and Yumiko Kurahashi.Highlights of this anthology include: Kafu Nagai's bittersweet portrait of a privileged family's expiring existence in "The Fox" Ango Sakaguchi's heartening celebration of postwar chaos in "One Woman and the War" Fumiko Hayashi's unabashed exploration of female sexuality in "Borneo Diamond" Junichi Watanabe's chilling assessment of alienation and social dislocation in "Invitation to Suicide" Gishu Nakayama's look at an out-of-place prostitute recovering at a hot-spring resort in "Autumn Wind" Through brilliant, highly-praised translations by Lane Dunlop, The Best Japanese Short Stories offers fascinating glimpses of a society embracing change while holding tenaciously onto the past. A new foreword by Alan Tansman provides insightful back stories about the authors and the literary backdrop against which they created these great works of modern world literature.

    1 in stock

    £12.99

  • New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

    Rebellion Publishing Ltd. New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

    1 in stock

    Octavia E. Butler said, “There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking—breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery. Like the first New Suns anthology (winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy awards), this book liberates writers of many races to tell us tales no one has ever told.Many things come in twos: dualities, binaries, halves, and alternates. Twos are found throughout New Suns 2, in eighteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories revealing daring futures, hidden pasts, and present-day worlds filled with unmapped wonders.Including stories by Daniel H. Wilson, K. Tempest Bradford, Darcie Little Badger, Geetanjali Vandemark, John Chu, Nghi Vo, Tananarive Due, Alex Jennings, Karin Lowachee, Saad Hossain, Hiromi Goto, Minsoo Kang, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Malka Older, Kathleen Alcalá, Christopher Caldwell and Jaymee Goh with a foreword by Walter Mosley and an afterword by Dr. Grace Dillon.

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • Gita Govinda: Love Songs of Radha and Krishna

    New York University Press Gita Govinda: Love Songs of Radha and Krishna

    1 in stock

    Jayadeva’s Gitagovínda is a lyrical account of the illicit springtime love affair of Krishna and Radha, a god and goddess manifesting on earth as a cowherd and milkmaid for the sake of relishing the sweet miseries and rapturous delights of erotic love. The narrative framing their bucolic songs was composed under royal patronage in northeastern India in the twelfth century. It was to be performed for connoisseurs of poetry and the erotic arts, for aesthetes and voluptuaries who, while sensually engaged, were at the same time devoted to Krishna as Lord of the Universe. The text at once celebrates the vicissitudes of carnal love and the transports of religious devotion, merging and reconciling those realms of emotion and experience. Erotic and religious sensibilities serve, and are served by, the pleasures of poetry. In the centuries following its composition, the courtly text became a vastly popular inspirational hymnal. Jayadeva's songs continue to be sung throughout India in fervent devotional adoration of Krishna.

    1 in stock

    £19.99

  • The Dinner Table: Over 100 Writers on Food

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Dinner Table: Over 100 Writers on Food

    1 in stock

    'A gorgeous collection: if you savour words quite as much as food, this is for you!' NIGELLA LAWSON A deliciously moreish collection of the finest pieces of writing on food. In this big, beautiful anthology, award-winning writers Kate Young and Ella Risbridger present you with their ultimate fantasy dinner party. Here you’ll find over 100 authors, cooks and poets, from Laurie Colwin, Salman Rushdie and Jack Underwood, to Rachel Roddy, Audre Lorde and Nigella Lawson. The individual pieces in The Dinner Table each have something to say to their neighbours on either side; just like a real-life dinner party, the collection is designed to flow from one topic to the next. You’ll discover old friends as well as new, discussing eggs, bread, fridge-raid suppers, wedding feasts and much, much more. With pieces taken from newspapers and novels, magazines and memoirs, private letters and public statements, you can dip into The Dinner Table for one piece or twenty. Pop in for a drink, or stay until the tables are cleared away. Stay for coffee, and stay for breakfast. Contributors include... Naomi Alderman * Maya Angelou * Yémisí Aríbisálà * Jane Austen * Anthony Bourdain * Angela Carter * Laurie Colwin * Jimi Famurewa * Helen Fielding * Ross Gay * Amitav Ghosh * Diana Henry * Shirley Jackson * Madhur Jaffrey * James Joyce * Kevin Kwan * Nigella Lawson * Min Jin Lee * Audre Lorde * Samin Nosrat * Sylvia Plath * Rachel Roddy * Salman Rushdie * Sathnam Sanghera * Nigel Slater * Toni Tipton-Martin * Bryan Washington * Sarah Waters * Virginia Woolf * Michelle Zauner

    1 in stock

    £22.50

  • Illuminations: The Top 5 Sunday Times Bestseller

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Illuminations: The Top 5 Sunday Times Bestseller

    1 in stock

    'A wonderful collection, brilliant and often moving ... Both mind-expanding and cosmic while utterly rooted in our urban reality' NEIL GAIMAN 'One of the great fiction minds of his generation' ROLLING STONE In his first-ever short story collection, which spans forty years of work and features many never-before-published pieces, international bestselling author and legendary creator of From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and other modern classics, Alan Moore, presents nine stories full of wonder and strangeness, each taking us deeper into the fantastical underside of reality. In A Hypothetical Lizard, two concubines in a brothel for fantastical specialists fall in love, with tragic ramifications. In Not Even Legend, a paranormal study group is infiltrated by one of the otherworldly beings they seek to investigate. In Illuminations, a nostalgic older man decides to visit a seaside resort from his youth and finds the past all too close at hand. And in the monumental novella What We Can Know About Thunderman, which charts the surreal and Kafkaesque history of the comics industry over the last seventy-five years through several sometimes-naive and sometimes-maniacal people rising and falling on its career ladders, Moore reveals the dark, beating heart of the superhero business. From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to theoretical Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Illuminations is exactly that - a series of bright, startling tales from a contemporary legend that reveal the full power of imagination and magic. 'One of the most significant fiction writers in English ... Moore’s influence can be felt everywhere—in our literature, on our screens, in our politics' GUARDIAN Illuminations became a Sunday Times Top 5 Bestseller on 15th October 2022

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • Land of Big Numbers

    Simon & Schuster Ltd Land of Big Numbers

    1 in stock

    ‘Te-Ping Chen’s Land of Big Numbers contains 10 illuminating, sharp stories set in China, penned by a former investigative reporter who worked in Beijing for several years’ The Independent‘In this magnificent collection of stories, the author and former Beijing-based correspondent vividly captures the desires and losses of a richly drawn cast while drawing on the realities of contemporary China’​ CosmopolitanA dazzling debut collection which, deftly and urgently, tells the stories of those living in the biggest and most complicated country on earth. A brother competes for gaming glory while his twin sister exposes the dark side of the Communist government on her underground blog; a worker at a government call centre is alarmed one day to find herself speaking to a former lover; a delicious new fruit arrives at the neighbourhood market and the locals find it starts to affect their lives in ways they could never have imagined; and a young woman's dreams of making it big in Shanghai are stalled when she finds herself working as a florist. These are just some of the myriad lives to be evoked in The Land of Big Numbers, a collection of stories which - sometimes playfully, sometimes darkly - draws back the curtain on the realities of modern China and unveils a cast of characters as rich and complicated as any in world literature. With virtuosic brilliance, Te-ping Chen sheds light on a country much talked about but little understood and announces the birth of a bright new star in the literary firmament. “A spectacular work, comic, timely, profound. Te-Ping Chen has a superb eye for detail in a China where transformation occurs simultaneously too fast and too slow for lives in pursuit of meaning in a brave new world. Her characters are achingly alive. It’s rare to read a collection so satisfying, where every story adds to a gripping and intricate world.” Madeleine Thien, author of the Booker-shortlisted Do Not Say We Have Nothing "Te-Ping Chen shows us how much life, loss, and quiet pleasure exists in the world, just out of view." Alexandra Kleeman

    1 in stock

    £8.99

  • Homesick for Another World: Stories

    Penguin Putnam Inc Homesick for Another World: Stories

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £14.11

  • The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang

    Columbia University Press The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang

    1 in stock

    The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odors, lust and loathing, memories and madness.Perhat Tursun’s novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers—contemporary Chinese authors such as Mo Yan; the modernist images and rhythms of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Kafka; the serious yet absurdist dissection of the logic of racism in Ellison’s Invisible Man—while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun’s own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.

    1 in stock

    £16.99

  • Tales from the Perilous Realm

    HarperCollins Publishers Tales from the Perilous Realm

    1 in stock

    This de luxe collector’s edition includes the first edition text and features an exclusive colour frontispiece illustration on a fold-out sheet. The book is quarterbound, with a specially commissioned motif stamped in three foils on the front board, and is presented in a matching slipcase. The five tales are written with the same skill, quality and charm that made The Hobbit a classic. Largely overlooked because of their short lengths, they are finally together in a volume which reaffirms Tolkien's place as a master storyteller for readers young and old. Roverandom is a toy dog who, enchanted by a sand sorcerer, gets to explore the world and encounter strange and fabulous creatures. Farmer Giles of Ham is fat and unheroic, but – having unwittingly managed to scare off a short-sighted giant – is called upon to do battle when a dragon comes to town; The Adventures of Tom Bombadil tells in verse of Tom's many adventures with hobbits, princesses, dwarves and trolls; Leaf by Niggle recounts the strange adventures of the painter Niggle who sets out to paint the perfect tree; Smith of Wootton Major journeys to the Land of Faery thanks to the magical ingredients of the Great Cake of the Feast of Good Children. This new collection is fully illustrated throughout by Oscar-winning artist, Alan Lee, who provides a wealth of pencil drawings to bring the stories to life as he did so memorably for The Hobbit and The Children of Húrin. Alan also provides an Afterword, in which he opens the door into illustrating Tolkien's world. Taken together, this rich collection of tales from the author of The Children of Húrin will provide the reader with a fascinating journey into lands as wild and strange as Middle-earth.

    1 in stock

    £67.50

  • On Cats

    HarperCollins Publishers On Cats

    1 in stock

    A collection of charming and celebrated writings about cats, from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Doris Lessing’s love affair with cats began at a young age, when she became intrigued with the semi-feral creatures on the African farm where she grew up. Her fascination remained undiminished by the handsome domesticated creatures who shared her flats and her life in London and grew into real love with El Magnifico, the awkwardly lovable cat who in his later years suffered the great indignity of becoming a three-legged beast. Consisting of Lessing’s celebrated collection of stories, ‘Particularly Cats and Rufus’, and the poignant though unsentimental memoir, ‘The Old Age of El Magnifico’, this book is a brilliant evocation of the feline world.

    1 in stock

    £9.67

  • The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

    Random House USA Inc The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £15.29

  • The Birth of Kumara

    New York University Press The Birth of Kumara

    1 in stock

    This court epic describes events leading up to the birth of Kumára, the war god who will defeat the demon Táraka. The gods try to use Kama, the Indian Cupid, to make the ascetic god Shiva fall in love with the daughter of the Himalaya mountain. Kama fails, and is burnt to ashes by the angry Shiva. Then Parvati, the daughter of the mountain, herself turns to asceticism to win the husband she longs for. She is successful, and the climax of the poem is the marriage and lovemaking of Shiva and Parvati, parents of the universe. The greatest long poem in classical Sanskrit, by the greatest poet of the language, Kali·dasa's The Birth of Kumára is not exactly a love story but a paradigm of inevitable union between male and female, played out on the immense scale of supreme divinity. In this court-epic, the events are described leading up to but not including the birth of Kumára, the war god destined to defeat the demon Táraka. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

    1 in stock

    £20.99

  • All Fires the Fire

    Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd All Fires the Fire

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £10.03

  • A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics

    Wave Books A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics

    1 in stock

    "He's a poet for our time like Ginsberg was for his."--Eileen Myles "Conrad's work shows us that the body itself is the first source of alienation and estrangement from the self, and is thus the true subject of poetry. Only by engaging this body ...can we achieve transport."--Bookforum What is the best Love you've ever had in this world? Be quiet while thinking about that Love. If someone comes along and starts talking, quietly shoo them away, you're busy, you're a poet with a penny in your mouth...Now get your pen and paper and write about POVERTY, write line after line about starvation and deprivation from the voice of one who has been Loved in this world. CAConrad's (Soma)tic exercises desire to literally crack open existence as we know it. A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon is an essential how-to book for anyone interested in breaking through their perceived limitations to become a more politically and physically engaged writer. Incorporating unorthodox steps in the writing process, these twenty-seven exercises and their corresponding poems confirm Conrad's unwavering belief in poetry as a necessary practice for being. CAConrad, a 2011 PEW Fellow in the Arts, is the author of five books of poetry, including The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010/Chax Press, 2009). He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

    1 in stock

    £12.99

  • The Lover, Wartime Notebooks, Practicalities

    Everyman The Lover, Wartime Notebooks, Practicalities

    1 in stock

    Marguerite Duras was one of the leading intellectuals and novelist of post-war France, but her wartime writings were not published in full until after her death. The Wartime Notebooks trace Duras's formative experiences - including her difficult childhood in Indochina and her harrowing wait for her husband's return from Nazi internment - revealing the personal history behind her bestselling novels. The Lover is the best known of these; set in pre-war Indochina, its haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her wealthy Chinese lover is based on her own life. In spare and luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts. Practicalities is a collection of small and intensely personal pieces Duras dictated near the end of her life. These deceptively simple meditations on motherhood, domesticity, sex, love, alcohol, writing, and more are witty, earthy, outspoken and surprisingly fresh and relevant to the same issues today.

    1 in stock

    £14.99

  • Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

    Graywolf Press Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £14.86

  • Ficciones

    Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Ficciones

    1 in stock

    The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges’s Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges’s genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

    1 in stock

    £12.99

  • Stim: An Autistic Anthology

    Unbound Stim: An Autistic Anthology

    1 in stock

    Around one in one hundred people in the UK are autistic, and the saying goes that if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. Autistic people's personalities, differences and experiences outweigh the diagnostic criteria that link them, yet stereotypes persist and continue to inform a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be autistic.Rarely do autistic people get a chance to speak for themselves, but this insightful and eye-opening collection of essays, fiction and visual art showcases the immense talents of eighteen of the world's most exciting autistic writers and artists.Stim invites the reader into the lives and minds of the contributors, and asks them to recognise the challenges of being autistic in a non-autistic world. Inspired by a desire to place the conversation around autism back into autistic hands, editor Lizzie Huxley-Jones has brought together humorous, honest and hopeful pieces that explore the many facets of being autistic.

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

    Vintage Publishing Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

    1 in stock

    WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREIn these stories lives come into focus through single events or sudden memories which bring the past bubbling to the surface. The past, as Alice Munro's characters discover, is made up not only of what is remembered, but also what isn't. The past is there, just out of the picture, but if memories haven't been savoured, recalled in the mind and boxed away, it's as if they have never been - until a moment when the pieces of the jigsaw re-form suddenly, sometimes pleasurably but more often painfully. Women look back at their young selves, at first marriages made when they were naive and trusting, at husbands and their difficult, demanding little ways. There is in this new collection an underlying heartbreak, a sense of regret in her characters for what might have been, for a fork in the road not taken, a memory suppressed in an act of prudent emotional housekeeping. But at the same time there is hope, there are second chances - here are people who reinvent themselves, seize life by the throat, who have moved on and can dare to conjure up the hidden memories, daring to go beyond what is remembered.

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature

    WW Norton & Co The Norton Anthology of English Literature

    1 in stock

    The most trusted anthology for complete works and helpful editorial apparatus. The Tenth Edition supports survey and period courses with NEW complete major works, NEW contemporary writers, and dynamic and easy-to-access digital resources. NEW video modules help introduce students to literature in multiple exciting ways. These innovations make the Norton Anthology an even better teaching tool for instructors and, as ever, unmatched value for students.

    1 in stock

    £33.95

  • Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through Illness and Disability

    Footnote Press Ltd Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through Illness and Disability

    1 in stock

    'An anthology to treasure and return to' ELINOR CLEGHORN'Uniquely compelling, dynamic and powerful' LUCY JONES'Deeply affecting' TOM SHAKESPEARE'Promises to change the landscape of nature writing' LIZZIE HUXLEY-JONESA first-of-its-kind anthology of nature writing by authors living with chronic illness and physical disabilityWITH A FOREWORD BY SAMANTHA WALTONThrough twenty-five pieces, the writers of Moving Mountains offer a vision of nature that encompasses the close up, the microscopic, and the vast.From a single falling raindrop to the enormity of the north wind, this is nature experienced wholly and acutely, written from the perspective of disabled and chronically ill authors.Moving Mountains is not about overcoming or conquering, but about living with and connecting, shifting the reader's attention to the things easily overlooked by those who move through the world untroubled by the body that carries them.Contributors: Isobel Anderson, Kerri Andrews, Polly Atkin, Khairani Barokka, Victoria Bennett, Feline Charpentier, Cat Chong, Eli Clare, Dawn Cole, Lorna Crabbe, Kate Davis, Carol Donaldson, Alec Finlay, Jamie Hale, Jane Hartshorn, Hannah Hodgson, Sally Huband, Rowan Jaines, Dillon Jaxx, Louise Kenward, Abi Palmer, Louisa Adjoa Parker, Alice Tarbuck, Nic Wilson

    1 in stock

    £15.29

  • All That's Left To You: A Novella and Other Stories

    Interlink Publishing Group, Inc All That's Left To You: A Novella and Other Stories

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £14.39

  • Everything Inside

    Quercus Publishing Everything Inside

    1 in stock

    From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love.AUGUST 2020 REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICKWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDWINNER OF THE STORY PRIZEWINNER OF THE 2020 VILCEK PRIZE IN LITERATURE Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart--a master.

    1 in stock

    £9.67

  • The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews

    Canongate Books The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews

    1 in stock

    Shakespeare and Company, Paris, is one of the world's most iconic and beautiful bookshops. Located on the banks of the Seine, opposite Notre-Dame, it's long been a meeting place for anglophone writers and readers. In that tradition, determined for the bookshop to remain a place of meaningful and transformative conversation, owner Sylvia Whitman and novelist and literary director Adam Biles have hosted several hundred interviews with writers, ranging from prize-winning novelists to visionary non-fiction writers. The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews is a selection of the best of these interviews from the last decade. Packed with warmth, sensitivity and humour, it's a celebration of the greatest writers of our age and an insight into the lives and thoughts behind some of today's most talked-about books.

    1 in stock

    £18.00

  • Wednesday’s Child

    HarperCollins Publishers Wednesday’s Child

    1 in stock

    ‘Any new book by Yiyun Li is a cause for celebration’ Sigrid Nunez ‘One of our finest living authors’ New York Times A dazzling new collection of short stories written over a decade, spanning loss, alienation, ageing and the strangeness of contemporary life – from Yiyun Li, the prize-winning author of The Book of Goose A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. A professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and grand mysterious forces – death, violence, estrangement – come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details: a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many years, until it must be seen. Li is a breathtakingly original writer, an alchemist of opposites: tender and unsentimental, metaphysical and blunt, funny and horrifying, omniscient and yet acutely aware of just how much we cannot know. Beloved for her novels and memoirs, she returns here to her earliest form, gathering short stories and a remarkable novella never before published in the UK. Taken together, the stories in Wednesday's Child articulate the true cost of living with all Li’s trademark unnerving beauty and searing wisdom. ‘Quiet, subtle and often agonisingly wrenching … Li explores the brittle fractures within the human heart … A shimmering meditation’ Financial Times ‘Strands of melancholy are braided through Li’s tender, thoughtful stories’ Daily Mail ‘Against the backdrop of threat, Li’s characters meditate coolly on meaning and mortality’ Observer

    1 in stock

    £15.29

  • That Glimpse of Truth: The 100 Finest Short Stories Ever Written

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC That Glimpse of Truth: The 100 Finest Short Stories Ever Written

    1 in stock

    A special reissue from Head of Zeus's bestselling anthology collection of the 100 finest short stories ever written. Profound, lyrical, shocking, wise: the short story is capable of almost anything. This collection of 100 of the finest stories ever written ranges from the essential to the unexpected, the traditional to the surreal. Wide in scope, both beautiful and vast, this is the perfect companion for any fiction lover. Here are childhood favourites and neglected masters, twenty-first century wits and national treasures, Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates. Featuring an all-star cast of authors, including Kate Atkinson, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, V.S. Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon, Muriel Spark and Colm Tóibín, That Glimpse of Truth is the biggest, most handsome collection of short fiction in print today.

    1 in stock

    £18.00

  • Playing Games

    Hodder & Stoughton Playing Games

    1 in stock

    The remarkable debut novel from critically acclaimed writer Huma Qureshi: an engrossing story of art and sisterhood, family, marriage and betrayal'Poignant and impressionistic . . . highly readable and relatable' Guardian'A gem of a novel' i'A beautifully written debut' RedHana has a perfect job, a perfect home, a perfect marriage. It is her younger sister Mira who is a mess. But Hana wants children and her husband is hesitating, and perhaps her control is slipping.Mira dreams of a creative life but she's stuck working at a local café. She hates her flatmate and Hana's dismissal of her writing but she can't find the right inspiration.One night, a fight between Hana and her husband sparks something in Mira: the words ring in her head and she starts typing. But what can you borrow from your sister? And what can be forgiven?'Warm and moving . . . Playing Games thoughtfully and elegantly considers what it means to be a sister, a mother and a writer' Chloë Ashby, author of Wet Paint'A riveting and evocative tale of two sisters navigating love, loss and desires' Zeba Talkhani, author of My Past is a Foreign Country'Reading Qureshi's crystal prose is a rare pleasure. I found Playing Games unputdownable' Molly Aitken, author of The Island Child

    1 in stock

    £16.99

  • Far From Home

    Scribe Us Far From Home

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Body in the Mobile Library

    Eye Books The Body in the Mobile Library

    1 in stock

    A collection of absurdist yet plausible short stories

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Oxford Book of Death

    Oxford University Press The Oxford Book of Death

    1 in stock

    The inescapable reality of death has given rise to much of literature's most profound and moving work. D. J. Enright's wonderfully eclectic selection presents the words of poet and novelist, scientist and philosopher, mystic and sceptic. And alongside these 'professional' writers, he allows the voices of ordinary people to be heard; for this is a subject on which there are no real experts and wisdom lies in many unexpected places.

    1 in stock

    £10.99

  • A Christmas Carol

    Dover Publications Inc. A Christmas Carol

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

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  • How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage and Style and Women and Also Cocktails Ever Written

    HarperCollins Publishers Inc How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage and Style and Women and Also Cocktails Ever Written

    1 in stock

    Animated comedy series "Archer" is a wittily raunchy spy spoof ("Entertainment Weekly") with a cult following. Set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), suave master spy Sterling Archer deals with global espionage; a domineering, hypersexual, late middle-aged mother/boss, Malory Archer; his ex-girlfriend, Agent Lana Kane; her ISIS accountant boyfriend Cyril Figgis; and, a less-than-masculine code name: Duchess. Stylistically, the show is a mix of the '60s and modern cultures and the book will follow closely with more than 100 colour illustrations from the show. Tentative Outline: Personal Style - you should be spending more on clothes, the importance of a personal tailor, are two buttons one too many, fragrance - Bay Rum or nothing, and Valet vs. Butler; Food and Drink - taste like a spy, the many uses of Greek yogurt, Scotch and Gummi Bears, the Breakfast of Champions, and Men are from Martinis, Women from Vodka; Transportation - how to drive drunk (which you should never do), under the hood, and cool cars and why I drive a Challenger; and, Women - tips for getting ladies (Kinda like "The Game" but not as shitty), pick-up lines in various languages, and you Don't Have to Put on the Red Light - escorts and you. Also to be included: The Sterling Sutra, Archer's favorite weapons and fighting techniques, and more.

    1 in stock

    £12.99

  • Her Body And Other Parties

    Profile Books Ltd Her Body And Other Parties

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    SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FICTION PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018 'Brilliantly inventive and blazingly smart' Garth Greenwell 'Impossible, imperfect, unforgettable' Roxane Gay 'A wild thing ... covered in sequins and scales, blazing with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link and Helen Oyeyemi' New York Times In her provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the mysterious green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague spreads across the earth. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery about a store's dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted house guest. A dark, shimmering slice into womanhood, Her Body and Other Parties is wicked and exquisite.

    1 in stock

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  • Laughable Loves

    Faber & Faber Laughable Loves

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    A dazzling collection of stories - originally banned in 1968 Prague - by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road-only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone home to his wife. Games, fantasies, and schemes abound in all the stories while different characters react in varying ways to the sudden release of erotic impulses.

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • Mouthful of Birds: LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE, 2019

    Oneworld Publications Mouthful of Birds: LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE, 2019

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    A SPELLBINDINGLY CREEPY COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES, FROM AN ARGENTINIAN LITERARY STAR 'The Grimm brothers and Franz Kafka pay a visit to Argentina in Samanta Schweblin's darkly humorous tales.' J.M. Coetzee Spine-tingling and unexpected, unearthly and strange, the stories of Mouthful of Birds are impossible to forget. The crunch of a bird's wing. A cloud of butterflies, so beautiful it smothers. A crimson flash of blood across an artist's canvas. Samanta Schweblin's writing expertly blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday, pulling the reader into a world that is at once nightmarish and beautiful. An exhilarating tour de force guaranteed to leave the pulse racing. 'This is our world, and sharp-focused, but stripped of its usual meanings... Brutal violence is twisted into horrific, intensely experienced art.' Guardian *Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, 2019*

    1 in stock

    £8.99

  • A Twist in the Tale

    Pan Macmillan A Twist in the Tale

    1 in stock

    A compelling book of short stories from the number one bestselling author, Jeffrey Archer.A man calls unexpectedly on his mistress and sees another man leaving her flat. Accusing her of being unfaithful, he quarrels with her, strikes her. She dies. Leaving unseen, he tips off the police so that the other man is arrested and charged . . . Has he achieved 'The Perfect Murder'? A tantalizing opening to A Twist in the Tale, a fantastic collection of short stories. Consider also: a wine-tasting with a bizarre difference, a game of sex with a sexy stranger, a violent row in a golf clubhouse bar, a rivalry founded on eating cornflakes . . . just some of the openings in this cunningly constructed, fast-moving, entertaining set of stories from the bestselling author.

    1 in stock

    £11.85

  • Eat, drink & blame the ancestors

    Burnet Media Eat, drink & blame the ancestors

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £13.95

  • Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow, The

    Graffeg Limited Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow, The

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

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  • World's Greatest Speeches

    Sterling Publishers Pvt.Ltd World's Greatest Speeches

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £6.41

  • Waiting for the Dog to Sleep

    Twisted Spoon Press Waiting for the Dog to Sleep

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £9.37

  • The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories

    Faber & Faber The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories

    1 in stock

    Yoruba legend and culture were the source of much of Amos Tutuola's writing and the stories collected here are no exception. They feature characters from folklore, archetypal figures from Yoruba society, supernatural or magical happenings, acute human observation and often a moral point. Their very titles - from 'The Duckling Brothers and their Disobedient Sister' to 'Don't Pay Bad for Bad' - are evocative of a unique blend of tradition and imagination, which belongs to the same universal culture as Aesop and the Brothers Grimm.

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Toll House: A Ghost Story for Christmas

    Biblioasis The Toll House: A Ghost Story for Christmas

    1 in stock

    The Toll-House has a long and terrible history as a place of death. But Jack Barnes doesn't believe in spirits. His travelling companions, Messrs. Meagle, Lester, and White, wager that he might be convinced otherwise if they all spend a night together in the house. Four men go in, but will four come out?W. W. Jacobs was an English author, well-known for his story "The Monkey's Paw."

    1 in stock

    £6.59

  • Self-Help: Faber Modern Classics

    Faber & Faber Self-Help: Faber Modern Classics

    1 in stock

    'Lorrie Moore is one of my very favourite writers.' Monica Heisey 'America's first lady of darkness and mirth.' Guardian 'I'd rather spend time with her than anyone else on Earth.' Nicole FlatteryComplicated, awkward, funny, cruel, heartbroken, mysterious; Self-Help forms an idiosyncratic guide to female existence which is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. These stories are modern America at its most real, with characters sharing thoughts and experiences they could have borrowed from our own lives. This is how to deal with divorce, adultery, cancer, how to talk to your mother or become a writer, the Lorrie Moore way.

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 10: The Foundations of The Origin of the Species: Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844

    New York University Press The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 10: The Foundations of The Origin of the Species: Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844

    1 in stock

    Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the past 150 years. New York University Press's new paperback edition makes it possible to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is complete edition contains all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original pagination with Darwin's indexes retained. The set also features a general introduction and index, and introductions to each volume.

    1 in stock

    £25.99

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