Anthologies & Short Stories

Book SynopsisOn a train journey, Pozdnyshev tells his story to a stranger: how his relationship with his wife gradually deteriorated from one of love and passion to jealousy and resentfulness, culminating in a mad act of desperation while she practised Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with her violin teacher. An uncompromising examination of lust, suspicion and infidelity which was once forbidden by censors in Russia and banned in the US due to its shocking content, Tolstoy’s controversial novella – here presented in a new translation, along with ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus’, ‘Master and Man’ and ‘After the Ball’ – is now considered one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy’s late period.Trade ReviewTolstoy is the greatest Russian writer of prose fiction. -- Vladimir NabokovIt showcases the questioning, unsettling and perfectly crafted prose of the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace. * The Good Book Guide *In Roger Cockrell's fluid rendering in English, the story shines and glimmers beautifully. * RTÉ *Table of ContentsContains: The Kreutzer Sonata, After the Ball, Master and Man, The Prisoner of the Caucasus.

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Book SynopsisA young Harvard graduate with bright prospects, Bill Frothington is invited on board a steamer hosting a high-school dance, where he meets and falls in love with the seventeen-year-old Mae. As the match is not considered socially advantageous enough, Bill moves on, marries and has a career, but he remains painfully nostalgic for that episode on the river. A poignant tale which touches on the themes of yearning and lost youth that are central to many of Fitzgerald’s novels and stories, ‘The Love Boat’ is here presented with other lesser-known pieces which he wrote in the 1920s and explore the many facets of his creative talents.Trade ReviewHe was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation. * The New York Times *Table of ContentsContains: The Smilers, Myra Meets His Family, Two for a Cent, Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar, Diamond Dick and the First Law of Woman, The Third Casket, The Unspeakable Egg, John Jackson's Arcady, The Pusher-in-the-Face, One of My Oldest Friends, Not in the Guidebook, Presumption, The Adolescent Marriage, Your Way and Mine, The Love Boat.

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Book SynopsisSara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina and the other during the First World War, when he was a soldier about to go to battle. When, years later and after the death of her husband, Cedric contacts her out of the blue, Sara finds herself eager to see him again - against the wishes of her in-laws - and to find out the secret of this man she loves yet knows so little about. A poignant tale of thwarted love, 'The Intimate Strangers' explores many of Fitzgerald's favourite themes, such as the constraints of society on romance and the American fascination for Old Europe. This volume also includes other lesser-known stories he wrote from the mid-1930s until the end of his life, revealing new facets to the author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.Trade ReviewHe was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation. * The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisMost famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story writer, as exemplified by the tales included in this volume. Concerned with the manifold aspects of everyday life and varying in their settings – from aristocratic drawing rooms to poverty-stricken garrets, from the hustle and bustle of Paris to the Provençal countryside of the author’s childhood – these stories will keep the reader riveted from the beginning to the end and surprise for their modernity. Contains: The Attack on the Mill The Girl Who Loves Me Rentafoil Death by Advertising Story of a Madman Big Michu The Way People Die A Flash in the Pan Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder Priests and Sinners Fair Exchange The Haunted HouseTable of ContentsContains: The Attack on the Mill, The Girl Who Loves Me, Rentafoil, Death by Advertising, Story of a Madman, Big Michu, The Way People Die, A Flash in the Pan, Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, Priests and Sinners, Fair Exchange The Haunted House

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Book SynopsisThis volume, first published in 1856, includes three of the tales widely considered to be among Melville’s masterpieces. In ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’, a Wall Street lawyer hires a melancholy young clerk called Bartleby, whose sudden and mysterious refusal to work plunges the firm into disarray. ‘Benito Cereno’ is the account of a mutiny on a slave ship, based on the real-life journals of an American sea captain. ‘The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles’ is a series of sketches about the Galápagos Islands which was a huge success with the reading public and contains some of Melville’s most celebrated prose. Also included in this volume are ‘The Lightning-Rod Man’, ‘The Bell Tower’ and a story written especially for the collection, ‘The Piazza’. Taken together, these tales, in their masterful use of irony and concision, display the author of Moby Dick at his most uncompromising and compelling.Trade ReviewIt is Melville who establishes the benchmark for what the short story can attain and allows us to set the standards by which all the other great writers of the form can be measured. -- William BoydTable of ContentsContains: Bartleby, the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles, The Lightning-Rod Man, The Bell Tower, The Piazza.

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Book Synopsis‘Tobermory’ – the title story of this collection – is widely considered one of Saki’s finest pieces, in which a short-sighted dinner-party guest introduces a talking cat to the diners, inadvertently revealing gossip and pushing fickle characters into the limelight – in the process undermining the common perceptions of grandiose and genteel high society. From some of his earliest successes, such as ‘Gabriel-Ernest’, ‘The Bag’ and the Clovis stories, about a young man with an impish sense of humour, to later tales such as ‘The Boar-Pig’, which is as bizarre as it is hilarious, and ‘The Toys of Peace’, which he was never able to see in print, this selection contains a wealth of well-known tales with vastly different themes – from reincarnation to psychological warfare – and bearing every trademark token of wit with which Saki has enthralled generations of eager readers.Trade ReviewIf only Saki… were still alive. The age of Trump needs his brutal dismantling of human stupidities. -- Stephen Moss * The Guardian *Start a Saki story and you will finish it. Finish one and you will start another, and having finished them all you will never forget them. They remain an addiction because they are so much more than funny. -- Tom SharpeA master in his genre. -- Naomi Lewis * The Observer *Table of Contents`The Open Window', `The Boar-Pig', `The Chaplet', `The Lumber Room', `The Schartz-Metterklume Method', `Gabriel-Ernest', `Sredni Vashtar', `The Storyteller', `The She-Wolf', `The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water', `The Bag', `The Mouse', `Esme', `Tobermory', `Mrs Packletide's Tiger', `Hermann the Irascible', `The Unrest Cure', `The Jesting of Arlington Stringham', `Filboid Studge', `The Hounds of Fate', `Laura', `The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat', `The Toys of Peace', `Tea', `A Bread-and-Butter Miss', `Bertie's Christmas Eve', `Forewarned', `The Interlopers', `The Bull'.

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Book Synopsis"In ‘The Wave’, a young man falls dangerously in love with the tenant downstairs, who is engaged to be married; in ‘The Signorina’, a flirtatious young woman is caught between her feelings and her parents’ desire for a good match; in ‘A Friend to the Wives’, the peerless Pia Tolosani leaves a trail of regret in the life of a former suitor. In this collection of stories – Pirandello’s first published work of fiction – the master of Italian modernism dissects the passions that are either dimly felt or unrequited, ultimately raising doubts about the very nature and existence of love, while simultaneously foreshadowing the themes and the psychologically nuanced characters that he would go on to develop in his later works."

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Book SynopsisA respectable young widow and mother of two children, the Marquise of O- finds herself inexplicably pregnant after being rescued by a Russian officer from the attentions of his soldiers during the storming of her town's citadel. Convinced of her own innocence and wishing to vindicate her own integrity, the Marquise places an advert in the newspapers, appealing for the father to come forward and promising to marry him. But will this be enough to quench her family's doubts and the derision of the society around her? Will this help her solve the mystery and urge the perpetrator to acknowledge paternity of the child? One of the great classics of German literature, Heinrich von Kleist's sexually charged novella is as edgy today as it was when it was first published in 1808, and is accompanied here by two other celebrated stories, 'The Earthquake in Chile' and 'The Foundling', showcasing the range of their author's narrative abilities and his taste for the ambiguous and the paradoxical.Trade ReviewOne of the most radical writers who ever lived - Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisThe Best of Benedict Kiely is a treasure trove of his best and most acclaimed stories, published to mark the centenary of the birth of this great twentieth-century Irish writer. Many of these stories were originally published in The New Yorker before appearing in four collections over a 24-year period during the writer’s lifetime. They are quintessential Kiely; superbly crafted, mingling song, anecdote, myth, history and a powerful sense of place into an allusive storyline. They show Kiely’s supreme gift in recording the feeling of lived life, pulsing with joys, disappointments and the accidental and deliberate digressions along the way. Colum McCann has observed in Kiely’s work that ‘… there is really no such thing as an end, because the stories keep unfolding and influencing’ and these classic Kiely stories, published together for the first time, will linger with the reader, young or old, long after the final sentence.

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Book SynopsisNew fiction by: Suad Aldarra Caleb Azumah Nelson Jan Carson Elaine Feeney Oona Frawley Sinéad Gleeson Anna Jean Hughes Caleb Klaces Naomi Krüger Henrietta McKervey Paul McVeigh Mary Morrissy Nuala O'Connor Chris Wright To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways of being – linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a slightly different perspective of the world. In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from Ireland and the UK powerfully and poignantly explore the depths and breadth of the real dementia experience, traversing age, ethnicity, class and gender, sex and consent. Each writer’s story is drawn from their own personal experience of dementia and told with outrageous and dark humour, empathy and startling insight. Here are heroes and villains, tricksters and saints, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, characters whose past has overshadowed their present and characters who are making a huge impact on the world they currently find themselves in. They might have dementia, but dementia is only a small part of who they are. They will challenge, frustrate, inspire and humble you. Above all, these brilliant pieces of short fiction disrupt the perceived notions of what dementia is and, in their diversity, honesty and authenticity begin to normalise an illness that affects so many and break down the stigma endured by those living with it every day. Find out more about the AHRC-funded research project based at Queen's University Belfast, from which this anthology has emerged: www.blogs.qub.ac.uk/dementiafiction/ Trade ReviewRounded picture of dementia from those who know it well. -- John Walshe * Sunday Business Post *“…there is great variety in these nine fictions, not only in the character and degree of agency of the dementia sufferer, but in the degree to which the reader is challenged by the form.” -- David Butler * Books Ireland Magazine *

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Book SynopsisThe publication of "Short Stories 1895-1926" celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Walter de la Mare's death. It is also the culmination of a major literary enterprise. For many people Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) is as great a writer of fiction as of poetry. But the majority of his short stories, of which there are a hundred, have long been unavailable. "Short Stories" brings them all together in three volumes in the first comprehensive collection to be published. De la Mare's earliest published works were stories, and he continued writing and rewriting stories throughout the rest of his life. There was always a creative counterpoint between the themes and imagery of his prose and his poetry - such as the dream, childhood, the house, night, love lost and regained, solitude and the traveller. A full understanding of either is impossible without knowledge of both.Trade Review"'What strikes one most about [them] is how truly peculiar they are... it is good to see these dark and disquieting stories back in print.' TLS on Short Stories 1895-1926 and Short Stories 1927-1956 'He was so... "great" that, like all the greatest, his greatness functions as an assumption that goes hardly even recognized...the chief emotion is, as it should be, one of immense gratitude.' Martin Seymour-Smith in Scotland on Sunday on Short Stories 1895-1926 'Beautiful, enigmatic and disquieting stories.' Lord David Cecil 'De la Mare is a master of mise-en-scene...Prose with the most vivid and unsettling intensity, which resembles some of what the surrealists were producing in France...' Angela Carter"Table of Contents"The Riddle" and other stories (1923): "The Almond Tree"; "The Count's Courtship"; "The Looking-Glass"; "Miss Duveen"; "Selina's Parable"; "Seaton's Aunt"; "The Bird of Travel"; "The Bowl"; "The Three Friends"; "Lispet, Lispett and Vaine"; "The Tree"; "Out of the Deep"; "The Creatures"; "The Riddle"; "The Vats". Ding, dong bell (1924): "Lichen"; "Benighted"; "Strangers and Pilgrims"; "Winter". "The Connoisseur" and other stories (1926): "Mr Kempe"; "Missing"; "The Connoisseur"; "Disillusioned"; "The Nap"; "Pretty Poll"; "All Hallows"; "The Wharf"; "The Lost Track". Uncollected stories, 1895-1920: "Kismet"; "The Hangman Luck"; "A Mote"; "The Village of Old Age"; "The Moon's Miracle"; "The Giant"; "De Mortuis"; "The Rejection of the Rector"; "The Match-Maker"; "The Budget"; "The Pear-Tree"; "Leap Year"; "Promise at Dusk"; "Two Days in Town".

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Book SynopsisThe publication of "Short Stories for Children" celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Walter de la Mare's death. It is also the culmination of a major literary enterprise. For many people, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) is as great a writer of fiction as of poetry. But, the majority of his short stories, of which there are a hundred, have long been unavailable. "Short Stories" brings them all together in three volumes in the first comprehensive collection to be published. The third and last volume, "Short Stories for Children", starts with "Broomsticks and Other Tales" of 1925, with its twelve stories, and continues with "The Lord Fish" of 1933 with seven stories. It includes three distinctive stories, 'Pigtails, Ltd', 'The Thief' and 'A Nose', that have never been reprinted since they originally appeared in Broomsticks. Quirky, disparate, unpredictable, acutely observed, sometimes frightening, and often preoccupied with states of mind and personal identity, these stories have much in common with the adult stories. Some of them are peopled with giants, witches, kind elves, evil and spiteful fairies, and imprisoned maidens in castles, but most are not.We find ourselves in railway trains, a mansion in the City of London, another Elizabethan one in a mysterious tract of country, a remote farm house near the sea, a waterlogged forest, a drawing-room being watched by a fly; and, among other things, we encounter a wise monkey, a haunted cat, a fish magician, a baron transmogrified into a donkey, a thief desperate to be burgled, a man who believes he has a wax nose, and a godmother celebrating her 350th birthday. As in de la Mare's poems, everyday reality may at any time become undercut by disturbing uncertainty and dark, though not always malign, forces. A full understanding of the poems and stories is impossible without knowledge of both. Vivid and timeless, Bold's original woodcut designs and Rex Whistler's original engravings have been used to illustrate the two parts of the book.Trade Review"'What strikes one most about [them] is how truly peculiar they are... it is good to see these dark and disquieting stories back in print.' TLS on Short Stories 1895-1926 and Short Stories 1927-1956 'He was so..."great" that, like all the greatest, his greatness functions as an assumption that goes hardly even recognized...the chief emotion is, as it should be, one of immense gratitude.' Martin Seymour-Smith in Scotland on Sunday on Short Stories 1895-1926 'Beautiful, enigmatic and disquieting stories.' Lord David Cecil 'De la Mare is a master of mise-en-scene...Prose with the most vivid and unsettling intensity, which resembles some of what the surrealists were producing in France...' Angela Carter"Table of ContentsIntroduction, vii; Abbreviations, ix; STORIES IN COLLECTIONS; BROOMSTICKS AND OTHER TALES (1925); Pigtails, Ltd, 3; The Dutch Cheese, 18; Miss Jemima, 24; The Thief, 43; Broomsticks, 52; Lucy, 70; A Nose, 91; The Three Sleeping Boys of Warwickshire, 118; The Lovely Myfanwy, 135; Alice's Godmother, 158; Maria-Fly, 177; Visitors, 187; THE LORD FISH (1933); The Lord Fish, 197; A Penny a Day, 222; The Magic Jacket, 237; Dick and the Beanstalk, 261; The Scarecrow, 288; The Old Lion, 305; Sambo and the Snow Mountains, 329; Bibliographical Appendix, 349.

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Book SynopsisCollection of short stories which draw heavily upon Jessie Kesson's own experiences of growing up in a small town in Scotland. The title story, Where the Apple Ripens, is the story of Isabel Emslie, a young girl facing up to her last day at school and an uncertain future in service in the town. On the very threshold of womanhood, Isabel's overwhelming zest for life and desire for new experiences leads her to the door of the local Lothario. An intense, highly charged view of rural Scotland, where sensuality wars against Calvinistic repression, this novella is one of Jessie Kesson's finest achievements.

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Book SynopsisA sharp green tale from the award-winning author of Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time and Wild: An Elemental Journey. “Boiling hot day, McTypical McSuburb, McTypical McSunday. I’m watching the neighbours, going into their gardens to mow the litter... YA BASTARDOS! VIVA LA-FUCK-THIS-FOR-A-LIFADISTAS...” So begins a young man’s search for freedom, leaving the confines of Wimbly and finding himself living in a treehouse, a partner in grime with the road protesters of Newbury.

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Book SynopsisIrrational ambition, despair, suppressed desires and secrets are woven into the heft of each of Aguirre’s ten profound stories; whether it's a boy trapped at the age of fourteen after a botched attempt to capture time in a capsule, an organic seed distributor entrapping an errant lover with a replica pre-Columbian Aztec artifact bought in Chicago, or a woman attempting to drown herself in a water aerobics class in London, the tales in 29 Ways to Drown grip by their absolute logic and the sheer absurdity of the inevitable truths they unravel.Trade Review"...with a mystical sense of universal magic, Aguirre brings her literary world to vivid life. [These] characters haunt and intrigue..." — Courttia Newland; "...brings to mind the work of Borges and Cortazar but with a wholly contemporary twist." — Julia Bell; "Niki Aguirre is that rarest of writers, one who possesses an exuberant imagination, but who also casts a devastatingly sharp eye on human reality." — Laila Lalami

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Book SynopsisSince his first public appearance in the late 1590s, Shylock has been synonymous with antisemitism. Many of his bon mots remain common currency among Jew-haters; among them "3000 ducats" and the immortal "pound of flesh". But Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, was incapable of inventing anyone so uninteresting; instead he affords Shylock such ambiguity that some of his other lines have become keynotes for believers in shared humanity and tolerance. Following Shakespeare's example these stories - all inspired by The Merchant of Venice - range from the comic to the melancholic. Many pivot on significant productions of the play: Stockholm in 1944, London in 2012, and Venice in 2016. Some are concerned with domestic matters, others with the political, including one - more outrageous than the others - that links Shylock via Israel with the American presidency; most combine both. Running through these linked stories - of which there are seven, like the ages of man - is the cycle of family life, with all its comedy and tragedy.

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Book SynopsisNew Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year we publish the very best from emerging and established writers, and list many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among our contributors.

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Book SynopsisJohn Buchan (18751940) is remembered today as the creator of Richard Hannay, gentleman spy and hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and other adventures. Although his pacy thrillers remain Buchan's best-known work, it was the short fiction located in the Borders countryside that first established him as a master of suspense and storytelling.Introduced by Robert Hume, A Queer Warld collects four of Buchan's short stories in one volume: The Herd of Standlan', On Cademuir Hill', At the Rising of the Waters', and Skule Skerry'. In each, the landscape and the elements are powerful presences, driving the characters' moral and spiritual dilemmas as they face their different dangers.

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Book SynopsisGathered for the first time in English and spanning his entire career, Vampire in Love offers a selection of the Spanish master Enrique Vila-Matas’s finest short stories. An effeminate, hunchbacked barber on the verge of death falls in love with a choir boy. A fledgling writer on barbiturates visits Marguerite Duras’s Paris apartment and watches his dinner companion slip into the abyss. An unsuspecting man receives a mysterious phone call from a lonely ophthalmologist and visits his abandoned villa. The stories in Vampire in Love, selected and brilliantly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, are all told with Vila-Matas’s delightful erudition and wit, and his provocative questioning of the interrelation of art and life.Trade Review‘A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.’ -- Roberto Bolaño‘Highly original, both lucid and ludic.’ -- Valerie Miles * The Guardian *‘He absorbs the reader into a singular territory in which life and literature are a shared enterprise.’ -- Valerie Miles * New York Times *‘Arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure.’ -- Joanna Kavenna * New Yorker *‘Enrique Vila-Matas is a consistently rich and challenging contemporary Spanish-language novelist’ * World Literature Today *

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Book SynopsisMr Jolly is the first collection of short stories by Michael Stewart, and contains some of the award-winning novelist's most extraordinary writing to date. Each tale offers a unique, utterly compelling insight into the human condition, framed by a mind-bendingly original concept that no other writer working today could or indeed would have concocted. Readers will meet a conformity-obsessed league of bald men, breaking into homes for an extended debate about the nature of freedom; discuss the nomenclature of the marshmallow with a man whose single goal in life is to witness them accidentally skewered on stiletto heels; and meet God, in perhaps the most frustrating (yet believable) depiction of the divine being in modern literature.Last phone calls, alien abductions, murders and more are grounded in stories of struggling parents, baffled lovers and lost children (some of who may live permanently onthe number 606 bus). However long you live, and however much you read, you'll never come across another book quite like this.

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Book SynopsisOn the cusp of womanhood, Daina Tabūna's heroines are constantly confronted with the unexpected. Adult life seems just around the corner, but so are the kinds of surprise encounter which might change everything. Two siblings realise they're too old to be playing with paper dolls. A girl develops a fixation with Jesus. And a disaffected young woman stumbles into an awkward relationship with an office worker. The narrators of these three stories each try, in their own way, to make sense of how to behave in a world that doesn't give any clear answers.Trade ReviewAuthor Daina Tabūna (born in Riga, Latvia in 1985) has an innate skill in communicating voice to the reader. All three stories in The Secret Box seem to spring from some truth or experience in the author’s life, from which she spins out a narrative with a viewpoint that is seamlessly consistent and vibrantly alive.' -- Jo Manby * Mslexia Max *A quote that I absolutely loved from this story was “Without warning, the time had arrived where it wasn’t our dolls that had to be beautiful and sexy, but us ourselves”. To me this perfectly sums up what the transition to becoming a teenager is like for a young girl. I commend Daina for highlighting this issue and for showing what society expects from women, even from a young age. -- Marie Humble * Cuckoo Review *

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Book SynopsisIn this dark and toothsome collection, Anna Vaught enters a strange world of apocryphal feasts and disturbing banquets. Famished explores the perils of selfish sensuality and trifle while child rearing, phantom sweetshop owners, the revolting use of sherbet in occult rituals, homicide by seaside rock, and the perversion of Thai Tapas. Once, that is, you've been bled dry from fluted cups by pretty incorporeals and learned about consuming pride in the hungriest of stately homes. Famished: seventeen stories to whet your appetite and ruin your dinner.

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Book SynopsisJoel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction. Scar City is one of the final collections put together before his death in 2013 – with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense, haunting and often painful stories from a master of the short form. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS ROYLE

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Book SynopsisMan Hating Psycho is the caustic new collection of stories from visionary writer Iphgenia Baal. Interrogating the disconnect between our public identities and real-life selves, Baal exposes the inherent duplicity of online communication. Text messages relaying deep personal crisis are nothing more than an annoyance, WhatsApp takedowns of wide-eyed left-wingers unfold at breakneck speed, friendships that seem set in stone disintegrate at the first hint of sex, the language of love degraded as life becomes more and more transactional. With black and disquieting humour, thirteen playful texts disparage the highly-profitable superstitions that are the scaffolding of our current social order. Man Hating Psycho lays bare the trappings of modern life, whilst putting the short story form through a literary mincer.

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Book SynopsisA pregnant woman takes the ferry to the UK. A fractious intimate relationship develops between an Irish woman, an English man, and her girlfriend. Two ungendered characters contest the same female body. A deserted wife takes a lover but remains unsatisfied. Lauren Foley's debut collection of dramatic short stories, Polluted Sex, is fearless in its depiction of women's bodies and sexuality, offering an unflinching window into Irish girl and womanhood.

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Book SynopsisTo write about the North West coast is to do battle with the tenacity of stereotype. It is to dodge well-worn evocations of depressed, down-at-heel seaside towns, gaudy sea-front arcades, Ferris wheels, roller coasters and caravan parks and of past-their-best Lakeland towns with stunning views and grim prospects. To write about these places is to somehow acknowledge a variety of well publicised truths about the social and economic struggles of neglected and disenfranchised populations and also to dig deeper - to find the views and perspectives that surprise and make strange. No collection, even one including writers as varied and accomplished at the ones you'll meet in this anthology, could claim to provide a complete, exhaustive account of a region which encompasses hundreds of miles of coastline with centuries of complex history, a myriad of urban and natural habitats, and the entire available spectrum of human experience. Under these grey skies and rain-spotted sands lurk teeming hidden myriad of secret wildlife. Yet the stories included in Seaside Special succeed in gifting us readers with `postcards from the edge.' These ten writers, some of them established and some being published here for the first time, answer the challenge to `surprise and make strange' in an array of startling, often discomforting and most of all vivid glimpses of some of the lives and landscapes contained in this stretch of coast.

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Book SynopsisElemental, timeless stories, set in Italy, Finland, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Scotland and America, reveal the impact the seasons can have on our inner being Although each is complete in itself, these beautifully crafted tales contain recurring motifs so our understanding of one is enriched by the reading of others. The perspectives shift mesmerizingly as layer upon layer of human experience is uncovered. Ambiguity, mystery and spiritual searching abound, as the author meditates on many of the themes found in his highly acclaimed poetry: betrayal, lostness, bullying, the miraculous, faith and the power of love.Trade ReviewSteven is adept at elevating the everyday, and weaving into the apparently ordinary the grace of the eternal . . . Overall these are finely crafted stories, often with subtle Christian inflection, and quiet agendas. "All the Russian greats" would welcome Steven’s company. -- Martyn Halsall * Church Times *[On The Well of the North Wind] An emotionally sensitive, refreshingly honest book [that] brings a little known period of British history vividly to life * Brightest Day *This is a beautiful and captivating story set amidst holiness and wonder, moss and heather. If you are a bit of a romantic, into spirituality, are a creative sort, or just fancy something a bit different, then this book is for you! * Apples of Gold *This is true prose poetry and it took me almost as long to read as a full length novel, it is so dense and poetic. Kenneth Steven has a genius for the perfect phrase – there is absolutely no fat on this story’s bones, every single word serves a purpose and each is perfect in its place. * 5* review on goodreads *If you loved and were inspired by The Shack, then expect the same feelings from The Well of the North Wind. With poignant lines such as "‘When do you find God?’ He whispered ‘when in doubt?’ The answer came back at once, as fast as an echo ‘in the small things. In the voice of a child, in the curl of an otter, in the single moment of light on a day in the storm’" it is difficult not to feel moved. * eden.co.uk *[On Letting in the Light] A gentle light from an unseen source pours into the distilling simplicity of these poems -- Mark Oakley, Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral[On Evensong] This collection of poems by Kenneth Steven is stunning. There is a grave beauty in these lines, revealing a poetic voice of great sensitivity. These poems are, quite simply, wonderful. -- Alexander McCall SmithEnjoying [Kenneth Steven’s Columba Poems] intensely – style and subject. -- Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate 1984-98each topic is dealt with so delicately that it perfectly fits in with the flow of the book * The Bookbag *

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Book SynopsisIceland is a land of stories; from the epic sagas of its mythic past, to its claim today of being home to more writers, more published books and more avid readers, per head, than anywhere in the world. As its capital (and indeed only city), Reykjavik has long been an inspiration for these stories. But, as this collection demonstrates, this fishing-village-turned-metropolis at the farthest fringe of Europe has been both revered and reviled by Icelanders over the years. The tension between the city and the surrounding countryside, its rural past and urban present, weaves its way through The Book of Reykjavik, forming an outline of a fragmented city marked by both contradiction and creativity. Includes a foreword written by award-winning Icelandic author Sjon. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb, Philip Roughton, Lytton Smith, Meg Matich and Larissa Kyzer. Published with the support of the Icelandic Literature Center.

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Book SynopsisAn inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate - the way so many of the city's residents already have - to the mainland... An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with 'global pilgrims'... An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place... The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the 'impossibly beautiful', frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year - a city about which, Henry James once wrote, 'there is nothing new to be said.' Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.

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Book SynopsisTam O'Shanter meets Manga... Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d, Or cutty-sarks run in your mind, Think! ye may buy joys o’er dear— Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare. This vibrant and appealing adaptation of Tam O’Shanter brings the work of Robert Burns and the Scots language to life for a new generation through the medium of manga in this graphic novel for the 10-14 age range. Using the full and unabridged original poem, Richmond Clements a writer, editor and colourist, has adapted one of Burns' best-loved works. The illustrater, Inko, is a UK based Japanese manga and comic artist. Her work combines modern & traditional Eastern and Western cultures in this exciting edition.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of five subtly wrought stories from Amatmoekrim brings her short fiction into the English language for the first time. Ranging from the speculative ‘Jacques d’Or’ to the radical ‘De Radicaal’, this collection is a journey through Amatmoekrim’s pre-occupation with what kind of world we are creating. Her often cheerful and entertaining writing is threaded with threatening undertones, creating a haunting effect on the reader.

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Book SynopsisReturning to her archetypally ‘fresh and clear’ (Faithful) nonfiction, Mountain is a moving and memorable autobiographical account of a young woman making a trip to the mountains she visited so often as a child. Now grown and with her partner, past and present collide to create an impressive consideration of love and childhood, nostalgia and hope. Never before published in any language, this will also be Hofstede’s English language debut.

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Book SynopsisTaken from his highly successful collection, these two stories take unconventional positions towards short story archetypes. The Tourist Butcher is an unflinching tale about a serial killer who prepares his victims for a culinary dish, while Memories in Aluminium Foil follows the nightmares and existential crisis of a psychology student who receives a slice of human brain in aluminium foil as a gift from his biologist roommate.In the original Dutch collection, Ouariachi stated that his goal was to ‘bring the short story back to the campfire’, allowing his stories to hold up a mirror to the reader, rather than telling them what to achieve. These two stories, appearing in English for the first time, demonstrate his success: he has created a pair of dark, horrifying underworlds for the reader’s mind to get lost in, whilst maintaining a language that is light and graceful.

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Book SynopsisA family prepares for Assessment. Two brothers haggle over the legacy of their parents. A computer game designer aches with curious longings. Amidst it all, sisters, heroines, rebels, lunar moths and a not insignificant number of rabbits play out their lives under the strange grips of technology, governments, corporations and the capricious planets on which we all, in our different ways, just about manage to live.This Paradise is a rare and beautiful collection of stories about people fleeing towards places or times or situations they hope might be better – trying to outrun their nature, to deny the undeniable. Written with an arresting eye for detail, a rich sense of compassion and a darkly comic understanding of the human psyche, the stories in this volume propose a series of haphazard questions, not least of which is: where do we run to when there’s nowhere left to run?

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Book SynopsisA virus inflames a woman with mortal desire; a colonial naturalist seeks an impossible specimen; invisible violence stalks a safari; and a child’s bullying summons archaic armies. Ranging from taut human drama to phantasmagoria, these scenes make rich and strange connections – between ancient and new, human and animal, Africa and Europe, reality and dream. Includes prize-winning stories as well as previously unpublished works from one of South Africa’s foremost novelists.

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