Anthologies featuring bestselling authors alongside rising stars. Short story collections from some of our beloved authors with Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver and Anita Desai among the better known
Anthologies & Short Stories
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Elsa Asenijeff’s Is That Love? and Innocence: A
Book SynopsisFirst English translations of two early feminist short-story collections, shedding light on the "woman question" at the turn of the 20th century and relating to today's #MeToo movement. This edition provides the first English translations of two short-story collections - Is That Love? (1896) and Innocence: A Modern Book for Girls (1901) - by the Austrian writer Elsa Asenijeff (1867-1941). Primarily remembered as the lover and muse of sculptor and painter Max Klinger, in her time Asenijeff was a widely read author. Both books engage with "the woman question" at the turn of the twentieth century: Asenijeff thematizes the lack of education and professional opportunities for women and girls, critiques the bourgeois family as a site of patriarchal power, and sheds light on systemic sexual violence. Is That Love?, in particular, dismantles dominant narratives of romantic love and marriage. Written while Asenijeff was living in Bulgaria, and set there, the text also engages with that country's political turmoil. In Innocence, Asenijeff relies on some of the traditional characteristics of Mädchenliteratur, educational literature for girls, but also subverts its conventions. In their introduction, the translators explicate the sociohistorical background of both texts, arguing for Asenijeff's importance in the history of women's writing in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century German-speaking world and placing her within the larger context of the contemporary global #MeToo movement.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Is that Love? Short Psychological Tales and Observations Love: A Story from Bulgaria She The Governess: Story from Bulgaria Misery: Episodes from Women's Lives I II III IV The Riddle The Fly Raïna Karadjova The Vow Two Moderners What? Innocence: A Modern Book for Girls Introduction Secrets Darkness of the Metropolis Girls' Gossip Marriage At the Folksingers' Alone The Three Sisters Tatjana Lora's Housekeeping Week Mother's Telling a Story! (Two Fairy Tales) Aunt Jola On the Forest Path What Girls Are Not Supposed to Know Girl and Woman (A Chat) Small Child A Fairy Tale School Friends And So Shall We Be Sanctified
£76.50
Soho Press Accidents Happen
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£21.24
Graywolf Press,U.S. Fat Time and Other Stories
Book SynopsisIn Fat Time and Other Stories, Jimi Hendrix, Francis Bacon, the boxer Jack Johnson, Miles Davis, and a space-age Muhammad Ali find themselves in the otherworldly hands of Jeffery Renard Allen, reimagined and transformed to bring us news of America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Along with them are characters of Allen’s invention: two teenagers in an unnamed big city who stumble through a down-low relationship; an African preacher visits a Christian religious retreat to speak on the evils of fornication in an Italian villa imported to America by Abraham Lincoln; and an albino revolutionary who struggles with leading his people into conflict. The two strands in this brilliant story collection—speculative history and tender, painful depictions of Black life in urban America—are joined by African notions of circular time in which past, present, and future exist all at once. Here the natural and supernatural, the sacred and the profane, the real and fantastical, destruction and creation are held in delicate and tense balance. Allen’s work has been said to extend the tradition of Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Henry Roth, and Ishmael Reed, but he is blazing his own path through American literature. Fat Time and Other Stories brilliantly shows the range and depth of his imagination.
£12.59
Deep Vellum Publishing The New Adventures of Helen: Magical Tales
Book Synopsis“One of Russia’s best living writers . . . Her tales inhabit a borderline between this world and the next.” —The New York Times At first glance, the stories in The New Adventures of Helen seems simple, even child-like, but a deep reading reveals satire and darkness manifested through classic fairy tale tropes characteristically upended by Petrushevskaya. These “adult fairy tales” ask deep questions about gender, love, history, memory, and the future, taking place in times between history and the now. These stories, quirky but yet inspired by a confident hopefulness, will inspire and provoke English-speaking readers across the globe.Trade Review“We are likely to hear a lot more of this woman. Some October, perhaps, from the Nobel Prize committee.” —The Nation “One of Russia’s best living writers . . . Her tales inhabit a borderline between this world and the next.” —The New York Times Book Review “Petrushevskaya, now seventy-six and finally attracting the readership she deserves, [has] a ringleader’s calm mastery of the absurd.” —The New Yorker “Petrushevskaya writes instant classics.” —The Daily Beast “Petrushevskaya is the Tolstoy of the communal kitchen. . . . She is not, like Tolstoy, writing of war, or, like Dostoevsky, writing of criminals on the street, or, like poet Anna Akhmatova or novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, noting the extreme suffering of those sent to the camps. Rather, she is bearing witness to the fight to survive the everyday. . . . [She is] dazzlingly talented and deeply empathetic.” —Slate “This celebrated Russian author is so disquieting that long after Solzhenitsyn had been published in the Soviet Union, her fiction was banned—even though nothing about it screams ‘political’ or ‘dissident’ or anything else. It just screams.” —Elle “Her suspenseful writing calls to mind the creepiness of Poe and the psychological acuity (and sly irony) of Chekhov.” —More “Petrushevskaya’s fiction [offers] a glimpse of what it means to be a human being, living sometimes in bitter misery, sometimes in unexpected grace.” —Jenny Offill, The New York Times Book Review “The fact that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is Russia’s premier writer of fiction today proves that the literary tradition that produced Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Babel is alive and well.” —Taylor Antrim, The Daily Beast “What distinguishes the author is her compression of language, her use of detail and her powerful visual sense.” —Time Out New York “A master of the Russian short story.” —Olga Grushin, author of The Dream Life of Sukhanov “There is no other writer who can blend the absurd and the real in such a scary, amazing and wonderful way.” —Lara Vapnyar, author of There Are Jews in My House “One of the greatest writers in Russia today and a vital force in contemporary world literature.” —Ken Kalfus, author of A Disorder Peculiar to the Country “A master of the short story form, a kindred spirit to writers like Angela Carter and Yumiko Kurahashi.” —Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble, Magic for Beginners, and Stranger Things Happen “In her best work Petrushevskaya steers a sure course between neutrally recording the degraded life of the Soviet-era urban underclass and ratcheting up the squalor of that life for the mere pleasure of it. She does so by the steadiness of her moral compass and the gaiety of her prose.” —J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
£13.30
Notion Press Media Pvt Ltd Brian Unrolls His Mat: A Collection of Fables
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£14.99
Microcosm Publishing The Bicyclist's Guide To The Galaxy: Feminist,
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£11.69
The New York Review of Books, Inc Rock, Paper, Scissors, And Other Stories
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£15.29
The New York Review of Books, Inc Butterfly of Dinard
Book SynopsisFifty autobiographical short stories about childhood, life in Italy before and after World War II, and growing old in Milan by the winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the most celebrated Italian poets of the twentieth century.Best known for his poetry, Nobel Prize winner Eugenio Montale was also an elegant and incisive prose writer whose stories appeared regularly in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Butterfly of Dinard is a collection of fifty pieces whose distilled language, sprightliness, and subtle irony defy the limits of traditional short stories.Although initially skeptical of inventing fictional worlds, by drawing on his admiration for Katherine Mansfield, Anton Chekov, and Giovanni Verga, and by trusting his own understated sense of humor, Montale began to write about his experiences, “those silly and trivial things which are at the same time important.” Butterfly of Dinard represents a sort
£14.39
Turner Publishing Company Until We Have Faces: Stories
Book SynopsisIn a style reminiscent of John Cheever and Alice Munro, Michael Nye's second collection of stories, Until We Have Faces, contend with transfixing themes: marital and familial estrangement, ways of trespass, the intractable mysteries and frights of modern life, the uncertainty of knowledge and truth, the gulfs between people and the technology we use, the frailty of our economic lives—while underlining throughout the persistency of love. His consummate skill, penetrating wit, and unfailing emotional generosity are on full display in this fine new collection.Trade Review“The characters in Michael Nye’s brilliant collection all fight against a central question: what is so tragic about being unremarkable? Their dashed desires become their fuel, their desperation becomes their hope. Home, identity, race, love, loss—these themes reverberate in stories full of yearning, on paths toward selfhood marked by fragmentation. To step into the lives portrayed in Until We Have Faces is to feel, as one character notes, released from a cage after a long incarceration. We believe in their resilience because it is our resilience.”– Carolyn Ferrell, award-winning author of Don’t Erase Me
£11.69
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC Gas Guzzler and the Clock
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£7.99
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC Sitting on a Park Bench
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£12.34
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC Moving Stills
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£9.49
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC Saint Margaret Wagener
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£7.99
Melville House Publishing Walter Benjamin Stares At The Sea
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£16.19
Penguin Random House Group The Journal I Did Not Keep
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£13.49
LittlePuss Press Realistic Fiction
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£14.39
Banshee Press Tenterhooks
Book SynopsisAn eerie discovery at a building site triggers a crisis for a garda and his family. A grieving woman comes to believe that she is being possessed by the spirit of her mother, and seeks an unusual exorcism. A brave new world is established as Galway disappears slowly underwater. And a young woman experiences the morning after the night before in a strange, condemned midlands town. In these stories of an Ireland both strange and achingly familiar, Claire-Lise Kieffer animates our collective past, present and future. Humorous, off-kilter, savage and surreal, she depicts the bonds that hold couples, families and communities together with a sharp, humane and deeply original slant.
£15.29
Banshee Press Lets Dance
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£15.29
Heloise Press Industrial Roots
Book SynopsisRooted in the oral tradition of storytelling, INDUSTRIAL ROOTS is an exceptional collection of domestic vignettes narrated by different female characters. The stories in this book concern mainly the daily experiences of blue-collar life amongst the members of a working class family in Ontario. A woman that wants to steal babies, alcoholic husbands, sisters in love with the same man, aging parents, absent fathers - all have a place in the stories these women tell. Lisa Pike uses a variety of registers, from slang to standard English, to shape the characters' stories. This book is a linguistic gem that brings the English language to its limits.Trade Review"Aficionados of greyscale Americana will love these interlinked vignettes - perfect polaroid snapshots of everyday life for generations of working-class women in Ontario." Stu Hennigan, author of Ghosts Signs; "These bittersweet vignettes linked by intergenerational familial ties are little gems making up a caustic jewel of a novel." Jonathan Wolfman, BAFTA-Winner screenwriter and producer; "Lisa Pike is a wonderful writer. She brings these characters and their trials to life in a prose that carries their stories along in an engaging and accessible way." Dr Karina M. Szczurek, publisher and author of The Fifth Mrs Brink: A Memoir
£10.40
Penguin Random House Australia The Long Weekend: A Collection of Stories
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£10.79
Douglas & McIntyre The Swan Suit
Book SynopsisBlending banalities of everyday human routines and dilemmas with elements of fairy tales, magic, the macabre and the downright inventive, Katherine Fawcett''s fiction is anything but predictable.In this collection, reimagined folktales appear alongside stories entirely new, serving to defamiliarize us from the undeniably odd tales we continue to pass down generation after generation, and lend a vague familiarity to the stories of Fawcett''s invention.One of the three little pigs launches a line of high-end, easy-to-prepare, wolf brothbased meals. The Devil is on a mission to steal a child''s soul, but is distracted when he develops a massive crush on the day-care worker. A man stands in the shower contemplating his future when he discovers tiny mushrooms growing in his body''s various nooks and crannies.Fawcett''s wry humour and prodigious imagination are an addictive mix. The weird becomes normal, and the normal, fascinating. Subverting expectations at every turn, her matter-of-fact style and narrative skill make this collection a must-read for any lover of short fiction.
£16.14
Biblioasis Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of
Book SynopsisSophisticated, playful, and extremely funny, this collection begins the career of one of Canada's best humorists and storytellers. Featuring the adventures of Patchouli the Passionate, Sweet William, Paleologue, Passquick, Purlieu, Jasper, and Angus, with guest cameos by G.K. Chesterton and painter Raphael Santi, these odd Acadian episodes have delighted for decades.Table of ContentsThe Age of Innocence Secrets from Beyond the Pale Colours Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada Passion A Cynical Tale Peril The Galoshes The Dwarf in His Valley Ate Codfish Raphael Anachronic Smoke
£12.34
Biblioasis This Wicked Tongue
Book SynopsisAn A.V. Club Book to Read for June 2019 In moments of exile and self-exile, exodus and return, Elise Levine’s uncanny narratives lay bare the secret grammar of their characters’ psyches. An ill-tempered divinity-school candidate refuses to minister to a dying man’s wife; a couple fails to connect as they tour an ersatz cave in the south of France; holy women grieve in medieval England, and a pregnant runaway hitches a ride with a Church leader of dubious intentions. Propelled by their longing for pasts that no longer exist, these reluctant Adams and contemporary Eves confront the unspoken, the maligned, the abject aspects of their inner geographies, mining them for gems that glint and scatter in the light. Uncompromising and honest, lyrical and wry, This Wicked Tongue dares to tell the truth about the places we have come from and the new ones we might find.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR THIS WICKED TONGUE “It’s been a long wait for fans of Elise Levine’s delicious short stories. But the wait was well worth it...[This Wicked Tongue] delivers in spades. From the get-go, Levine demonstrates a boisterous command of language and an ability to seize the reader’s attention...her stories pry us open, revealing our secretly wounded places, finally acting as balm and salvation. Lucky us.” —Toronto Star “Sit back and let the language, distilled to its most pristine, wash over you with the force and effect of poetry.” —Hamilton Review of Books “Expertly crafted, impressively original, inherently riveting...very highly recommended.” —Midwest Book Review “Levine offers a vision and a language so poetically visceral and fiercely poignant—so uniquely intelligent—that story after story I was in awe of her courage and artistry.” —Barbara Gowdy "Edgy...convey[s] themes of yearning and loss...Levine demonstrates her ability as a wordsmith par excellence." —Winnipeg Free Press “Elise Levine writes with a new and exciting type of lyric rhythm. These are stories with the beating heart of poems.” —Rion Amilcar Scott, winner of the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction “Each story in This Wicked Tongue is powerful and vivid and packed with an emotional punch to the heart.” —Quill & Quire (starred review) “Elise Levine’s startling sentences alternate between serrated sentiment and lyrical reverie, offering readers that rarest commodity—genuine surprise.” —Jeff Jackson, author of Destroy All Monsters “Elise Levine uses language like a scalpel to cut to the nervy core of our inner life. There’s a restless desolation in these stories, perfectly poised against a wily, wry wit. This Wicked Tongue is wicked smart.” —Dawn Raffel, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney “Taut, musical sentences...a stylish, experimental collection.” —Kirkus Reviews “Levine shines, furnishing a mental space with language that juggles colloquial and classical vocabulary, complete with verbs that feel freshly minted. In other hands, such an inward turn might give rise to feelings of claustrophobia, but here one has the sense of a widening.” —Literary Review of Canada “Wonderfully dark, eerily atmospheric...sharp, smart, thoughtful, and rendered in Levine's customary powerhouse prose.” —Open Book PRAISE FOR ELISE LEVINE “Reading Elise Levine is akin to a wild ride down a dark road at night...Bold and startling...Precipitous and exhilarating.” —Globe and Mail “As immersive, hyper-vivid and true as fiction ever gets.” —Lisa Moore “A dazzling wordsmith, a lexical tease, Levine is like a kid let loose in a leaf pile, kicking up words for the sheer joy of watching them spin.” —Toronto Star “A cutting-edge literary sensation.” —NOW Magazine “One of Canada’s finest fiction writers…Levine demonstrates a kind of incandescent knowing about human affairs which she deploys in stunningly nuanced passages…A sensitive, cagey dominatrix of literary form and human psychology.” —George Elliott Clarke, Mail Star “Audacious…There’s hardly a word in [these stories] that doesn’t weigh heavily, or doesn’t have a bristling edge to it.” —Toronto Star “Levine’s vivid language and unflinching exploration of people living on the edge of society will stay with you long after each story is read … Levine is unafraid to experiment with language, voice, and form. Her explorations of humanity and the adventurous spirit of her work will keep the reader hooked, hesitating to turn the page but unable to resist the pull of her prose.” —St. John’s Evening Telegram “Levine’s writing is adventurous and brave…Tautly constructed and rigorously controlled…” —Quill & Quire “Levine is, undeniably, an outstanding wordsmith. Her writing style moves in multiple directions, making high stakes out of small movements while turning panic into poetry.” —Winnipeg Review “Taut and direct, Elise Levine’s writing compresses the distance between art and audience, drawing a reader experientially through her fiction. Levine is a visceral imagist. Her fiction renders event indistinguishable from emotion, affecting the gut as fully as the mind.” —Ottawa Citizen “Levine uses raw, hallucinatory prose to tell this curious story of a woman becoming undone…The novel’s visceral wordplay, rough sexuality, and anguished depiction of survivor’s guilt are bound to captivate its audience. A transgressive, gut-wrenching portrayal of grief that asks what it’s like to drown.” —Kirkus Reviews "Levine’s spare language works brilliantly to capture both the vastness of the open water and the claustrophobic chaos of underwater caverns [as well as] a heightened, stylized canvas for Marilyn’s addictive nature...The result is a tale of self-destruction and hubris...absolutely gripping.” —Numero Cinq “A vibrant mixture of intimate moments...Blue Field is an exploration of two selves coming together with the sea. Levine’s aquatic language is gorgeous, displaying her literary prowess.” —THIS Magazine “No reader can make his or her way through these stories and retain any kind of complacency.” —Calgary Herald “Reading the novel is a sensation akin to drifting weightlessly beneath the surface of the text...dazzling, textured, tightly woven.” —Music and Literature “Levine exposes the roughness and the crude pain of life. It’s a rare writer who can write bluntly about the raw side of life while subtly leaving room for her readers to make their own, often disturbing connections.” —Books in CanadaTable of Contents Money’s Honey The Riddles of Aramaic All We Did Princess Gates Armada Made Right Here Public Storage, Available Now Death and the Maiden The Association This Wicked Tongue As Such Alice in the Field
£10.44
Biblioasis Best Canadian Stories 2021
Book SynopsisSelected by guest editor Diane Schoemperlen, the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Stories continues not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters. “The best short stories,” writes editor Diane Schoemperlen, “are disruptive in all the best ways, diverse in all senses of the word, always looking back and leading forward at the same time … they must be written in the world, in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of more horrifying news every day.” Submitted and published by Canadian writers in 2020, Schoemperlen’s selections for Best Canadian Stories 2021 feature work by established practitioners of the form alongside exciting newcomers, and stories published by leading magazines and journals as well as those appearing in print for the first time—all of which, as Schoemperlen writes, “bring us news of the world and the shape of things to come.” Featuring work by: Senaa Ahmad Chris Bailey Shashi Bhat Megan Callahan Francine Cunningham Lucia Gagliese Alice Gauntley Don Gillmor Angélique Lalonde Elise Levine Colette Maitland Sara O’Leary Jasmine Sealy Joshua Wales Joy WallerTrade ReviewPraise for Best Canadian Stories “The legacy for Canadian literature in the Best Canadian Stories series can’t be overstated. For years the collection has been the place to discover Canadian writers.”—Winnipeg Free Press “Best Canadian Stories … combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book “The arrival, late in the fall each year, of [this] collection is always cause for fanfare.”—Quill & Quire
£11.04
Biblioasis This Time, That Place: Selected Stories
Book Synopsis"Blaise is probably the greatest living Canadian writer most Canadians have never heard of."—Quill & Quire“If you want to understand something about what life was like in the restless, peripatetic, striving, anxiety-ridden, shimmer cultural soup of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries," writes Margaret Atwood, "read the stories of Clark Blaise." This Time, That Place draws together twenty-four stories that span the entirety of Blaise's career, including one never previously published. Moving swiftly across place and time, through and between languages—from Florida's Confederate swamps, to working-class Pittsburgh, to Montreal and abroad—they demonstrate Blaise's profound mastery of the short story and reveal the range of his lifelong preoccupation with identity as fallacy, fable, and dream. This Time, That Place: Selected Stories confirms Clark Blaise as one of the best and most enduring masters of the form—on either side of our shared borders.Trade ReviewPraise for This Time, That Place“[Blaise] paints a restless, uneasy portrait of society at the turn of the 21st century.”—New York Times"More people should read Blaise ... Contemporary life is full of irreconcilable tensions. This Time, That Place captures a handful of them, simultaneously telling stories of three countries and a multitude of identities that cut across various social, culture, political and economic dimensions."—Globe and Mail"If the topic is longing, loneliness or the search for love in an untethered world, no one writes with more wisdom or more beautifully."—Alexander MacLeod, for the Globe and Mail"With the publication of This Time, That Place confirms, author Clark Blaise is clearly documented as being one of the best and most enduring masters of the short story literary form."—Midwest Book Review“This Time, That Place is not only a stunning collection of fiction, it is one of considerable importance; most readers will not recognize how much they have been lacking in their reading lives until they experience the work of Clark Blaise first-hand."—Toronto Star"This Time, That Place demonstrates why Blaise is one of Canada's greatest short story writers."—CBC Books"Blaise is ... almost preternaturally adept at noticing things ... sublime technique and linguistic finesse [are] showcased in these inestimable short works."—Quill & Quire, starred review"The adolescent yo-yo takes many forms in This Time, That Place (Biblioasis), which recalls an old cigar box filled with undated and often cryptic postcards. [...] Individually or as a group, these loosely linked stories will reward multiple readings."—Literary Review of Canada"Clark Blaise might be North America’s Great Unclaimed Writer ... These stories, like their author, embody and enact a continental sense and sensibility."—The Bulwark“[Blaise’s] readers don’t feel as though they’re merely a fly on the wall: They’re sitting in the back of a stolen car in the middle of the night, inheriting a new identity as they watch a past life fade in the rearview.”—The McGill Tribune"The publication of This Time, That Place is a cause for celebration. Not only does This Time, That Place prove Blaise to be a master of the craft, it also holds a mirror up to the reader. It may answer the question 'Who is Clark Blaise?' but it raises the bigger, more important questions of 'Who am I?' and 'Where am I now?'"—PRISM International"This Time, That Place does a good job of establishing Blaise not only as one of the major voices in Canadian fiction in the last half-century, but as a deeply entertaining writer to boot. It’s one best enjoyed slowly, giving each of these stories time to settle and let them linger on.”—Live in Limbo"These stories cover ground not only geographically. They are also crowded with character and incident, always fiercely and smartly observed ... Blaise has gathered here a smart, sprawling collection of stories about family, rootlessness, and identity."—Kirkus Reviews"Blaise's stories are shapely and full of keenly observed details that bring their often unglamorous settings to life. For those unfamiliar with his work, This Time, That Place will come as an especially pleasant discovery."—Shelf Awareness"A dazzling gallery of portraits of North American lives rendered in Blaise's emotionally evocative style."—Joyce Carol Oates"This selection contains a life’s work from one of the most important short story writers to ever live in North America. No artist before Blaise, and nobody since, has moved through the continent with so much sensitivity, compassion, and intelligence. Most at home when they are lost, Blaise’s characters search hardest for belonging when the conditions are least hospitable. For fifty peripatetic years, his beautifully crafted stories have shown us a way though. In our desperation, whenever we ask: 'Where am I now?' Clark Blaise provides the honest answer we need: 'Right here.'"—Alexander MacLeod, author of Animal PersonPraise for Clark Blaise"If you want to understand something about what life was like in the restless, peripatetic, striving, anxiety-ridden simmering cultural soup of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, read the stories of Clark Blaise. He's the recording angel and the accuser, rolled into one. He's the eye at the keyhole. He's the ear at the door."—Margaret Atwood"Blaise is probably the greatest living Canadian writer most Canadians have never heard of."—Quill & Quire"Clark Blaise's brilliantly imagined The Meagre Tarmac is a novel in short-story form, warmly intimate, startling in its quick jumps and revelations ... with the rich and compelling detail for which [his] fiction is renowned ... Remarkable."—Joyce Carol Oates
£14.24
Biblioasis Best Canadian Stories 2022
Book SynopsisSelected by editor Mark Anthony Jarman, the 2023 edition of Best Canadian Stories showcases the best Canadian fiction writing published in 2021.A collection that takes us into a firey near-future and a notorious feminist’s personal past, from a near-drowning to a fake breakdown, through mothers who fail us to crummy jobs, to thieves, to grief, to revenge with a bottle of tabasco sauce. With work by established practitioners alongside that of lesser-known writers, this year’s Best Canadian Stories shows how the short form can evoke the experience of a person on the brink. Including 2023 Metcalf-Rooke Award winner Caroline Adderson, and featuring, in tribute, two stories by the late Steven Heighton, this year’s collection draws together beloved Canadian practitioners of the form and thrilling new voices to continue not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters.Featuring works by:Caroline Adderson • David Bezmozgis • Jowita Bydlowska • Kate Cayley • Tamas Dobozy • Omar El Akkad • Christine Estima • Naomi Fontaine • Sara Freeman • Steven Heighton • Philip Huynh • David Huebert • Alexandra Mae Jones • Carmelinda ScianTrade ReviewPraise for the Best Canadian Series“The wide range of writers, forms and themes represented here make it a great jumping-off point for readers who might be interested in Canadian poetry but are unsure about where to start.”—Globe and Mail“A superb collection of national thinkers, crackling with insight on the issues of the age.”—Chatelaine“The arrival, late in the fall each year, of [this] collection is always cause for fanfare.”—Quill & Quire“The legacy for Canadian literature in the Best Canadian Stories series can’t be overstated. For years the collection has been the place to discover Canadian writers.”—Winnipeg Free Press“Best Canadian Stories … combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book
£12.34
Biblioasis Instructions for the Drowning
Book SynopsisA NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient ... As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”—National PostThe unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow BoxerA man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.Trade ReviewPraise for Instructions for the Drowning"To read work like Heighton’s knowing that we won’t get more of it [...] inspires fury in all directions. [...] Every story in this collection has 'it,' whatever Heighton decided 'it' would be: pacing that thrills; fragile love and blind hate; descriptions you can smell and taste and hear."—New York Times"Heighton, who died last year at 60, draws on our most vulnerable moments in this moving collection, full of understated tension and exacting detail. The characters feel both recognizable and one-of-a-kind."—New York Times"These stories, by a Canadian novelist, poet, and musician who died last year, peer keenly into the penumbra surrounding death."—New Yorker"Released posthumously, this short-story collection carries serious emotional weight, both for the circumstances of its release and its content. All 11 short stories are gentle, profound examinations of the human condition, and are a fitting bookend to Heighton’s remarkable career."—Globe and Mail"To create so many small worlds and characters that feel so real and populate is an act of transcendence. To do it well is to offer a gift. In Instructions, the late Steven Heighton has managed both, and the gift is ours."—Globe and Mail“As these stories demonstrate, human life is a means of exploration and celebration, threaded through with darkness and loss. In the midst of death, Heighton seems to say, we are in life: it should be savoured.”—Toronto Star"In Instructions for the Drowning, however, he uses his poet’s precision, his depth as a novelist, and his intimacy as a memoirist to give us a glimpse of the closure he may have hoped for—for himself, for his characters, and also for his readers."—The Walrus"Heighton keeps us afloat in the depths of Instructions’ themes with his truly brilliant writing which is at turns poetic, curious, compassionate and very, very funny."—Winnipeg Free Press“Steven Heighton has left us with a very strong final collection of short stories. I enjoyed every moment of reading Instructions for the Drowning, with each story shedding light on different parts of the human condition.”—Miramichi Reader"Heighton has left an indelible mark on the realm of Canadian words and letters, with his poetry, fiction and nonfiction. This collection further solidifies his importance to Canadian Literature."—The Quarantine Review"Heighton’s almost preternatural ability to recognize what to include and what to leave out of a particular piece is most apparent in his poetry and his short fiction, where compression and precision of language combine to create meaning."—That Shakespearean Rag"A remarkable book by an unparalleled literary talent."—Steven Beattie, Quill & Quire (starred)"Heighton will go down as one of the brightest stars in Canadian literary history."—FreeFall Magazine"Masterful ... the Joycean stories collected in Instructions for the Drowning are searing reminders: that the other side of rage is a vale of tears."—Foreword Reviews (starred)"Instructions for the Drowning is a short story collection explores themes of love and fear, delusion and idealism and the ironic ways we come up short despite trying our very best."—CBC Books"As Instructions for the Drowning pulls readers into life’s most vulnerable moments, the power and depth of Heighton’s talents shine through each page."—Toronto Life"In these 11 expertly constructed and memorable short stories, he excels at capturing his subjects at moments of maximum stress, in the process illuminating different aspects of the human character."—Shelf Awareness“As a poet and later as fiction writer Steven Heighton had this stunning range of voice in his stories. He would go anywhere. He always surprised you. His death as a still young writer is a tragedy and a great loss. He was a writer who grew so much with each book. You could always witness it happening.”—Michael Ondaatje, author of Warlight and The English Patient"Steven Heighton is one of our most ethical, profound writers. These stories face delusion and illumination, rebellion and surrender, they shock with their beauty and their understanding. The characters, living and dead, are gatherers of knowledge yet the deepest parts of themselves come alive in all they cannot know. Heighton leaves us an unforgettable work that, through its rigour and exactitude, finds within itself a desperately moving liberation."—Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
£12.34
Metonymy Press Personal Attention Roleplay: Stories
Book Synopsis
£10.79
Invisible Publishing Diving Board
Book Synopsis“Opening Diving Board is like waking in a white room with no doors or windows. A question resonates as one reads these stories: How did Tomás Downey place me here so perfectly, and why is it that I don''t want to leave?”—Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender is the Flesh and The UnworthyTomás Downey writes from the edge of the abyss. A little girl disappears midair; a horse grows from a seed; a war widow receives a visit of condolence, over and over and over again. In “The Astronaut” a man has become weightless, bobbing around on the ceiling, nauseated every time he is brought down and tethered to the earth. But the question here is not “how” or “why,” it’s “what happens next?” The astronaut wonders “Will I burn like an asteroid or drown in the void of space?” just as all of Downey’s stories reside in that threatening, destabilizing moment when all connection is lost. The world is filled with an ever-thickening mist, an old love haunts the living, making fruit rot in the bowl, and resolution isn’t offered or even sought—the human condition is queasy, fretful, absurd. All we can hope for is the leap into the unknown.
£12.34
Colourpoint Creative Ltd Little Red and Other Stories
Book Synopsis‘All she wants is a new country, a new language, new food. New people, new stories ... She wants all this newness – which is as old as the hills – to encourage her, enclose her, remake her... She feels this, though she doesn’t really believe it.’ In these eleven stories, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne draws us into the lives of characters struggling to find equilibrium. Visited by change and crisis, they are forced to confront the stories that define their sense of themselves and their place in the world. Beautifully written and sharply observed, this dazzling and daring collection is a deft exploration of the complexities of human desire – its darkness, its incoherence, its potential to help us tell a new story.Trade ReviewLittle Red and Other Stories is a treasure chest, full of such jewels. -- Henrietta McKervey * Irish Independent *These stories are rooted in human feeling and authenticity … a gift to her readers -- John Boyne * Irish Times *
£12.34
Colourpoint Creative Ltd Selected Stories: ÉIlíS Ní Dhuibhne
Book Synopsis‘When the story is finished, Muriel and Polly sit in silence. The coloured lights on the fuchsia bush twinkle against the black sea and the black mountain and the black sky. They sit in silence. They let the story settle.’ For almost forty years, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne has captivated readers and critics alike with the dazzle and daring of her stories. Hailed as an original voice from her first collection, she has gone on to create a body of work that has established her as one of Ireland’s finest and most compelling storytellers. The fourteen stories gathered here demonstrate the breadth of Ní Dhuibhne’s achievement across her long writing career, particularly in terms of her depiction of the richly complex territory of women’s lives. They are testament to her great and enduring talent for weaving stories that draw us in and stay with us in the silence, long after the story has ended. ‘A masterful storyteller, tonally adept at pivoting from searing and political, to comic and moving in a matter of pages.’ SINÉAD GLEESON ‘Ní Dhuibhne’s stories stand out for their superb sense of character and time and place.’ COLM TÓIBÍN ‘A fully contemporary writer working old magic; Ní Dhuibhne calls on ancient tradition to renew the way we see the world.’ ANNE ENRIGHT Stories: The Postmen’s Strike - Blood and Water - The Flowering - The Wife of Bath - Gweedore Girl - Estonia - The Pale Gold of Alaska - The Banana Boat - A Literary Lunch - The Moon Shines Clear, The Horseman’s Here - Bikes I have Lost - The Coast of Wales - New Zealand Flax - Little Red.Table of ContentsSelected Stories: The Postmen’s Strike Blood and Water The Flowering The Wife of Bath Gweedore Girl Estonia The Pale Gold of Alaska The Banana Boat A Literary Lunch The Moon Shines Clear, The Horseman’s Here Bikes I have Lost The Coast of Wales New Zealand Flax Little Red
£14.24
Quercus Publishing The Gurkha's Daughter: shortlisted for the Dylan
Book SynopsisA pioneering collection describing and dramatizing the Nepalese diaspora - the displacement and exile of the Nepali-speaking world*SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE*A disfigured servant girl plans to flee Nepal; a Kalimpong shopkeeper faces an impossible dilemma; a Hindu religious festival in Darjeeling brings with it a sacrifice; a Nepali-Bhutanese refugee pins her hopes on the West; a Gurkha's daughter tries to comprehend her father's complaints; two young Nepali-speaking immigrants meet in Manhattan. These are just some of the stories of the people whose culture and language is Nepalese but who are dispersed to India, Bhutan and beyond. From every perspective and on every page, Prajwal Parajuly blends rich colour and vernacular to paint an eye-opening picture of a unique world and its people.Trade Review'Equally moving stories, the author takes us effortlessly inside the lives of the families in this remote ancient kingdom and its diaspora' Daily Mail. * Daily Mail *'[An] accomplished debut collection ... A distinctive talent' Financial Times. * Financial Times *'Crisp, inventive and insightful ... Marvellous' Guardian. * Guardian *Table of ContentsThe Cleft. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. A Father's Journey. Missed Blessing. No Land is Her Land. The Gurkha's Daughter. Passing Fancy. The Immigrants.
£9.49
Profile Books Ltd Hits and Misses
Book Synopsis'Simon Rich is outrageously, lavishly gifted' - Caitlin Moran 'Simon Rich is the funniest writer alive' - Matt Haig 'How fabulously funny' - Lauren Laverne 'One of my favourite authors' - B J Novak From a bitter tell-all by a horse who made a man famous and then got left behind to a gushing magazine profile of one of your favorite World War II dictators, these stories trawl through history to skewer our obsession with fame and fortune - all the way from ancient Babylon to Hollywood. What father-to-be wouldn't feel a little jealous when his baby outstrips his success from the womb? And what happens when a film critic is forced to live in the movies he so cruelly damned? Loved in the UK by celebs, writers and readers alike, from Lauren Laverne to Matt Haig and Caitlin Moran, Simon Rich is back with his funniest and most personal collection of stories to date.Trade ReviewSimon Rich is outrageously, lavishly gifted -- Caitlin MoranHow fabulously funny -- Lauren LaverneOne of my favourite authors -- B J NovakSimon Rich is the funniest writer alive -- Matt HaigGenius ... He is a Thurber, even a Wodehouse, for today. Who could ask for more? You can give his books to people and just watch them laugh. Only after you've snorted through them yourself, though * Evening Standard *With Simon Rich's new collection you will laugh out loud regularly ... The stories are very, very funny ... Read Hits and Misses if you like laughing at things. -- Patrick Freyne * Irish Times *Wildly funny -- Anthony Cummins * Metro *
£8.99
Transworld Publishers Ireland Ltd The Last Resort
Book Synopsis'Profoundly imagined characters, spiced with the off-kilter and deliciously mad . . . a work of great empathy and imagination' THE IRISH TIMESThe season's just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time. Frankie is haunted by his daughter's death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist, makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie-obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they've lost.With trademark wit and playfulness, in this stunning linked short-story collection Jan Carson explores complex family dynamics, ageing, immigration, gender politics, the decline of the Church and the legacy of the Troubles. The Last Resort firmly places Carson as one of the most inventive and daring writers of her generation.'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY TIMESTrade ReviewProfoundly imagined characters, spiced with the off-kilter and deliciously mad . . . a work of great empathy and imagination - The Irish Times -- The Irish Times. . . stories filled with wit and humanity - Irish Independent -- Irish Independent
£11.69
Fantom Films Limited The Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens: Volume 3
Book Synopsis
£14.60
Quercus Publishing Fearie Tales: Books of Horror
Book SynopsisNeil Gaiman, Joanne Harris and other bestsellers re-imagine famous fairy tales in this wonderfully rich, scary anthology, illustrated by Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings artist Alan Lee. Following in the grand tradition of the Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, some of today's finest writers have created their own brand-new fairy tales - but with a decidedly dark twist. Fearie Tales is a fantastical mix of spellbinding retellings of 'Cinderella', 'Rapunzel', 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Rumpelstiltskin', amongst others, with unsettling tales inspired by other childhood classics, all interspersed with the sources of their inspiration: the timeless stories first collected by the Brothers Grimm.Edited by Stephen Jones, Britain's best-known anthologist of dark tales, and illustrated by Oscar-winning artist Alan Lee, who also provided the magnificent cover, with stories by Neil Gaiman; Joanne Harris; Garth Nix; John Ajvide Lindqvist; Markus Heitz; Michael Marshall Smith; Angela Slatter; Robert Shearman; Christopher Fowler; Ramsey Campbell; Peter Crowther; Brian Hodge; Brian Lumley; Reggie Oliver and Tanith Lee.But be warned: this stunning volume of frightening fables is definitely not suitable for children!Trade ReviewFearie Tales has the edge here, mainly because it proved so refreshing and authentic, reflecting the true intention of the original storytellers, after decades of sugarcoated Disney fare. * The Stylist Book Wars *The best spooky fiction: Close the curtains, pull up a chair, open a book - and prepare to be pleasantly scared * The Metro *Authentically terrifying . . . The whole is gorgeous, the hardback from paper to font is a treasure to hold, even before we see Alan Lee's magnificent drawings * ScienceFic *This is one absolutely beautiful collection. A must-have. * Terror-Tree *Marvellous: each story is great in its own way and together they just work remarkably well to bring thrills and nightmares. All of them are terrifying and mesmerising at the same time. The illustrations by Alan Lee are incredible. Read it if you dare and see if you can keep your lights off during the night. 10 stars! -- Marc Aplin * Fantasy-Faction *Stephen Jones remains at the top of the tree as one of the world's premier anthologists * Crime Time *A collection of definitely-not-for-kids fairy tales twisted and retold by an amazing list of authors * Bibliosanctum *This is an impressive one: horror yarns inspired by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Add in a splendid cover illustration and superb pieces of interior art by Alan Lee and you have the makings of a great anthology * British Fantasy Society *Moving, shocking, funny, pretty essential * Concatenation *I've dipped in and out, read half the book in one go, re-read, and mulled over. The stories are tense, creepy, twisted, sad, and horrible in varying proportions * Andthenireadabook *Takes the retold fairy tale sub-genre, already claimed and used exquisitely in fantasy and dark fantasy fiction, deep into horror territory * Ellen Datlow, Best Horror of the Year *Satisfyingly creepy and viscerally horrific -- Luna Centifanti * Times Higher Education, Books Of The Year *This book provides a double dose of delight to fans of fear-fraught fiction. Firstly, there is Alan Lee's captivating and delightfully mordant artwork which adorns the covers, endpapers and interiors, and then there are the stories themselves, which are compelling, intriguing, and unsettling in equal measure . . . Added together with Jo Fletcher Books' impeccable design and production values, and you have a book that you will treasure for years to come. * Illustrators *With Fearie Tales, noted horror anthologist Stephen Jones sets out to return the form to its roots. Using the original tales collected in the early 19th Century by the Brothers Grimm as inspiration, Jones presents a collection of modern-day fairy tales designed to frighten and unsettle, and written by some of the foremost practitioners of horror and dark fantasy currently working in their respective fields . . . This is a must for horror aficionados everywhere, and doubly so for anyone with a penchant for fairy tales in particular. The usual high production values from Jo Fletcher mean this is a book that you'll want to have displayed on your shelf, and that's just the icing on the cake. Dark, disturbing but most of all: wonderful. -- Matt Craig * Reader Dad *'For a goosebump-raising story, look no further than the beautifully illustrated Fearie Tales . . . All the time-honoured horror themes are here -- Russell Williams * Metro *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Don't Scare the Children - Stephen Jones. The Wilful Child. Find My Name - Ramsey Campbell. The Singing Bone. Down to a Sunless Sea - Neil Gaiman. Rapunzel. Open Your Windows, Golden Hair - Tanith Lee. The Hare's Bride. Crossing the Line - Garth Nix. Hansel and Gretel. Peckish - Robert Shearman. The Three Little Men in the Wood. Look Inside - Michael Marshall Smith. The Story of a Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was. Fraulein Fearnot - Markus Heitz. Cinderella. The Ash-Boy - Christopher Fowler. The Elves #1. The Changeling - Brian Lumley. The Nixie of the Mill-Pond. The Silken Drum - Reggie Oliver. The Robber Bridegroom. By the Weeping Gate - Angela Slatter. Frau Trude. Anything to Me is Sweeter, Than to Cross Shock-Headed Peter - Brian Hodge. The Elves #2. The Artemis Line - Peter Crowther. The Old Woman in the Wood. The Silken People - Joanne Harris. Rumpelstiltskin. Come Unto Me - John Ajvide Lindqvist. The Shroud.
£11.69
Columba Books Mythical Irish Wonders
Book Synopsis
£18.89
Pushkin Press A Nail, A Rose
Book Synopsis'Madeleine Bourdouxhe is one of the more remarkable literary discoveries of the last few years' Jonathan Coe These are stories of longing and dissatisfaction, of daily life ruptured by strange currents of feeling. A woman, wandering alone and heartbroken, is first attacked and then romantically pursued by a stranger. A maid wears her mistress's expensive coat to meet her lover, but finds herself more preoccupied by fantasies of intimacy with 'Madame'. A woman gives birth on the day foreign troops invade the city, and must flee with her newborn on the back of a truck. Written in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Europe, and admired by the Existentialists and the Surrealists alike, these stories are now translated with extraordinary clarity by Faith Evans. With piercing insight and candour, Madeleine Bourdouxhe illuminates the conflicted hearts of the housewife, the mother, and the maid. These unforgettable tales of ordinary women are suffused with desire and melancholy, memory and fantasy, and lit by the furnace burning just beneath the surface of everyday life.Trade Review"Often dream-like but centred on the daily life of women… magnificent." - Guardian "Her lonely, fantasising women call up Rhys and Mansfield." – Hermione Lee, Observer"The stories here reveal a poetic imagination which combines the startling imagery of the surrealists with intensely female preoccupations . . . a singular, resonant voice." – Literary Review"These are the stories of a very gifted, very honest writer, who moves quite naturally between fidelity to fact and fidelity to the furnace beneath it, of memory and fantasy and bereavement." – TLS "Madeleine Bourdouxe is one of the more remarkable literary discoveries of the last few years." - Jonathan Coe "An unforgettable, thrilling achievement... What [Marie] does, no less, is stake a claim to Bourdouxhe's rightful position alongside Proust and Virginia Woolf as an explorer of interior life." - Sunday Times "A stunning collection... [Bourdouxhe] has the observational expertise and tightness in structure of Katherine Mansfield, a touch of Angela Carter’s wildness, and the realism in her characterisation and dialogue reminded me of Daphne Du Maurier’s later work... a moving, powerful and transformative reading experience." — The Heroine Collective"Exquisite, elegant, and nonsentimental... Bourdouxhe conveys the sharp, almost physical intensity of thought." - Irish Times on Marie"the laureate of yearning… [her] greatness lies in her ability to conjure the most exquisite and heart-rending moments from the most quotidian circumstances. Everyone should read her." — Graeme Macrae Burnet, author of His Bloody Project "Powerful stories… what a treat for modern readers to have her work revived." — A Life in Books blog"The surrealist soul of these stories is played with in both tragedy and comedy, and is frightfully good at bringing colour and electricity to the flat and the ordinary." — Books and Bao blog"There are not many writers you can think of who have understood the patriarchal situation with such clarity and disregarded it all the same with the exact proportionate amount of dignity, nihilistic abandon and fatalism." — Flowerville blog"Bourdouxhe’s women have almost untold depths of feeling and trauma…But they are never bowed: they love, they mourn, they desire, they dream, they take risks. Above all, they never lose their sense of self." — Translating Women blog "I loved her writing, with its bare starkness." — Bookword blog"remarkable collection. Vivid… exquisite… stylish." — Book Jotter blog "A compact, yet challenging, piece of work… explores a variety of themes… continues to invoke debate and deliberation." — Swirl and Thread blog
£10.80
Pushkin Press I Would Prefer Not To: Essential Stories
Book SynopsisIn these stories of the surreal mundanity of office life and obscure tensions at sea, Melville's darkly modern sensibility plunges us into a world of irony and mystery, where nothing is as it first appears. A lawyer hires a new copyist, only to be met with stubborn, confounding resistance. A cynical lightning rod salesman plies his trade by exploiting fears in stormy weather. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, an American trader's cheerful outlook is repeatedly shadowed by paralyzing unease.Trade Review"Melville instinctively aspired to the grandest scale, and even in his shorter works offers vast inklings and the resonance of cosmic concerns." -- John Updike"Melville seems to promise the very stuff of existence: time, space, air. We don't so much read him as inhale him." -- Geoffrey O'Brien, Village Voice"There are very few stories that, on re-reading after re-reading, seem to become impossibly more perfect, but Herman Melville's eerie, aching story 'Bartleby, the Scrivener' is one such." -- Stuart Kelly, Guardian
£10.80
Pushkin Press Lucky Breaks
Book SynopsisIn Lucky Breaks, we encounter anonymous women from the margins of Ukrainian society, their lives upended by the ongoing conflict with Russia. A woman, bewildered by her broken umbrella, tries to abandon it like a sick relative; a beautiful florist suddenly disappears, her shop converted into a warehouse for propaganda; hiding out from the shelling, neighbours read horoscopes in the local paper that tell them when it's safe to go outside. In stories of linguistic verve and dark, absurdist wit, Yevgenia Belorusets writes of how trauma seeps into the mundane, telling surreal, unsettling tales of survival in a shattered country.Trade Review'[Lucky Breaks] is a book in Russian about the war in Ukraine that does not describe combat operations and that forbears to generalize in any way... The tender and terrible stories of Yevgenia Belorusets, where bogeyman tales of childhood dress in the language of Jean Genet, and the documentary dilates into the epic, become the history we all have in common' - Maria Stepanova, author of In Memory of Memory'Women... find themselves constructing surreal narratives in an attempt to capture the strangeness of living a life under bombardment.' - Daily Mail'Ukraine's Catch-22... an uncompromising tableau of individuals dislodged by conflict some years before Russia's full-scale invasion... Humour is not a way out for these women, but it does allow the reader a way in... these are stories that stay with you' - The Telegraph'A tantalisingly oblique collection... as sharp and fragmentary as the shards of lives upended.' - Catherine Taylor, Irish Times
£9.49
Pushkin Press Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird
Book SynopsisIn these tense, macabre stories, bodies fall from the sky, perfect nails conceal grisly secrets and violence pulses behind gleaming façades. From hellish visions to obsessive relationships, acclaimed author Agustina Bazterrica takes us to the dark heart of human desires and fears. Shocking, brutal, yet glinting with sharp humour, Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird is a breathtaking dive into human monstrousness from a master of contemporary horror.Trade Review'Like Enriquez, Bazterrica writes fetishistic gore with a bewitching allure, creating... an overwhelming sense of dread and a fear of losing one's senses' - Big Issue'In 19 Claws, Bazterrica resumes the study of the macabre that characterised Tender Is the Flesh. This time, however, the brutality of the female experience is cut through with a dark wit and a heavy dose of the fantastic' - Guardian'Gothic and brilliantly grim, these uneasy tales from the author of Tender Is The Flesh are as shadowy as night even in the bright glare of sunshine, as Bazterrica's darkly macabre imagination works like talon and beak, capable of tearing apart everyday situations and transforming them into something horribly chilling' - Daily Mail'This book will leave you shocked into contemplating the darker sides of human nature' - Sci Fi Now'A compelling and unsettling work that will leave readers questioning the boundaries between love, desire, and obsession' - GlamourPraise for Tender is the Flesh'A hideous, bold, unforgettable vision of the future'' - i-D'A thrilling dystopia that everyone should read' - Dazed'Sitting comfortably? Not after even the tiniest nibble of this gut-churning, brilliantly realised novel' - Daily Mail'What a compelling, terrible beauty this novel is. My heart was breaking even as my skin was crawling' - Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies'Written in her deliciously dark tone, Bazterrica's claws puncture polite society's fragile membrane, revealing the darkness writhing beneath' -Litro
£11.69
Granta Books Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
Book SynopsisIt is the long, hot summer of 1963 and New York is filled with lovers, dreamers and protestors. Young African-American women grow out their hair and discover the taste of new freedoms. Young men, white and black, travel south to fight against segregation, praying for a society in which love is colour-free. Written in the late 1960s and early 1970s but overlooked in Kathleen Collins's lifetime, these stories mark the debut of a masterful writer whose electrifying voice was almost lost to history.
£8.54
Salt Publishing Licensed Premises
Book Synopsis‘Nobody believes what they see on TV, so they want to look for something else, an alternate reality, or a conspiracy theory, and it’s interesting to explore it, Twitter is fucking full of it, especially now. It’s no wonder people round here are into it, but you don’t have to read all that shit, just have some mushrooms and wander round Lidl off your tits.’In these fourteen northern tales, Campbell takes us from the edgelands of Manchester to the cloistered villages of The Peak District, Northumberland and Scotland, and illuminates the lives of outsiders, misfits, loners and malcontents with an eye for the darkly comic. A wild-eyed man disturbs the banter in a genial bookshop. A fraught woman seeks to flee a collapsing reservoir. A failed academic finds solace in a crime writer’s favourite pub. A transit van killer stalks a railway footpath. A poet accused of plagiarism finds his life falling apart.Trade ReviewIn Licensed Premises there is a greater willingness to take risks, to step outside the straitjacket of Carverian restrictions. There is even a stream-of-consciousness experiment in ‘Reeks’, after the style of Jack Kerouac, after the style of Marcel Proust! Yes, really. Although Campbell sees himself as a storyteller and not a social historian, these stories could stand as a record of our time as the work of Gaskell, Dickens, and Mayhew did to a previous century. If you want to understand our modern cities and modern work, let Neil Campbell be your guide. -- Richard Clegg * Bookmunch *
£9.49
Salt Publishing The Moon is Trending
Book SynopsisThis new short story collection from Clare Fisher explores of feelings of failure around gender, sexuality, and work, that arise in a success-obsessed capitalist culture. Dazzling, playful, and experimental, it veers between the real, the surreal and the absurd.Trade ReviewClare Fisher's short fictions go a long way. She writes with humour and insight and real skill, about our bodies and our selves, and the world we're in, and about the fragile net of thoughts that holds us. -- Keith RidgwayShort though its components are, it doesn’t do to read The Moon Is Trending through all the way through. You’d think it’d be easy to read twenty-seven very short stories in one go, but it didn’t play out like that. I read one, sometimes two—no more than three—in a row at a time. It works to be dipped into and out of. To be picked up and put it down. To be gone back and forth to. To be recommended. -- JL Bogenschneider * The London Magazine *Sharp, playful, often surreal and just as often soulful shards of contemporary and queer life and longing. -- Lucy Caldwell
£9.49
Salt Publishing Scablands and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThese are tales from the post-industrial scablands – stories of austerity, poverty, masochism and migration. The people here are sick, lonely, lost, half-living in the aftermath of upheaval or trauma. A teacher obsessively canes himself. A neurologist forgets where home is. A starving woman sells hugs in an abandoned kiosk. Yet sometimes, even in the twilit scablands, there’s also beauty, music, laughter. Sometimes a town square is filled with bubbles. Sometimes sisters dream they can fly. Sometimes an old man plays Bach to an empty street, two ailing actors see animal shapes in clouds, a cancer survivor searches for a winning lottery ticket in her rundown flat. And sometimes Gustav Mahler lives just round the corner, hoarding rare records in a Stoke terrace.Trade ReviewAlthough each of these compelling stories stands alone, there are at least two possible links between them all: first, the political nature (with a lower-case “p”); and second, the desperate need these characters have for connection in this isolating world. Such themes unite them as a collection. This is a short story collection that I strongly recommend. -- Ruth F Hunt * Morning Star *The images created in these stories linger long after the book has been shut: an Andy Pandy Nightdress, a soldier digging in the mud, a girl on a till trying to pause her life and a biography completely crossed out in red pen. The stories in Scablands may be short, but Taylor’s superb word weaving skill ensures the tales last so much longer than their actual length. -- Lisa Williams * Everybody’s Reviewing *Taylor not only provides evidence that as an endlessly variable, malleable form, the short story is alive and well. Indeed, he gives his readers every reason to rejoice in its continuing good health, and this, despite the fact that so many magazines and journals which used to print short stories have gone to dust. Arnold Bennett, that hospitable, generous champion of writers of all kinds, would have been delighted with Scablands, and so, for what it’s worth, am I. -- John Lucas * London Grip *
£9.49
Salt Publishing Forgetting is How We Survive
Book SynopsisA plane crashes. A boy drowns. A body is found on a dark lakeside. A woman tries to make sense of a strange memory from her childhood. A father searches for a missing dog – his only link to his lost son. A boy on the brink of adolescence embarks on a journey and gets more than he bargained for. Young lovers get their kicks trespassing in empty houses. A young man prepares to leave his hometown for the last time, and a giant sink hole threatens to swallow everything.In Forgetting Is How We Survive, people are haunted by ghosts of the past, tormented by doppelgangers and pining for the futures that have been lost to them. Each faces a turning point – an event that will move their life from one path to another, and every event casts a shadow.The stories in this collection come from another England where earthy realism hides another world where anything is possible.
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Man Who Wouldn't Get Up and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThe first collection of short stories from one of Britain's finest novelists and criticsA nameless man who has fallen out of love with life, refuses to get out of bed, with unexpected consequences. A sociologist recalls how he learned his first and formative lesson about the oppressive power of capitalism selling newspapers and magazines up and down the platforms of Waterloo station. Some years before the era of the Pill and the Permissive Society, four university friends travel to the Mediterranean for their first holiday together, where the climate is sultry and sex is on everyone’s mind. And a strong-willed young woman defies adverse circumstances to pursue the perfect wedding at all costs. These are some of the characters that populate David Lodge’s shrewd, funny and delightfully entertaining short stories, collected here for the very first time. What prompted their publication in this form is a short story in itself, told by the author in his Foreword.LONGLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2017Trade ReviewHis down-to-earth stories have a nice blend of the worldly and the ingenious. -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times *David Lodge's short stories are as witty and surprising as his novels * The Times *Fresh and timely...well-observed collection that one wishes was twice as long * Financial Times *Lodge’s preoccupations in these stories tend to be masculine, though not exclusively. The stories deal with the tumult and mysteries of relationships in a style at once serious and farcical… This collection shows Lodge at his most playfully imaginative. * Independent *
£12.34
Vintage Publishing The Boatman and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThe breathtaking short story collection from the Costa-shortlisted Irish writerThree gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man's life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully in his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labour rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; a pair of newly-weds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island. Spanning a century and two continents - from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an aeroplane bound for Taipei - these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, Billy O'Callaghan's stories explore the resilience of the human heart and its ability to keep beating even in the wake of grief, trauma and lost love.'The best fiction I have read this year... Taut, subtle and moving, and brought off beautifully' John Banville, Best Books of 2020, Irish TimesTrade ReviewThe best fiction I have read this year is Billy O'Callaghan's short-story collection The Boatman. The book is old-fashioned in the best sense, in that it is written by a grown-up for grown-up persons, as Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch. The stories are taut, subtle and moving, and brought off beautifully. -- John Banville * Irish Times *Best Books of 2020* *Wonderful stories… A masterclass... The reader is lulled into a false sense of ordinariness that gives way — sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly — to a moment of cataclysm…that leaves the reader reeling… There is no denying the power of his words… O’Callaghan’s stories are beautiful, plain and simple, and each one is devastatingly good. -- Kathleen MacMahon * Sunday Times *Billy O'Callaghan writes beautifully... In evoking atmosphere, such a key element in the short story, he is matchless... His prose is a feast after a famine... The luxuriance of the language, the agility of the sentences, and the depth of the reflections. These stories are like classical sonatas... The writing is invariably delightful. -- Eilis Ni Dhuibhne * Irish Times *A shining example of how [short stories] can distil and intensify a writer’s gifts… These 12 stories confirm [O’Callaghan’s] delicate craftsmanship, unflashy narrative and descriptive skill, and his deep understanding of powerful and universal emotions… Breathtaking… Masterly… Irish writing has put out many new and more consciously modernist shoots in recent years, all welcome. But Billy O’Callaghan belongs now in the recognised front rank, along with Bernard MacLaverty, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor and Colm Tóibín. -- Ann Chisholm * Tablet, *Novel of the Week* *[Billy O’Callaghan] makes epics out of the unspoken, the barely said, the half-hinted at, the wordless nod… This is O'Callaghan's quest, to reveal who his characters really are, especially when they're burdened with life's cruelties. And in chronicling the bravery sometimes required in simply putting one foot in front of the other, he makes heroes of the humblest of us. -- Anne Cunningham * Sunday Independent *
£9.49
