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
Pushkin Press The Siren's Lament: Essential Stories
Book Synopsis'One of the greatest Japanese writers... his work explores the destructive power of erotic obsessions' Guardian 'Outstanding... rich and mysterious' New York Times Book Review A new selection and translation of short stories by a hugely prominent classic Japanese writer, filled with eroticism and fantasy The rich and mysterious short stories of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki pulse with a restless eroticism. Visiting a kingdom ruled by a weak-willed duke, the sage Confucius finds himself drawn into a battle of wills. A naïve servant boy is compelled down a path of vice and sin by his master's daughter. A young prince finds himself enraptured by his newest possession: a beguiling, enchanting mermaid. These three stories, two of which are here translated for the first time by Bryan Karetnyk, capture the essence of Tanizaki's shorter writings. Drawing on tales from both Japanese and Chinese mythology, combined with poignant psychological realism, Tanizaki reveals and revels in the paper-thin line between the sublime and the depraved.Trade Review“In these stories we have that still-young man, randy and undisciplined, ranging everywhere for pleasure.” — The Washington Post “Undiscovered jewels.” — Guardian“Lyrical, dramatic and unforgettable…Highly recommended!” — Shiny New BooksPraise for Jinochiro Tanizaki: “Junichiro Tanizaki may well prove to be the outstanding Japanese novelist of this century” — New York Times Book Review “Japan's great modern novelist. Tanizaki createda lifelong series of ingenious variations on a dominant theme: the power of love to energize and destroy” — Chicago Tribune “Tanizaki writes with an unabashed sensuality” — John Updike
£11.40
Pushkin Press A Different Sound: Stories by Mid-Century Women
Book SynopsisThese remarkable short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked and new freedoms are embraced. Selected and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes, this collection places works from renowned women writers alongside recently rediscovered voices. Suffused with tension and longing, they form a window onto a remarkable era of writing. Contains: 'The Cut Finger' by Frances Bellerby, 'Summer Night' by Elizabeth Bowen, 'The Birds' by Daphne du Maurier, 'The Land Girl' by Diana Gardner, 'Listen to the Magnolias' by Stella Gibbons, 'Shocking Weather, Isn't It?' by Inez Holden, 'The First Party' by Attia Hosain, 'Three Miles Up' by Elizabeth Jane Howard, 'The Skylight' by Penelope Mortimer, 'The Thames Spread Out' by Elizabeth Taylor and 'Scorched Earth Policy' by Sylvia Townsend WarnerTrade ReviewAs well as introducing some little-known writers, Lucy Scholes offers a way of seeing women's writing differently * Times Literary Supplement *
£15.29
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
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.
£9.49
Pushkin Press Where All Good Flappers Go: Essential Stories of
Book SynopsisFeaturing short stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker, Zora Neale Hurston and more Edited and Introduced by David M. Earle Vivacious, charming, irreverent: a flapper is a girl who knows how to have a roaring good time. In this collection of short stories she's a partygoer, a socialite, a student, a shopgirl, and an acrobat. She bobs her hair, shortens her skirt, searches for a husband and scandalizes her husband. She's a glittering object of delight, and a woman embracing a newfound independence. Bringing together stories from widely adored writers and newly discovered gems, sourced from the magazines of the period, this collection celebrates the outrageous charm of an iconic figure of the Jazz Age.
£10.80
Floris Books Stories, Poems and Meditations
Book SynopsisAlongside his work with the Camphill movement, Karl König was a prolific writer of stories, poems and meditative verses. This book contains: -- A selection of his creative work -- Verses for specific occasions -- Twenty-four poems -- Four stories for children-- Ten other short stories, including Also a Christmas StoryAn extensive introductory essay explores the cultural environments in which König was writing -- including Vienna in the early twentieth century, and the challenging times leading up to the Second World War -- and discusses the creative development of his literary work.Trade Review'There is much beauty in these meditative verses, and the profound sense for esoteric Christianity and the penetration of Rudolf Steiners anthroposophy sounds through these especially, sometimes in pure intimacy, sometimes loud and clear. I would warmly like to recommended this book for all readers, not just for those familiar with the subject. '-- PerspectivesTable of ContentsI Want the Meaning of Life The Lyrical Work of Karl Konig (Introduction by Alfons Limbrunner) Editor's Note (Richard Steel) Meditative Verses Christmas 1944 Guardians of the Services For the Goetheanum Windows For the Children of Lake Farm For the Friends in America Poems For Alfred Bergel Untitled [1920] Untitled [1921] Whitsun To You, Brother Proletarian! For Albert Steffen's Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life Calling Up Untitled [for Tilla 1938] For You For Me For Turner, the Great Painter To Germany Untitled [probably 1940] For the Camphill Community Prater Pound and Dollar Verse for the Human Being Easter Morning St John's Day Whit Sunday Eye and Ear Calendar Verse [1961] Calendar Verse [1962] The Tourmaline Secret One Last Poem? (Richard Steel) Karl Konig's Last Poem Stories for Children Two Addresses for Children Michaelmas Advent Two Parables Arranged for Eurythmy The Treasure in the Field The Pearl in the Shell Short Stories The Bohemian-Moravian Brotherhood The Monk's Dream The Idle Tongue Brother and Sister Athena Parthenos The Three Days Christmas Past, Present and Future A Highland Story One Morning 1352 bc Also a Christmas Story Karl Konig's Christmas Story (a postscript by Richard Steel) Appendix Notes Bibliography Index
£13.49
Collective Ink Condimental Op, The
Book SynopsisA collection of noir, surreal stories, comicbook asides, hardboiled moments, fantasy, dystopia, sci-fi, snapshots of Japanese culture, and the existentialism of contemporary experimental electronic music. This is Bergen's baptismal short story collection, bringing together recent short stories, never-before-seen older material, new comicbook art, and a range of incisive pop-culture articles written about music and Japan from 1999 to 2013.
£11.99
Anthem Press Norah Hoult’s ‘Poor Women!’: A Critical Edition
Book SynopsisIrish author (Eleanor) Norah Hoult (1898–1984) travelled in prominent literary circles and corresponded actively with some of the leading Irish authors of the early twentieth century, including James Stephens, Brigid Brophy, Sean O’Casey and Sean O’Faolain. Despite her reputation and a forty-four year publishing career, Hoult’s oeuvre remains surprisingly neglected. This edition seeks to rectify that critical oversight by introducing Hoult’s short story collection ‘Poor Women!’ to a new generation of readers. Hoult is often compared to writers such as Kate O’Brien and Edna O’Brien for her representations of the oppressive facets of Catholicism. Less explored is her engagement with emotional paralysis and her detailed representations of widowhood and urban settings, inviting comparison to literary giants James Joyce and Mary Lavin. These similarities offer venues for further study.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Poor Women!; 2. Mary, Pity Women!; 3. Notes on the Text; Appendix
£76.50
Granta Books New American Stories
Book SynopsisThe short story is a barometer for the state and shape of literature. New American Stories presents the boldest, most innovative and most resonant fiction coming out of the American literary scene. Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet and Leaving the Sea, has here curated an anthology that gives the lay of the literary land. From established masters of the form like Don DeLillo and Lydia Davis to neoteric trailblazers such as Rebecca Curtis and Rachel B. Glaser, this collection sees Marcus trying to 'prove that the distinctions we erect between styles and approaches to fiction can be essentially meaningless'. The result is a must-read, must-own volume for readers of literary fiction.
£11.69
Granta Books Prodigals: Stories
Book SynopsisAdrift in lives of possibility and limitation, the flawed, struggling and sympathetic characters of these desperate, eerie stories seek refuge from meaninglessness and boredom in love, art, friendship, drugs, and sex. A journalist is either the guest or captive of a reclusive former tennis star at his mansion in the French hills; a terrible storm forces a man and a woman, who may be his therapist, to flee New York together; the artistic ambitions of a banker are laid bare when he comes under the influence of two strange sisters. Unflinching, funny and profound, Prodigals maps the degradations of contemporary life - from the deification of celebrity, to the impotence of violence, to the psychological debts of privilege, to the loss of grand narratives - with unusual insight, sincerity, and passion. It is a fiercely honest and heartfelt look at what we have become, the comedy of our foibles, and our longing for home.
£8.54
Granta Books Rowing to Eden: Collected Stories
Book SynopsisAmy Bloom has long been regarded as a master of the short story form. Here, her brilliance shines across two decades and more than twenty-five stories. From the bereaved widow who finds unexpected comfort in 'Sleepwalking', to the matchmaking shrink in 'Psychoanalysis Changed My Life'; from the teenage girl furious at her dying mother in 'Hold Tight' to the transgressive lovers of 'The Gates Are Closing'; from the married friends irresistibly drawn to one another in 'William and Clare' to the brave and heartless girl in 'Permafrost' - these are stories brimming with life and grief, erotically charged and beautifully crafted.
£9.99
Granta Books Notes from the Fog
Book Synopsis'I wake up and I have to make the right choice,' he said. Master-stylist Ben Marcus returns with a wonder-cabinet of brain-rearranging stories. From the horrifyingly strange to the deeply touching, each story is a literary masterclass unlikely to leave the reader unchanged. From parent/child relationships thrown agonisingly off kilter, to intensely moving scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers, Ben Marcus is the great chronicler of the contemporary uncanny and the peculiar future. Piece by piece, he takes us apart.
£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
Transworld Publishers Ltd Beneath the Earth
Book SynopsisIn this collection of twelve dark, unerring and surprising short stories, John Boyne explores the extremities of the human condition in all its brilliance and brutality. The secrets we keep and the ways in which they shape us, the impossibility of shared loss, the lengths we will go to in order to protect our families and the distance we will run to protect ourselves.Drawing on a host of enthralling characters – a farmer, a cuckold and a teenager exploring his sexuality; good parents, bad parents, writers and soldiers; a student, a rent boy and a hitman – Boyne examines the hopeful and the damaged without prejudice or judgement. This, his first collection of short stories, is some of John Boyne’s finest writing to date. It includes ‘Rest Day’ which won the 2015 Writing.ie Short Story of the Year award in Ireland.Trade Review"The best of the best ... These revealing stories, unfolding like intimate confessions, will twist your heart." Daily Mail "Boyne offers writing of insight and beauty that elevates this collection to impressive heights indeed, and confirms him as one of Ireland's finest contemporary writers" Observer "Boyne has achieved a careful authenticity ... Beneath the Earth is a satisfying and polished set of short stories with definite longevity and immense global appeal." Irish Independent "[Beneath the Earth] tracks the light and dark of Ireland's past and present ... Boyne is particularly strong on dramatising child and teen sensibilities but here we see how the badness of adults spills over and infects these damaged children." Independent
£9.49
Transworld Publishers Ltd A Snow Garden and Other Stories: From the
Book SynopsisAs read on Radio 4, seven linked stories set in the Christmas holidays - all as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be:A Faraway Smell of Lemon: The School Term has ended. It is almost Christmas but Binny, out last-minute shopping couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings to all men. Ducking out of the rain she finds herself in the sort of shop she would never normally visit.The Marriage Manual: Christmas Eve. Two parents endeavour to construct their son’s Christmas present from a DIY kit and in the process find themselves deconstructing their marriage.Christmas at the Airport: A glitch in the system, travellers stranded and all sorts of lives colliding in the face of a sudden birth...The Boxing Day Ball: Maureen has never been out with the local girls before. Who knew that a disco in the Village Hall could be life-changing?A Snow Garden: Two little boys, dumped with their divorced father for his share of the Christmas holidays and none of them with a clue how to enjoy it. I'll Be Home for Christmas The most famous boy in the world comes home hoping to escape the madness with a normal family Christmas.Trees: As if Christmas wasn't wearing enough, now his elderly parent is asking for a hole in the ground … Father and son break old habits and plant a tree to mark the start of the new year.Trade ReviewFull of bittersweet Christmas moments. A real gem. * Good Housekeeping *These stories are heartwarming. -- Imogen Lycett Green * Daily Mail *Joyce is warm and very funny, and she has a merciless eye for those nightmare moments when weaknesses are exposed and everything is called into question. -- Kate Saunders * The Times *The perfect tonic for tinsel-itis, [A Snow Garden] is laced with quietly devastating observations on love and marriage. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Observer *As sparkling and Christmassy as a selection box. * Sunday Mirror *
£9.49
Transworld Publishers Ltd You Think It, I'll Say It: Ten scorching stories
Book SynopsisA dazzling, smart and razor-sharp story collection by Curtis Sittenfeld, Sunday Times bestselling author of Rodham and American Wife.The theme that unites these stories is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others, and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, they show Sittenfeld's knack for creating real, believable characters that spring off the page, while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit.'DO-OVER', ONE OF THE STORIES IN THIS COLLECTION, WAS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 SUNDAY TIMES EFG SHORT STORY AWARD.
£10.44
Y Lolfa Way Things Are, The - A Collection of Poems and
Book SynopsisAn eclectic collection of poems and short stories based on themes from Greek mythology to Black Holes: they deal with injustice, transience, loss and death. Drawing on inspiration from the work of Shakespeare, Browning, Jung and Euripides, Peter Gordon Williams takes us on a fascinating journey of discovery.
£7.59
Salt Publishing The Pre-War House and Other Stories
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the East Midland’s Book Award 2014The Pre-War House and Other Stories is the debut collection from Alison Moore, whose first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Specsavers National Book Awards 2012.The stories collected here range from her first prize-winning short story (which appeared in a small journal in 2000) to new and recently published work. In between, Moore’s stories have been shortlisted for more than a dozen different awards including the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Lightship Flash Fiction Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize and the Nottingham Short Story Competition. The title story won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes.Trade ReviewThere is an insistent, rhythmic quality to Moore’s writing, and a dark imagination at work. -- Genevieve Fox * Daily Mail *Many of the themes centre around family, relationships, loss, and uncertainty. Some of the stories create a sense of claustrophobia as the characters become trapped in situations beyond their control. Each piece has its own unique style but the thread weaving through the collection is an intangible sense of anticipation. It is a delicious read and, having read some of the stories a few times, it is something I will keep going back to. A remarkable debut collection which comes highly recommended. -- F.C. MalbyThe level of accomplishment on display in this bleak narrative is remarkable. Moore is not, however, a beginner. She has been publishing short stories since 2000, and that apprenticeship shaped her first novel. Now she has published a collection of her stories, and it turns out to be just as uncompromising and unsettling as The Lighthouse ... Moore's distinctive voice commands exceptional power. -- Dinah Birch * The Guardian *[A]lmost every story works beautifully and Moore is clearly a master of the short form writing. They are atmospheric, often sad and dark, and weighed down my memory. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the final story with gives the collection its title. This is a longer piece than most of the others, as a daughter sells the family home which stirs memories of a surprising life within the four, pre-war walls of the house. * The Bookbag *Evocative and sinister, it builds relentlessly to its inevitable unwanted climax. Impressive and memorable. -- Merric Davidson * The New Writer *It should come as no surprise that The Pre-War House is a controlled and powerful piece of prose fiction, coming as it does from an author whose debut novel features on the recently released Man Booker 2012 [shortlist]. -- Dan PowellAn understated series of stories by Moore—whose first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize—captures facets of loss and obligation. Set in empty homes, isolated fortresses, and seaside cottages, these stories use physical spaces as echo chambers of memory—of what once was or what might have been. In and out of them, women and girls (plus two male protagonists) skirt life's darkest forces, particularly the weight of birth, death, and infidelity. In "Seclusion," Maureen, once a desired young woman, contends with onslaughts of forgetfulness and fearful isolation—until she attempts to seize control by stealing a reminder of her past in her daughter's old bedroom. "Late" finds a middle-aged woman queasily rushing to work after a cocktail-fueled evening with her deadbeat husband, taking stock of her marriage before returning that evening to a house that has been irrevocably changed. "Humming and Pinging" poignantly explores the sadness of infidelity from a child's perspective, while the meditative title story, which features a woman packing up her family home, shows that beneath the well-manicured lawns and tar soap-scented judgments of her childhood, more complicated secrets lurk. There's a sense of unmet expectations inherent in these stories—a version of the imagined past or present that juts up against reality, creating a quiet sense of sadness that dogs these characters. As they navigate their lives, Moore slowly unearths their essential fears, regrets, and unmet desires, producing a subdued and beautiful feeling of yearning that leaves the reader ruminating long after the final page. A masterful collection. * Kirkus Reviews *Table of Contents Acknowledgements When the Door Closed, It Was Dark Humming and Pinging The Egg Overnight Stop Glory Hole Nurture Seclusion Sleeping Under the Stars Jetsam Monsoon Puddles It Has Happened Before The Yacht Man The Machines Wink Wink If There’s Anything Left Static Sometimes You Think You Are Alone A Small Window The Smell of the Slaughterhouse Helicopter Jean Small Animals Trees in the Tarmac Late The Pre-War House
£8.99
Salt Publishing More Sawn-Off Tales
Book SynopsisIn stories that are laugh out loud funny, cringingly weird and desperately sad., Gaffney introduces the possibility of momentary actions that change everything; a swimming man sees a hundred glass eyes at the bottom of a river; a broken vase causes a couple to re-examine their relationship with the universe; a zoo with only three animals makes a man reconsider his relationship to his surrounding; and a comedian decides to expresses himself through the medium of smell. Relationships begin, stutter, then crash to earth, each mundane transaction peeling away the everyday to reveal a canyon of emotion. Gaffney’s characters are awkward, often disconnected, yet they are also profoundly sympathetic. With great empathy and generosity he reveals the idiosyncrasies, vulnerability, yearning, and twisted systems that governs our lives. In More Sawn-off Tales David Gaffney creates a deliriously lonely, yet lovely universe where strangers hand you their watch and an estranged couple try to communicate through paint colour. An expert miniaturist with the ability to stuff an elephant inside a flea without the insect noticing, Gaffney is like David Shrigley meets Curb Your Enthusiasm.Trade ReviewLoaded with potent charges, insidious and cumulative in their effects, in Gaffney’s fiction thoughts take physical form, and the material world has a surreal vitality. The stories are sometimes haunting, and sometimes comic. * Times Literary Supplement *Evanescent moments of connection and happiness. One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others. -- Nicholas Clee * The Guardian *Utterly brilliant. Hilariously demented and wonderfully succinct. David Gaffney’s Sawn-Off Tales are little McNuggets of pure gold. This is writing at its best. -- Graham RawleMore Sawn-Off Tales is rich with phrases which will stick in the reader’s memory (‘I keep a ball of tissue under my armpit and drop shreds of it into her food to keep her loyal’) and ideas which are ripe for expansion into longer stories, such as the psychiatrists who organise arts activities for their manic patients so that they can burgle their houses. * Workshy Fop *Bleached Lichen Number Four is one of the most heart-wrenching stories of the collection, and depicts a man who attempts to communicate to his ex-girlfriend through the colour of her favourite paint. It, like many others in this fantastic collection, is a clever and poignant exploration of what it takes to be connected to another.With More Sawn Off Tales, Gaffney has created very short stories that offer full, vivid and complete worlds for the reader to inhabit, and once inside they won’t want to leave. -- Kylie Grant * The List *In More Sawn-Off Tales Gaffney demonstrates his mastery over flash fiction, as he evokes sadness and humour in equal measure through the often tragic but fully formed characters in 70-plus stories. * The Big Issue *Table of Contents Acknowledgements Passing Place Nerves Hidden Obvious Typical It Happens Inside Oasis Leisure Lounge Bleached Lichen Number Four The Clever People Who Can’t Do Anything Useful Mo’s Feet The Zoo With Three Animals Acceptable for Men to Like Something Happened Here Reekers Functional Market Area More Men Will Come The Homes of Others It’s All in Storage Everything’s West of Something The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head The Big Pub The Joke About Todd Pokato Lifting and Handling the Truth The Building With the Hole The Proper Care of Surfaces The Receipt The Smell Comedian Get the Ball and Give It to Bobby Moore The Gypsy in Me New Audiences The Power of Millions Boy You Turn Me It Doesn’t Really Matter If Things Die Out Taped Over Thrill Me Slowly The Listed Bridge The Good Machines Happy Birthday, Hee Hee The Scientific Explanation for Faraway Eyes Can You Feel the Waves? Let’s See What Rachel’s Been Up To Nothing Can Hurt Me Now Nineteen-Eighties Cavalier The Man Who Was Always There But Never Said Anything Blood in Flight Lag Phase Buy Yourself a Cheap Tray Skewness For The Lady Other People’s Worlds Inches From What You Want Uncle Leonard The Bad Psychiatrists This Is Your Brain On Drugs Doll Parts The Woman With the Four Planks of Wood Loss Function The Bear’s Head Like a Town The Mousemats Say Innovate Or Die Normal Hours Private View Dip Finish DJ Stinger and the Ghost Alpcaca Effective Calming Measures How to Get Around in the Sky As If You Are There Talking to the Budgerigar The Happy Spore The Leaves Are Really Something Else The Periphery is Everywhere The Underpass Two Columns Eat Less Pastry A Dress Code For Modern Musicians
£9.49
Salt Publishing Best British Short Stories 2017
Book SynopsisThe nation’s favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its seventh year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This critically acclaimed series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume.Featuring stories by Jay Barnett, Peter Bradshaw, Rosalind Brown, Krishan Coupland, Claire Dean, Niven Govinden, Françoise Harvey, Andrew Michael Hurley, Daisy Johnson, James Kelman, Giselle Leeb, Courttia Newland, Vesna Main, Eliot North, Irenosen Okojie, Laura Pocock, David Rose, Deirdre Shanahan, Sophie Wellstood and Lara Williams.Trade ReviewFor those new to short stories, the quality and breadth of what is being showcased here, will not easily be bettered. Moreover, the experiential difference that contemporary short stories offer, when compared to novel reading – the unique register they can strike – makes this collection all the more valuable. * Bookmunch *Virtually every story in Best British Short Stories 2017 circles around something unspoken. This is not officially the theme of the collection, but it’s easy to read these pieces in dialogue with one another, as they explore what it means to be unspeakable. -- Eleanor Franzén * Litro *I suspect that Nicholas Royle, editor of Best British Short Stories 2017, was mindful that he not only had to choose the “best” stories of the year, but also to create a book with some variety that would appeal to as many readers as possible. Consequently, of the twenty stories he chose, some had to be simple and straightforward, with clear, transparent prose and enough background explanatory context to be easily accessible to the reader, while others were inevitably elliptical and puzzling, drawing attention to the language itself, experimenting with form, and refusing to help the reader understand the significance of the story. -- Charles May * Reading the Short Story *For those new to short stories, the quality and breadth of what is being showcased here, will not easily be bettered. Moreover, the experiential difference that contemporary short stories offer, when compared to novel reading – the unique register they can strike – makes this collection all the more valuable. -- Tamim Sadikali * Bookmunch *Table of Contents Nicholas Royle – Introduction Courttia Newland – Reversible Rosalind Brown – General Impression of Size and Shape Giselle Leeb – As You Follow Jay Barnett – Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Andrew Michael Hurley – While the Nightjar Sleeps Krishan Coupland – The Sea in Me Vesna Main – Safe Sophie Wellstood – The First Hard Rain Françoise Harvey – Never Thought He’d Go Peter Bradshaw – Reunion Laura Pocock – The Dark Instruments Irenosen Okojie – Filamo Lara Williams – Treats Deirdre Shanahan – The Wind Calling David Rose – Ariel Claire Dean – Is-and Eliot North – This Skin Doesn’t Fit Me Any More James Kelman – Words and Things to Sip Niven Govinden – Waves Daisy Johnson – Language Contributors’ Biographies Acknowledgements
£9.49
Salt Publishing Temptation: A User’s Guide
Book SynopsisLush Library Recommends: Anna James’ Books for 2018Variations and fugue on the theme of obsessionVesna Main disturbs our self-image as educated, reasonable and ironic people who read modernist fiction. She disturbs us because we recognise ourselves in her obsessive and bloody-minded characters as they are pushed to the extreme. But they are only too human and seek love, just like us.This is a collection of twenty short stories of different lengths and written in a variety of styles. Main writes about characters whose passion borders on obsession and who are seeking love and companionship but are doomed to remain alone, with their sense of personal failure as the only company.Trade ReviewIn the opening pages of Vesna Main’s short story collection we meet two women – both objects of the male gaze but under very different circumstances. The first story references EastEnders, the second the Salon des Refuses, challenging the reader’s moral perception and demonstrating the nuances of consent. Themes like these emerge throughout the otherwise disconnected 20 stories in the Croatian author’s collection. They are introduced with a quote by Alberto Manguel from his novel All Men Are Liars: “It is strange that no reader ever understood that my only subject is love.” The desire to be loved runs throughout Temptation, but there are no happily-everafters here. -- Antonia Charlesworth * Big Issue in the North *In these beautifully observed stories, Main deftly explores love’s myriad forms. -- Emily Rhodes * The Spectator *Lush Library Recommends: Anna James’ Books for 2018 Another collection of short stories, this one from Croatian writer Main, these look at ideas of loneliness, passion and obsession and the sometimes grey areas between them. In these experimental stories of different lengths and styles, her characters include a prostitute turned murderer, a self-destructive book collection and a perfectionist dinner party hostess. -- Anna JamesMain is excellent at building suspense, which is very difficult to achieve effectively in a short story. The successful development and maintenance of suspense is the difference between plucking delicately on a string to set up a subtle, subliminal vibration of psychological discomfort, rather than sawing on it to create a jarring noise which just irritates. Main is a writer who works subliminal for all it’s worth. -- Elaine Aldred * Strange Alliances *Main’s stories are vivid, strange, thrillingly brief and filled with sex, violence and the banal horror of daily life. They are unusual tales filled with often unlikeable characters. Temptation is for you if you like witty, sharp dialogue, experimental modernist fiction and stories which speak to the darkest corner of ourselves. -- Megan Kenny * Disclaimer Magazine *
£8.54
Salt Publishing The South Westerlies
Book SynopsisThe South Westerlies is an attempt to know place (Gower) through the creation of a collection of short stories. Place is not a cosmetic backdrop, but an affecting agent in the lives of a wide cast of fictional characters. The collection is unified by the tone of the prevalent dank south-westerly wind that blows across the peninsula, the UK’s first designated area of outstanding natural beauty. However, the author chooses to let her gaze fall on the downsides of a much vaunted tourism destination and a place that is too beautiful, perhaps, for its own good.Trade ReviewSimilarly, Jane Fraser maps out the edge of north Gower in this supremely confident debut collection with its “farmhouses limewashed in the vernacular style,” its persistent grey rains and the dominant southwesterly winds which bonsai the hedgerow trees and equally shape the stubborn characters who work the land hereabouts. So many stories are shored up by fine, nuanced landscape-writing such as “Just in Case” which presents the reader with the burrows “brushed with the burnished bronze of sunrise and the conical dunes, a lunar landscape, sharply defined and stark with shadow that will lift with the rising sun.” Lovely stuff, and there’s lots of it but always balanced by shadow, the darkness seeping in like damp. -- Jon Gower * Nation Cymru *One of those books that arrives like a surprise, unexpected, a bolt from the blue, and knocks you back on your heels with the pleasure of reading it. A terrific debut short story collection. * Bookmunch *4/4 Fraser is a consummate short story writer. Each story conveys an aspect of life on the Gower; they are succinctly told, not a word wasted, and they are emotionally charged. They are simple tales beautifully told, sometimes utilising the lyrical Welsh language, they are layered and nuanced. Small moments that somehow make a vast landscape of human experience. This feels like a story from the heart, something of the place and people where Jane Fraser lives is conveyed to the reader. -- Paul Burke * NB Magazine *Fraser’s collection swells and falls with the tide, offering very human insights into many different aspects of untold – but very much lived – narratives. Every reader will find truth at least somewhere in these stories, though all share the same rocky piece of coastal Wales. The tales cycle through failing marriages, tragic loss, lifetimes of quiet suffering and pivotal moments for both the young and the old. -- Kathryn Tann * Wales Arts Review *Fraser’s debut, The South Westerlies, a collection of 18 short stories set mostly in and around Gower, South Wales, is rife and woven with careful detail and design. I could ramble and try to find a multitude of words to describe it, but ultimately, the collection is a joy to read for all those who deeply love intricate prose. A writer who understands their setting so well – as Fraser does of Gower – each story is acute in its texture. -- Emily Harrison * Storgy *
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Salt Publishing Like Fado: And Other Stories
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Edge Hill PrizeLike Fado consists of thirteen individual stories that culminate in the extended novella-like story, ‘Whitethorn’. Each story takes us into the lived experience and psychological dilemmas of its characters, dissolving certitude in favour of richly ambivalent and suggestive endings as storylines merge and diverge, enriching each other through their narrative resonance. The natural world is brought to life in vivid detail in locations that range from the North-West of England to Europe and Africa, whilst the interior lives of characters form the dramatic locus of each piece, rendered in language that is precise, lyrical and evocative.Trade ReviewGraham Mort’s latest short story collection, Like Fado, is a wonderfully engaging read. The thirteen stories are standalones, but they share thematic and textual traits that bind them into a single whole. -- Paul Taylor-McCartney * Everybody's Reviewing *This is strong and emotive writing . . . fluid and impressive, conveying thoughts with honesty -- Jackie Law * Neverimitate *Set in all parts of the world, all of the stories have richly formed characters and there is enough detail of each of them for you to be able to grasp their backstory as they are thrust deep into the plot. They feel like real people too, not wildly implausible characters, doing real, mundane things and experiencing the joys and pains of life. -- Paul Cheney * Halfman, Halfbook *As I work my way through the pages, I find myself asking whether I am reading a life experience and if not, how on earth did the writer’s mind bring such imagery and paint them with words on the page ... Lockdown may well be releasing its hold on our lives but please do not give up on reading and buy yourself a copy. -- SuAndi * Black Arts Alliance Newsletter *
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Salt Publishing Best British Short Stories 2021
Book SynopsisThe nation’s favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its eleventh year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or, more accurately, by its title. This critically acclaimed series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume.This new anthology includes stories by Julia Armfield, A.J. Ashworth, Iphgenia Baal, Emma Bolland, Tom Bromley, Gary Budden, Jen Calleja, Robert Dewa, John Foxx, Josephine Galvin, Uschi Gatward, Meave Haughey, Hilaire, Alice Jolly, Isha Karki, Yasmine Lever, Simon Okotie, Mel Pryor, Douglas Thompson and Matthew Turner.
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Salt Publishing Stewkey Blues: Stories
Book SynopsisFiction Category Winner in the 2022 East Anglian Book AwardsSome of the characters in Stewkey Blues have lived in Norfolk all their lives. Others are short-term residents or passage migrants. Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.Trade ReviewFamed though it is for its flatness, Norfolk is a county of manifold aspects, many of which are captured in these sharp, subtle new stories by native son DJ Taylor. They all emerged from 2020’s lockdown, and together delineate the region’s geographical and social range, occasionally squinting back in time and tuning in to mythical echoes. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Observer *The wide variety of experiences explored keeps this collection fresh and of interest. The author writes with elan as he excavates the core of the human condition. The reader is left hoping that Norfolk avoids the encroaching homogeny of modern expansionism. Each story provides a highly enjoyable and still lingering read. -- Jackie Law * neverimitate *There's urban ennui and dead-end lives in the suburbs of Norwich, loneliness in a caravan park outside Thetford; social codes traduced in a village near Shopham; and wild shotgun-toting lawlessness in the wilds of Breckland. Taylor has a gimlet eye for the telling detail and enjoys the oddity of Norfolk's eccentrics, those born and bred among its flat farmlands, and those attracted to the place like iron filings to a magnet. -- Siobham Murphy * The Times *DJ Taylor’s Stewkey Blues is set not only in the (culturally and geographically) different territory of Norfolk, but in a different time too. Several of his tales are set in the 20th century and his tone and points of reference across the collection are redolent of this era. His characters namecheck The Wind in the Willows and Top of the Pops, PG Wodehouse and the Benny Hill Show. People dating are ‘walking out’ together; the new Bill Bryson is ‘jolly good’. The collection’s realm is the provincial domestic: the middle managers, shop owners, minor public school boys and lesser gentry of Norfolk fret over the ‘damp-course’ and bleeding the radiators, unspoken social mores and petty social interactions. -- Melanie White * Literary Review *The stories are subtly composed and elegantly written. The narrative voice is attractively wry, and particularly acute in its choice of telling detail. Its air of savouring diffidence, moreover, is curiously reminiscent of Anthony Powell, particularly in our sense that behaviour is being observed far more than judged. No one should be deterred by the Norfolk setting, for only in the most literal sense is this provincial fiction. After Stewkey Blues, I for one would happily read Taylor about anywhere: Swaffham and Snoring (Little or Great), to be sure, but also Timbuktu. -- Andrew Rosenheim * Spectator *
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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 *
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Salt Publishing Connective Tissue
Book SynopsisThis collection of short fiction aims to define the sometimes indefinable and to give voice to those struggling to make sense of what life throws at them. There are those who travel in a continuous loop on London’s underground and those who dance at night with the departed. A woman confronts herself in a bedroom mirror after decades of denial and a widow finds comfort in an osteopath’s consulting room. And then there is a strange creature who falls to earth; dreams and portents; crows and folklore, and much more.The stories are tragic and comi-tragic, but all reveal the strength and complexity of the human spirit. They bring poignant insights on grief, loss and longing and the depths and strangeness of the human psyche and how we manage to survive and just about cope.Trade ReviewConnective Tissue is a mature, polished collection that evolves from its predecessor in pleasing and sometimes surprising ways. It will delight Fraser’s admirers and win her new fans. As a plus, it comes in a cute pocket format that makes it extra desirable. * Nation.Cymru *Sinew, bone, and blood unite each narrative, like the widow whose ache for touch leads her to the massage table; in the corner of the consulting room is a yellowing human skeleton, raising questions about the body it inhabited, an echo of loneliness. -- Ruth McKee * The Irish Times *
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Salt Publishing Candescent Blooms
Book SynopsisShortlisted for Best Collection in the British Fantasy Awards 2023Candescent Blooms is a collection of twelve short stories which form fictionalised biographies of mostly Golden Era Hollywood actors who suffered untimely deaths. From Olive Thomas in 1920 through to Grace Kelly in 1982, these pieces utilise facts, fiction, gossip, movies and unreliable memories to examine the life of each individual character set against a Hollywood background of hope and corruption, opportunity and reality.Trade Review★★★★★ Andrew Hook’s book is a gothic treat. I only wish he’d investigated and imagined the fast exit of Mike Todd, one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, whose private plane blew up over New Mexico; or the drowning – homicide or otherwise – of Natalie Wood; or the fate of Gig Young, who shot his wife and then himself in Manhattan. Perhaps there will be a sequel, or a continuation. In particular, I much admired the heightened poetic style, which wholly fits the subject-matter. We are told about “Benny Goodman’s treacle-swing”; there are Chandleresque phrases such as someone or other emitting “a soft bubble of hostility”; and Hook is capable of epigrams worthy of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, eg, “Guilt would be bearable, but innocence corrupts the soul.” Marvellous. -- Roger Lewis * The Telegraph *
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Salt Publishing The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories
Book SynopsisHowell’s much-celebrated stories interweave elements of the commonplace with darkness, subterfuge and sheer weirdness, all realised with natural narrative flair. In this striking new collection, we see Howell explore a wide range of cultures, including Hawaii, Portugal and Japan, alongside these are period tales, and sinister and sexual encounters, all related with a cool eye for our desires and obsessions.Trade ReviewBrian Howell’s latest collection of short stories, The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories (Salt, 2022), is wonderfully weird. What can be done in a short story, which is much harder to sustain over the length of an entire novel, is to explore feelings and situations that are off-kilter, at odds with the norm. These are narratives that push the boundaries of acceptance and conjure feelings of uneasiness, sometimes even repulsion, but that also challenge views on how people choose, or are forced, to live. Bearing in mind these elements, I feel The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories, although not for everyone, is not only wonderfully weird, but also weirdly wonderful. -- Laura Besley * Everybody’s Reviewing *
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Salt Publishing Mammals, I Think We Are Called
Book SynopsisLonglisted for The Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2023Ambitious and playful, darkly humorous and imaginative, these strikingly original stories move effortlessly between the realistic and the fantastical, as their outsider characters explore what it’s like to be human in the twenty-first century. Whether about our relationship with the environment and animals, technology, social media, loneliness, or the enormity of time, they reflect the complexities of being alive. Beautifully written and compelling, you won’t read anything else like them.Trade ReviewI've been waiting for a collection of Giselle Leeb's short stories for a few years, and it's just as wonderful as I'd hoped! With wry dark humour and a boundless and inventive imagination, Leeb makes us look at the familiar with fresh eyes, taking us out of our everyday realities to explore everything that makes us human or non-human. From the weatherman in the opening story onwards, you won't want to put this book down, but you will make yourself because you don't want it to end. Everything that makes a great short story is here. -- Tania HershmanIt is both thought-provoking and entertaining, perhaps because of the author’s constant focus on building a sense of atmosphere … A collection that manages to balance heavy topics, while also leaving the reader with a sense of hope, Leeb hits a balance … Skillfully ambiguous, dark and also optimistic, Mammals I Think We Are Called is a wonderful contribution to the local literary world. -- Lizzy O’Riordan * Leftlion *These stories are startlingly weird, blackly hilarious, raw and dreamlike. The common thread I think is a breathtakingly of-this-moment sense of alienation – from the natural world, from each other, from a sense of what's true and what's deception. But there's always a shred of hope somewhere in among the disaffection and pain, and that's what pulls me through the moments of horror … I was surprised by the range and breadth of these stories, and in particular was amazed at the poise of "The Goldfinch is Fine", in which a weatherman gradually loses his mind over an irrational, then increasingly certain terror of rising seas, “Hooked”, in which collective, hallucinatory dreams reunite an isolated city, and “Barleycorn”, in which a mysterious plague of spontaneous hair growth coincides with a hunt for a serial killer. These are challenging stories that invite the reader to engage in unexpected depth. -- Michael DeLucaThese eighteen short stories are fantastically imaginative and cover a wide range of themes including identity, psychology, and the environment. There is humour and darkness, joy and sorrow, realism and the Fantastick. There's extreme weather, toy apes coming to life, hauntings, cyborgs, and even cryogenics. Wide-ranging in theme and style, they were a delight. -- Rupert Dastur
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Salt Publishing Eastmouth and Other Stories
Book SynopsisAlison Moore’s debut collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories, gathered together stories written prior to the publication of her first novel.‘The tales collected in The Pre-War House… pick at psychological scabs in a register both wistful and brutal.’ —Anthony Cummins, The Times Literary Supplement‘Moore’s writing is surprising and exact and culminates in the title story, the novella which brings the collection to a powerful crescendo’ —The Arkansas International‘just as uncompromising and unsettling as The Lighthouse… Moore’s distinctive voice commands exceptional power’ —Dinah Birch, The GuardianEastmouth and Other Stories is her second collection, featuring stories published in the subsequent decade, including stories that have appeared in Best British Short Stories, Best British Horror and Best New Horror, as well as new, unpublished work.Trade ReviewAn eminently satisfying read from a master storyteller with a deliciously chilling imagination. Perfect for curling up with as the nights draw in – if you dare. -- Jackie Law * neverimitate *Alison Moore's sinister stories inhabit a familiar territory of domestic disturbance, where grey seaside towns and chilly old houses are the everyday settings for events which seethe with quiet unease. -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *
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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
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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 *
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Salt Publishing The Mellow Madam and Other Stories
Book Synopsis
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Salt Publishing Best British Short Stories 2023
Book SynopsisInspired by Giles Gordon and David Hughes’s Best Short Stories series, which ran to ten volumes between 1986 and 1995, Best British Short Stories this year reaches its thirteenth volume.Best British Short Stories 2023 showcases an excellent and varied selection of stories, by British writers, first published during 2022 in magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks and online.This new anthology contains stories by Alinah Azadeh, David Bevan, AK Blakemore, Gabriel Flynn, Jim Gibson, Lydia Gill, Miles Greenwood, Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Philip Jennings, Sharon Kivland, Alison Moore, Georgina Parfitt, Gareth E Rees, Leone Ross, John Saul, DJ Taylor, Briony Thompson, Matthew Turner, Mark Valentine and David Wheldon.
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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.
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Salt Publishing Concrete Fields
Book SynopsisThe countryside – what is it for? A paradise on earth where you can relax and get creative? Or an outdoor wool factory where every other house is an Airbnb and there are fewer trees than Camden. In his new collection of short stories David Gaffney explores the theme of town versus country through a number of different lenses, including his own experience of being brought up in west Cumbria then moving to Manchester. A creative residency on the coast of Scotland becomes weirder and weirder in “The Retreat”; ‘I’ve always had the feeling that the countryside has something against me and that one day it will take its revenge.’ In “The Table”, a recluse in Penrith uses mid-century furniture to lure city dwellers into a world of ‘depressed farmers with shotguns and bottomless pits of slurry that will swallow you so hard you'll never be seen again. And in “The Garages” the pressure of city living forces a man to become oddly obsessed with empty spaces. Often funny, often haunting, often profound, Gaffney uses dark humour and surreal characters to demonstrate a deep understanding of how places, urban or rural, can shape, influence and sometimes distort our lives. ‘People who like the countryside tend to believe in things that aren’t really there,’ says a character in “The Country Pub”. These are indeed stories about things that aren’t really there, and this is why they resonate with you long after you have stopped reading.
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Salt Publishing Mrs Pulaska and Other Stories
Book SynopsisWith this new collection the acclaimed novelist Christopher Burns proves his mastery of the short story form. His intelligent but conflicted characters face their decisive moments across wide ranges of time and place, each action reshaping their futures and redefining their pasts. Interplaying with these choices are locations that underpin and define each story, such as a repository of unstable nitrate film, a desert outcrop where a daughter vanished, a winter barn in which a silent refugee works without explanation, and a Parisian suicide that echoes down far more than a century.In these stories, landscape itself can be a determinant, as essential to the narrative as the characters that walk into a draining reservoir, a Neolithic cave, or a remote Greek church. For these are driven people haunted or determined, alert or unaware, lovers or doubters, saviours or perpetrators.Several of these stories have previously appeared in publications as diverse as Les Temps Modernes, Granta Short
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Salt Publishing The Anechoic Chamber
Book SynopsisAn anechoic chamber is a soundproofed room with no echo. The profound silence it produces is disturbing enough. But listen carefully and you'll hear something worse In this new collection of uncanny short stories, award-winning author Will Wiles finds sinister creatures and subtle nightmares in mundane modern environments and bureaucracy. A cursed NHS file brings doom to whoever handles it. A memory-foam mattress breaks down the walls of sleep. A marketing executive for a property developer turns to the occult. And horror seeps from the most unexpected places: eBay purchases, boxes of holiday photographs, and the hidden corners of the smart TV menu. While mostly modern in setting, this is a collection steeped in the tradition of the weird tale and the ghost story, and includes homages to the greats of the previous century: a doomed Edwardian antiquarian is drawn into a murderous plot involving a Roman mosaic, and river boatmen uncover eldritch terror in a deserted mining town. You'll never look at some things the same way again.
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