Short stories
Paul Dry Books, Inc Where Somebody Waits
Book SynopsisThis book instantly transports you to small-town Arkansas over a half-century ago -- a world of catfish and bourbon-and-Coke; of tent revival meetings and less boisterous discussions about heaven and hell; of finding love or just dreaming about it. A neighbourly community, but with its share of intrigues. And instantly you are under the spell of Ruby Davidson, the magnetic central character of "Where Somebody Waits". Self-assured, kind, always willing to take a stand for people less fortunate, at "five foot ten inches, with masses of red hair and a pompadour that increases her stature to six feet", she''s also strikingly beautiful. Ruby loves her husband, adores her nephews and nieces, and more or less dutifully respects the tightly knit Jewish family into which she has married. Her life is filled with triumphs and failings, joy and sadness, lived with all possible grace, and told in a spirit of admirable and honest reflection. A full life, yes, but not an untroubled one, because Ruby also still loves her high-school sweetheart. How she comes to terms with this old, old conundrum and how it affects the lives of everyone around her shape the heart of Where Somebody Waits. Margaret Kaufman has written five books of poetry. A resident of Kentfield, California, she leads poetry workshops, teaches at the From Institute at the University of San Francisco, and edits both fiction and poetry. This is Kaufman''s first book of fiction.
£15.29
Paul Dry Books, Inc Curious Affairs
Book SynopsisBitter, joyful, worn down, filled with wonder, acutely self-aware, and often deeply in need of perspectivesuch are the women at the center of Mary Jane Myers'' compelling debut short story collection. Lonely and stuck in lives that have begun to feel stale, these ordinary womenadministrative assistants, typists, accountantsawake unto themselves after brushes with the surreal. While light and playful in tone, the stories reflect the hollowness and toxicity that can come from ascribing too strictly to the popularly held values of our contemporary society and the confusion caused by wobbly religious beliefs in a secular world. Louise, an unassuming tourist, is accosted in a museum in Florence by the voice of Galileos finger bone promising to grant her greatest wish in return for a simple favor. Diane narrowly escapes a toxic relationship and sinks into a depression when she becomes convinced the gods are speaking to her through a stone from the lava fields of Maui. Helen, who has always wanted someone with whom to appreciate classical music, ends up playing host to Franz Schubert, when she meets the young composer wandering in the woods near her home in the Santa Monica Mountains. Witty, revelatory―and at times chilling―Curious Affairs allows us to see the strangeness in the ordinary.
£16.19
Galaxy Press Man-Killers of the Air
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£16.69
Galaxy Press The Dive Bomber
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£16.69
Galaxy Press The Carnival of Death: A Case of Killer Drugs and
Book SynopsisIn the movie The Big Sleep, Bogart as Philip Marlowe follows a trail of decadence and murder on the dark side of L.A. But even the seamy underside of the city of angels pales in comparison to the freak show found by undercover U.S. narcotics agent Bob Clark . . . in The Carnival of Death. Clark?s investigation begins with cocaine and leads to cold-blooded murder?the discovery of one, and then another, headless corpse. Who is behind the slaughter? Are the killings tied to the drug traffic? Or is a deeper, darker, and even more sinister conspiracy unfolding in the carnival? There are plenty of distractions?bright lights and beautiful girls?but Clark better find the murderers of the midway fast. Because the next head that rolls could very well be his own.In 1934, while living in New York, the heart of the publishing industry, Hubbard struck up a friendship with the city?s medical examiner?a relationship that started his education in undetectable crime and provided him with authoritative clinical background for his detective stories. Also includes the mystery The Death Flyer, in which a man and woman find themselves trapped on a ghost train and bound for a deadly crash . . . unless they can find a way to derail fate and cheat death?on the fly. Experience the spinning wheels, the pleasure-seeking crowds and the screams of horror as the audio version of The Carnival of Death takes you on a roller-coaster ride of suspense. ?Roars to life.? ?Library Journal
£16.55
Galaxy Press Gun Boss of Tumbleweed
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£10.44
Galaxy Press Hurricane
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£16.69
Galaxy Press The Dive Bomber: A High-flying Adventure of Love
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£10.44
Galaxy Press Greed
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£10.44
Galaxy Press Gun Boss of Tumbleweed
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£16.69
Galaxy Press Devil's Manhunt
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£16.55
Galaxy Press Death Waits at Sundown: A Wild West Showdown
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£10.44
Night Shade Books Pump Six and Other Stories
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£999.99
Galaxy Press Writers of the Future Volume 37
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£13.46
Hackett Publishing Co, Inc Exemplary Novellas
Book Synopsis"Michael Harney's translation of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares is the most authoritative and accurate rendering of Cervantes's classic tales to date and promises to be the translation against which future translations will be measured. Harney skillfully portrays the nuanced and complex world of the Exemplary Novellas in a translation that is faithful to the letter and spirit of the original. An erudite and informative Introduction presents a general overview of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, the life of Cervantes, and a detailed analysis of the Exemplary Novellas. Before each story, Harney provides a brief synopsis, an analysis of the novella’s themes, motifs, and generic affinities, and a bibliography for further reading. In addition, numerous footnotes complement the background information Harney provides in the Introduction and prior to each novella." —Michael J. McGrath, Georgia Southern UniversityTrade Review"Harney maintains the richness of language and the narrative flavor of the assortment of tales, admirable in their range and power of allusion. Cervantes captures much of the spirit of his age, and Harney's eminently readable translation conveys the essence of the original material. The general Introduction and brief commentaries on each text are clear and useful, as are the generous notes that students and instructors should appreciate." —Edward H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University
£62.04
Simon & Schuster Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories
Book SynopsisAn NPR Best Book of 2023 A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps. Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.
£15.29
Simon & Schuster Oddbody
Book Synopsis';Full of heart and blood, this impressive, wildly imaginative collection heralds the arrival of a compelling new voice in speculative fiction.' Gabino Iglesias, The New York Times ';This is weird girl fiction at its finest.' Lucy Rose ';Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read.' Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Striking, visceral, and brutally honest, Rose Keating's Oddbody is a captivating short story collection that delves into the weirdness of bodies and of existence itself through the voices of social outsiders and outcasts.In her debut collection, Rose Keating takes you on a bold journey through the intricacies of sex, shame, and womanhood. With ten enchanting short stories, she crafts an emotional masterpiece that challenges us to reflect on the movement and needs of our bodies. Strange yet utterly mesmerizing, Oddbody is a provocative exploration that feels both surprising and sincerely authentic. In ';Oddbody,' a woman finds herself navigating a codependent relationship with a ghost, while ';Squirm' portrays a daughter tending to her father as he devours himself from the inside out. ';Pineapple' introduces us to a woman who opts to have feather wings surgically attached to her back. In ';Eggshells,' a waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. Each narrative in this collection is immersive, bizarre, and deeply empathetic, shining a light on women who dare to defy societal norms and invite you to question the conventions and milestones that determine success.
£15.29
Planet Logic Press The Clock Tower and Other Stories
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£12.82
Cormorant Books,Canada Blue River and Red Earth
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£9.49
Heritage House Publishing Co Ltd Campfire Stories from Coast to Coast
Book SynopsisA delightfully frightful collection of spooky stories set across Canada, appropriate for all ages and perfect for reading aloud around the campfire.In this spine-chilling companion to Campfire Stories of Western Canada and Ghostly Campfire Stories of Western Canada, Barbara Smith takes readers on a cross-country trip of sinister spirits, urban myths, haunted houses, ghostly shipwrecks, and other unexplained phenomena, just in time for camping season. With over forty hair-raising tales set in every province and territory, Campfire Stories from Coast to Coast combines fact and legend, with truly terrifying results. From an ancient spirit that haunts a Cape Breton lake to a Manitoba hitchhiker who encounters a UFO to a Tofino surfer who receives a fateful warning from a stranger, this collection is a celebration of all things creepy and Canadian. Ideal for camping trips, slumber parties, or lonely nights when you just want to scare yourself silly, Campfire Stories from Coast to Coast is sure to become a family favourite.
£18.89
University of Alberta Press Rising Abruptly: Stories
Book SynopsisGisèle Villeneuve’s short stories test the elastic pull between passion and terror. For inspiration, Villeneuve turned to her personal history to examine what lures urban dwellers outdoors, to test themselves against peaks and valleys. Using the overarching metaphor of mountain climbing, she plays with form, language, and narrative to reveal our fears, our loves, our passions. Rising Abruptly is a perfect companion for anyone who likes to travel, loves a climber, or simply glories in the allure of the mountains. "Even the unassuming day trips deliver their moments. The whiteouts. The going off route. Scrambling back down on rock coated with verglas. Neither of us liking it one bit, but resolutely descending. Focusing on the moment that could change everything with one misstep. The four-hour scramble that begins on a sunny summer morning, stretching into the night to a seventeen-hour epic. There are such days, and they can happen an hour’s drive from Calgary on a relatively small mountain. Back to comfort, talking up a storm. Doing the post-mortem. Watching the tempest, still so real in our minds, relief and excitement printed on our windburned faces. Together, building story, across time and across silences. Back to comfort then acquires a whole new meaning when you bear the land deep in the bone." From “Assiniboine Crossroads”Trade Review"The seven quirky stories in Gisèle Villeneuve’s new collection, Rising Abruptly, all have mountains at their heart.... The characters’ relationship with mountains evolves throughout the stories, creating an arc that models a romantic relationship: infatuation, the conflict between independence and commitment, and the acceptance of love coupled with death. Rising Abruptly is a literary ode to climbers and the mountains that captivate them, and presents a fascinating portrait of passion for the high peaks." -- Karen Ackland * Foreword Magazine *"Sept nouvelles impressionnantes, écrites dans une langue irréprochable, qui donnent — ou ne donnent pas — envie d’affronter les toits du monde." * Lettres québécoises *# 5 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, April 23, 2017"Mountain climbing is a metaphor in the stories found in her new collection, "Rising Abruptly", which use form, language, and narrative to deal with raw emotions like fear, love, and passion... Villeneuve's stories convey to readers a sense of the dual nature of the mountains, which are at once hard, difficult, and intimidating, but also fragile. In fact, it is precisely the juxtaposition of two opposites that often fuels Villeneuve's writing." Prairie Books Now, Fall/Winter 2016 -- Paula F. Kirman * Prairie Books Now *These are not your typical alpinist accounts. The climbers are mothers, sisters and sexagenarians—the stories often focused on loved ones or filtered through the lenses of emotion and heightened perception. Desire, dread and madness run like an undertow, often threatening to overtake the characters… These stories can be emotionally wrought, as off-kilter as their mountains, yet Villeneuve invites us into this thorny, exposed terrain with confidence. As a climber I found it gratifying to see women’s desires so strongly expressed. Rising Abruptly is a complex, satisfying collection that bears reading again.” -- Elaine Morin, * Alberta Views *Table of ContentsNuit Blanche with Gendarme Jagged Little Peak Benighted on Mighty Mount Royal Kinabalu Realm of the Cold Onion Nepal High Assiniboine Crossroads Acknowledgements
£19.79
University of Alberta Press Annie Muktuk and Other Stories
Book SynopsisI woke up with Moses Henry’s boot holding open my jaw and my right eye was looking into his gun barrel. I heard the slow words, “Take. It. Back.” I know one thing about Moses Henry; he means business when he means business. I took it back and for the last eight months I have not uttered Annie Mukluk’s name. In strolls Annie Mukluk in all her mukiness glory. Tonight she has gone traditional. Her long black hair is wrapped in intu’dlit braids. Only my mom still does that. She’s got mukluks, real mukluks on and she’s wearing the old-style caribou parka. It must be something her grandma gave her. No one makes that anymore. She’s got the faint black eyeliner showing off those brown eyes and to top off her face she’s put pretend face tattooing on. We all know it’ll wash out tomorrow. — from "Annie Muktuk" When Sedna feels the urge, she reaches out from the Land of the Dead to where Kakoot waits in hospital to depart from the Land of the Living. What ensues is a struggle for life and death and identity. In “Kakoot” and throughout this audacious collection of short stories, Norma Dunning makes the interplay between contemporary realities and experiences and Inuit cosmology seem deceptively easy. The stories are raucous and funny and resonate with raw honesty. Each eye-opening narrative twist in Annie Muktuk and Other Stories challenges readers’ perceptions of who Inuit people are.Trade Review"Dunning’s stories, nuanced and deeply felt, reach deep into the heart of what it means to be Inuit, into the sacred place where the songs of the north are still sung, visions are still seen, and the spirits still speak. From this place, it is possible to laugh at those who come to destroy. From this place, dignity is maintained and the connection to the turning of the seasons is unbroken. Together with grief for what has been lost, there is power and light in these stories." [Full review at https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/annie-muktuk-and-other-stories/] -- Kristine Morris * Foreword Magazine *"When I read the article, 'What inspired her was getting mad,' about the story behind Norma Dunning’s debut collection, Annie Mukluk and Other Stories, I was not surprised. Acts of justice and revenge factor throughout the book, propelling the stories so terrifically. Dunning wrote her stories in response to ethnographic representations of Inuit people that neglected to show them as actual people, and the result is a book that’s really extraordinary. Because her people are so real, people who laugh, and joke, and drink, and have sex (and they have a lot of sex)." [Full post at http://picklemethis.com/2017/08/02/annie-muktuk-and-other-stories-by-norma-dunning] -- Kerry Clare * Pickle Me This *"Although [Dunning] deals with serious contemporary realities for Inuit people, she manages to work in moments of humour that flesh out her characters, making them fully realized and complex.” -- Matthew Stepanic * Where.ca *# 10 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, September 24, 2017# 6 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, October 01, 2017# 10 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, October 22, 2017"A successful short story takes us to unfamiliar places, and the 16 stories in this collection certainly fill that bill. It’s a journey deep into Inuit life, with tales of Inuk of all shapes, genders and ages. The title story is at turns funny, violent and cunning: Jimmy tries to convince best friend Moses to stay away from the glorious Annie Muktuk, an arnaluk (naughty woman, according to the glossary) who will cause him grief. [Full article at https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2017/11/24/new-reads-for-short-story-lovers.html] -- Sarah Murdoch * Toronto Star *"This whole collection is fantastic, but the story with the bad trip is 'Husky', inspired by the life of trapper and HBC Factor "Husky" Harris whose visit to Winnipeg with his three Inuit wives, Tetuk, Alaq and Keenaq, is written about in history books. In the story, naturally, the group and their children make an impression at their hotel, and the racism of hotel staff leads to a fight that lands Husky in the hospital. The violence doesn't end there and the women are further victimized—but then they enact the most beautiful justice." [Full article at https://49thshelf.com/Blog/2017/08/14/The-13-Worst-Holidays-in-Canadian-Literature] -- Kerry Clare * 49th Shelf *"Inuk writer Norma Dunning’s debut collection passed under the radar of the big awards despite being the year’s best short fiction collection. The stories infuse Inuit myth with reality, explore the effects of colonialism, and delve into settler-writer portrayals of Inuit, all told with heart and humour that is infectious." Michael Melgaard, on his No. 1 book of 2017, [Article at http://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/np99-24-2-best-books-of-2017] -- Michael Melgaard * National Post *"I love Norma Dunning’s Annie Muktuk and Other Stories. The similarities are striking between Māori and Inuit ways of referencing ancestors, landscape, relationships, spirituality, mythology, and the social cultural political issues we face as tāngata whenua (Indigenous people). Her representations of trauma, love and grief with clever narrative twists are fantastic, as are the acts of revenge. She writes of sacred ancestral knowledge, informed by ancient spirits." [Full article at http://press.futurefire.net/2018/02/interview-with-iona-winter.html] -- Iona Winter“Fiction solves the problem of other minds, by cutting readers directly in on the thought and being of other people. If it has a moral purpose it is this: to give us empathetic understanding of other people, many of them very different from ourselves, in gender, and culture, and race…. I liked this book very much, for its rich characterization, for its liveliness in dialogue, and most of all for the window it presents on another form of consciousness, one to which a unique world of spiritual beings is very near.” -- Susan Haley * Fiddlehead *"Norma Dunning's debut short story collection is sensitive, intelligent and intense. Right from the first story, 'Kabloona Red,' in which an Inuit women knocks back cheap red wine whenever her white husband is away, Dunning writes about authentic experience. The narrators are first person or closely focused third, so the Inuit characters' confusion and pain as they struggle to maintain individual and cultural identifies are felt directly.... Strong currents of anger and courage propel the Inuit characters. They are survivors.... I loved this book." -- Candace Fertile * Alberta Views *# 7 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, April 15, 2018# 9 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, May 06, 2018"Annie Muktuk and Other Stories expounds on Inuit women empowerment. The collection comprises both happy and sad stories, a mixture of present day and the past, and has a touch of humour." [Full article at http://www.windspeaker.com/news/windspeaker-news/indigenous-artists-break-free-of-the-limits-of-the-small-box/] -- Shari Narine * Windspeaker *"As the author's bio explains, Dunning was raised in Southern Canada, but 'When she began to write about her own ancestors, her Inukness became evident.' It is indeed evident in these stories… It is a thoroughly contemporary collection, however – the literary equivalent of the Annie Pootoogook portrait that graces its cover." -- Jade Colbert * Globe and Mail *"Norma Dunning’s debut short story collection takes us out of our mundane lives into one that is raucous, humorous and spiritual.... Dunning has written a powerful book, the short stories depicting the way of her people, how they once lived and now live in the presence of the white world. She regales her audience with tales funny and sad, harrowing yet uplifting. But most of all she places the stories on the page to show that she and her people matter.... They are full of Native humour, full of knowing. They are stories full of survival..." February 27, 2019 [ Full review at http://www.prairiefire.ca/annie-muktuk-and-other-stories-by-norma-dunning/#more-4178] -- Mary Barnes# 5 on Edmonton's Bestselling Books list; Fiction, December 01, 2019# 7 on Edmonton's Bestselling Books list; Fiction, December 08, 2019Table of Contents1 Kabloona Red 7 Elipsee 35 Kakoot 57 Annie Muktuk 65 Manisatuq 73 Qunutuittuq 79 Itsigivaa 81 Iniqtuiguti 85 Inurqituq 89 Tutsiapaa 93 Nakuusiaq 97 Qaninngilivuq 101 Samagiik 105 Husky 131 My Sisters and I
£17.09
University of Alberta Press The Left-Handed Dinner Party and Other Stories
Book SynopsisSecrets aren’t good for families. — from “Big Luck Island” In The Left-Handed Dinner Party and Other Stories—a collection of new, delightful, distinctive short stories—everyone is missing something or someone; every family is riven by secrets and absences. From “The Remedy,” a tale of revenge and justice, to “The Smart Sisters,” a story of tricky family dynamics, Coulter’s narratives portray relationships, loss, and what we learn in the aftermath of death. Ghosts, echoes, memories, regrets...Coulter’s characters are haunted in many ways. With style and sweep that hints at Lynn Coady and Alice Munro, Myrl Coulter is a strong, fresh voice in contemporary Canadian fiction.Trade Review[T]he vividness of Coulter’s hard-luck characters and their situations commands attention. For the second half, Coulter changes tracks with two longer stories that experiment with tone, structure, and perspective. “The Smart Sisters” is a rollicking depiction of three struggling sisters.... “Limbo,” narrated by a “reluctant haunter”...is divided into six captivating tales that recount the decades after his death for those close to him. Gentle, comic, and uplifting, the story’s craft perfectly complements its humanity and skillfully closes this promising collection." [Full review at https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-77212-328-9] * Publishers Weekly *# 1 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, September 24, 2017“… this collection reads a bit like a mystery novel with subtle connections between characters and stories…told intriguingly and effectively…” -- Breanna Mroczek * Avenue Magazine *The way Coulter uses the short story medium to loosely tie the collection together adds an enthralling quality... Coulter wanted to showcase that the things which tear us apart — depression, anger, death, suicide — are seldom talked about, or even written about... The Left-Handed Dinner Party ends on a note of fleeting happiness that alludes to a place of resolution." [Full article at https://www.thegatewayonline.ca/2018/03/left-handed-dinner-party/] -- Enrique Marroquin * The Gateway *"What interests Coulter is families, and the endlessly paradoxical combinations of love and resentment, security and entrapment, which families offer. Some of the stories are connected by their characters, and the novella, “Limbo,” consists of a series of stories about the same family. Alcoholism, adultery, abuse, parental abandonment, trips into an uncertain future, suicide, secrecy, car crashes, sibling alienation—these are the stock-in-trade of Coulter’s families." [Full review at http://canlit.ca/article/space-and-time/] -- Paul Denham * Canadian Literature 236 *Table of Contents1 Grad School 2 The Remedy 3 The Left-Handed Dinner Party 4 The Scream 5 Uncanny 6 Estate Planning 7 The Ballad of Jake and Janet 8 Big Luck Island 9 The Smart Sisters 10 Limbo -Jean’s Slice -Orphan Sister -The Viewfinder -Willpower -The Dead List -The Beer Tent Acknowledgments
£16.14
Anvil Press Publishers Inc Cretacea & Other Stories from the Badlands
Book SynopsisMontaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards) The stories in Cretacea and Other Stories from the Badlands mostly take place in hot weather, where dust and sweat envelop everyone and everything. A teenage boy spends a summer with his hard-livin', hard-drinkin', messed up uncle and has to fight for a position in his new, temporary "family." A recent widower gets swept up in the world of the local swingers' scene. A band of misfits struggles to survive at a makeshift commune. An eccentric woman with OCD has a strange fetish that involves the prescription delivery boy. For no particular reason, a fossil-collecting, poetry-reading loner decides to turn sniper and shoot up the town - selecting only non-human targets. Asphyxia games with a sexy transvestite go seriously awry. A distraught man enlists his friendly neighbour in a nighttime river search for his lost daughter. Bored and desperate couples in a trailer park find unique ways to work out their kinks. The plans of a primed-for-action threesome are suddenly derailed when a badly beaten dog is spotted tied up to a parking meter. Fossils and prehistoric sleeping creatures, cattle, rivers, dusty highway gas stations, truck stop diners, guys in small towns with dead-end jobs and unfulfilled dreams, the smell of sage and the sound of cicadas in the air, and redemption is nowhere to be found ... This is not the Alberta world of oil and hockey and wheat, but of people at night, living alternate lives, wearing clothes that usually remain hidden in the depths of closets. When they emerge from these closets wearing these clothes, these shopkeepers, lawyers, and students do things to themselves and each other that it would take Freud to explicate. Everywhere in the valley lies the fear of loneliness, the obsession with desire, and the human fixation with the unknown. Praise for Cretacea & Other Stories from the Badlands: "[I]n Martin West's impressive debut short story collection ... readers will encounter echoes of Flannery O'Connor and Barry Hannah."(Foreword Magazine) "the 11 tales in Martin West's debut collection ... often surprise with strange, startling images." (Alberta Views)
£14.39
Anvil Press Publishers Inc The Knockoff Eclipse
Book SynopsisMelissa Bull's debut short story collection The Knockoff Eclipse and Other Stories hums with the immediacy of distant and future worlds. Firmly rooted in the streets of Montreal and its many neighbourhoods and subcultures, Bull zooms in on the female experience while playing with societal expectation and literary convention. Spattered with bits of French, many of the stories pull back the covers on the intersection between French and English Canada. In the titular story "The Knockoff Eclipse," we're transported to a future world where women's clothing quite literally advertises their supposed wants and desires. Wanda and Henry meet in an old divebar turned trendy futurist café. "I used to be a model. But I got tired of people looking at me," she tells Henry. The theme of looking or being looked at runs through the entire collection, female bodies and the women who inhabit them must constantly contend with the masculine gaze, which is often internalized in such a way that it seems inescapable. The Knockoff Eclipse is dark like Duras, flippant comme Sagan, with elements of the surreal running through. These stories are modern feminist fables for the reader who is decidedly uninterested in upholding the moral of the story as it's been traditionally told.
£13.29
Anvil Press Publishers Inc Czech Techno & Other Stories of Music
Book SynopsisFrom the author of 19 Knives and My White Planet comes a brilliant suite of stories built around music and travel. Whether it's a band coming apart at the ruins of Pompeii, or tours through Napoli's "volcanic dust and volcanic drugs and jackal-headed bedlam and mountains of stinking trash"; or a nostalgic stroll past the homeless in Victoria's inner harbour while "gentle Tunisian techno" rides the breeze, where the addicted populate park benches, as weighted as Shakespearean characters ... "lit rock and tiny chalice hidden under his shirt, get it all, draw every wisp of the wreath and heavy is the head that wears the crown, that lights the lighter." Or it's Steppenwolf or The Youngbloods drifting from a car radio as "an ambulance siren and lights fly our street ... a flashing mime show of grief's rocket." Or, perhaps they're in Iceland, or Denmark, "somewhere seriously lunar and attractive" spending wheelbarrows of cash the record execs didn't give them. Or it's the Viper Room, Sunset Boulevard, a bar in Butte, Montana, or Johnny Cash in Tijuana. The five stories that comprise Czech Techno are replete with the sizzle and jump we have come to expect in a Mark Jarman story - "those shadowbox anthems of lost icy street corners and vanished republics" are on grand display, his herky-jerky emblematic style in full roar. And the quest for love, the matters of the heart, is ever-present, weaving through these stories like a knife blade through sand.
£13.29
Anvil Press Publishers Inc I Am Claude Francois and You Are a Bathtub
Book SynopsisStuart Ross's sometimes poignant, sometimes outrageous third story collection deepens his exploration of the possibilities of the short story and narrative. A trio of tales probe fame through the lens of 1960s-70s French pop and disco icon Claude François; legendary Hollywood actor Lee Marvin saves the day, again and again; the citizens of a small town worship an all-knowing potato; a man dons a bib to eat his neighbour's house; a tourist finds both love and a dead frog in Nicaragua; and, in one rather educational anti-story, the author instructs readers in the art of writing the short story. In I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub, Stuart Ross, a veteran of the Canadian literary underground, unleashes his arsenal of pathos, absurdism, humour, and cantankerousness.
£13.29
Goose Lane Editions The High-Rise in Fort Fierce
Book SynopsisFinalist, Ottawa Book Award for Fiction 2019Long-Shortlisted, 2019 Relit Award (Short Story Category)Drugs. Violence. Racism. Despair. The tiny, northern town of Fort Fierce has issues in spades, and most of them fester in the high-rise by the lake.In this visceral, emotionally raw, and completely absorbing collection, Carlucci takes his readers through the ravaged history of Franklin Place, from its construction during the Cold War to its demolition decades later. We meet the Franklins themselves, three generations of landlords, each more paranoid and alienated than the last. And we meet their tenants: a drug dealer, a lonely bigot, a political activist, a struggling father, a wandering sex offender, a woman who refuses to give into it all. They wander in and out of each other's lives, with little in common but the building and the mould behind its walls.In The High-Rise in Fort Fierce, Carlucci immerses us in a dim yet eerily familiar world. Love and death, conflict and compromise, fear, determination, and the tense relations between indigenous and settler populations thread the warp and weft of his dark and irrepressible tapestry. We cannot look away.Trade Review"The mess of humanity that resides in The High-Rise in Fort Fierce — the weirdos and the outsiders, the brave and the bewildered, the ruined and the barely redeemed — are transformed through the blast furnace of Paul Carlucci's immense talent into something transfixing, their raw hope and hopelessness depicted unflinchingly. Hard to watch but impossible to look away." -- Zsuzsi Gartner"The High-Rise in Fort Fierce centres on a cursed building in a northern town. A family's toxic tower, once chi-chi real estate but now full of drugged-out pilgrims and mold spores,concealing an underground man deep in a secret doomsday bomb shelter. The Fort Fierce experience is a harrowing headlong rush; picaresque tales touching on race and cash, alcohol and opiates, and the occasional impulsive homicide, all delivered in Paul Carlucci's violent electric prose." -- Mark Anthony Jarman"Like the subterranean enclave that lies beneath its decaying battlements, The High-Rise in Fort Fierce delves into the secretive heart of contemporary masculinity, exposing its ambiguities and fears, its capacity for both violence and tenderness. Noirish and dystopian, Carlucci has a gift for lyrical turns of phrase that are a counterpoint to the grim settings and unfolding drama." -- Kerry-Lee Powell
£14.39
Goose Lane Editions The Forbidden Purple City
Book SynopsisFinalist, City of Vancouver Book Award 2019A man returns to Hoi An in his retirement to compose a poem honouring his parents. Two teenagers, ostracized in a private school, forge an unlikely bond. A son discovers the truth about his father's business ventures and his dreams of success. A young bride, isolated on a remote island with her new husband, finds community in a group of abalone divers.Taking the title for his debut collection of short fiction from the walled palace of Vietnam's Nguyen dynasty, Philip Huynh dives headfirst into the Vietnamese diaspora. In these beautifully crafted stories, crystalline in their clarity and immersive in their intensity, he creates a universe inhabited by the deprivations of war, the reinvention of self in a new and unfamiliar settings, and the tensions between old-world parents and new-world children. Rooted in history and tradition yet startlingly contemporary in their approach, Huynh's stories are sensuously evocative, plunging us into worlds so all-encompassing that we can smell the scent of orange blossoms and hear the rumble of bass lines from suburban car stereos.Trade Review"In The Forbidden Purple City, Huynh gives voice to Vietnamese-Canadian experiences, introduces many readers to a culturally diverse and intriguing history of Vietnam, and does so by crafting stories that are relatable, modern, quietly heartbreaking — and that keep us returning for a second, third and fourth read." * The Winnipeg Free Press *
£16.19
Goose Lane Editions Different Beasts
Book SynopsisWinner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Speculative FictionA bear runs amok in a luxury hotel. A daily swim at the local pool becomes a question of life or death. The champion of a border wall faces an unexpected adversary.The twelve stories in Different Beasts ask what it means to be both human and monster. Shape-shifting waifs, haunted stuffies, scavenging drones, insectoid demon-gods, and mutant angels all come to life in this wildly imagined debut. As do broken soldiers, disgraced politicians, tired parents, ogres and children, opportunists, and desperate survivors — human beasts each struggling with the animalian aspects of their nature.In this wild, fantastical, viscerally memorable debut, J.R. McConvey explores the power dynamics that undergird social relationships and crystallize into structures of fealty and worship, fear and control, aspiration and desire.Trade Review"Different Beasts made me fall in love with the craft of short stories all over again. This collection took me to places — some uncomfortable, others hearbreaking — that I wasn't expecting to go. This is the work of a writer of beastly talent, vision, and guts." -- Brian Francis, author of Break in Case of Emergency
£14.39
Goose Lane Editions Hour of the Crab
Book SynopsisCo-Winner, Margaret Laurence Award for FictionPatricia Robertson’s new collection of short fiction, Hour of the Crab, is a work of insight and mastery, each story demonstrating an original vision, intriguing characters, and sophisticated skill. Readers will travel with Robertson’s vivid characters, sharing their journeys, their challenges, their complicated choices. They will also discover other worlds — from an eleventh-century monastery in France to a near-future British Columbia where apocalyptic wildfires seem to be never-ending. A young woman discovers the corpse of a Moroccan teenager washed up on the beach in southern Spain and sets out to find his family in a gesture that destabilizes her own. An international aid worker shares her house with the very real ghost of a gardener’s boy. The last speaker of a dying Norse-like language carves the words he remembers into the stones of his house. Urgent and evocative, immersed in issues of our time, the stories of Hour of the Crab reveal Robertson’s ability to draw in her readers with the heightened realism of her imagined worlds. Trade Review“Panoramic in scope, precise in detail, stirring in content, Hour of the Crab is exhilarating and poised, a mythos of modern times. Here are fire gods, migration, and extraterrestrial messages, strange spirits and apparitions rendered harrowingly real. Deftly speculative, menacingly real, these stories compel you to change your life.” -- David Huebert, author of Peninsula Sinking“Hour of the Crab is fascinating and dark, playing with the edge of what is real and what could be.” -- Alison Manley * Miramichi Reader *“The stories in Hour of the Crab are compelling, touching on a wide range of human emotions and motivations and told in an interesting and thought-provoking way.” -- Susan Huebert * Winnipeg Free Press *
£16.19
Goose Lane Editions Rafael Has Pretty Eyes
Book SynopsisWinner, Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction Long-Shortlisted, ReLit Award (Short Fiction)"You go through life convinced you’re going to get diabetes like your old man and one day you choke to death on chicken gristle, and the autopsy shows your blood sugars were perfect."The seventeen stories in Elaine McCluskey’s latest collection, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, follow characters who have reached a four-way stop in life; some are deciding whether to follow the signs or defy them; others find a sinkhole forming beneath their feet.A former fast-talking, big-bucks radio host now lives as a divorced payday loaner working in a strip mall; a football wide receiver at a small Canadian university works the night shift as a bouncer while recovering from his third concussion; a well-liked city councilor is arrested on a packed bus. As one character puts it, "life is just one extended series of anecdotes strung together until they kill you."Set in the Maritimes but transcending regional boundaries, McCluskey’s stories are experimental, sometimes provocative, and often about those living on the margins. Smart, compassionate and unsparing, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes explores the absurdity and interconnectedness of a life adrift.Trade Review“Elaine McCluskey's characters leap to life, rendered in the kind of rich, vivid detail that makes you certain you’ve met them somewhere before. Rafael Has Pretty Eyes invites readers to revel in the stories of these artfully crafted characters and to feel every flash of sudden wonder or quiet sorrow. Once you've been drawn into McCluskey's ever-alluring world of words, you won't want to leave.” -- Amy Spurway, author of Crow“Rafael Has Pretty Eyes captures the ennui of our particular real-world moment, while blessedly not bringing up the pandemic. ... an eclectic short story collection.” -- Alison Manley * Atlantic Books Today *“Elaine McCluskey knows she has succeeded if her stories do three things: make you laugh, occasionally make you cry and in the end, surprise you. ... McCluskey succeeds in doing just that in Rafael Has Pretty Eyes.” -- Allison Lawlor * Saltwire *“Rafael Has Pretty Eyes is one of the best collections I’ve read in a decade, so glorious and furious, and I love the raw energy that surges through every story. Reading it is like sticking your tongue into the outlet of another person’s life and feeling the pure current that runs there.” -- Alexander McLeod, author of Animal Person“At the heart of McCluskey’s stories are “underdogs” and “people whom society decides have no business reaching for greatness, no business upsetting the natural order of things” (from “Remember”). In Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, McCluskey proves that she knows how to string it all together, and she reminds us stories can bring us back to life.” -- Marcie McCauley * World Literature Today *
£16.19
Goose Lane Editions The Running Trees: Stories
Book SynopsisFinalist, New Brunswick Book Award (Fiction) and Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short FictionA striking original, deftly humorous collection of stories that considers the quest for truth: how we come to it or alternatively avoid it.A fervently comic debut, The Running Trees leads readers into a series of conversations — through phonelines, acts in a play, and a rewound recording of a police interrogation — to reveal characters in fumbling bouts of brutality, reflection, isolation, and love.The relationship between two siblings disintegrates after one asks the other for the pen; a professor and his former student get drinks years after a "romantic" encounter; a book club meets only to find that they have wildly different opinions about a new memoir about their town; and a long-haired feline contemplates existence and consciousness while his cohabitant licks his own butthole.Whimsical, unconventional, humorous, and always pitch-perfect, The Running Trees explores how we desperately try to communicate with each other amid the gaps in meaning we create.Trade Review“Energetic, often hilarious, and endlessly surprising. Reading this collection feels like eavesdropping on a series of engrossing conversations. McMillan skillfully inhabits the voices of this cast of characters, in situations that range from the suspenseful and unsettling to the deliciously absurd. The people in this book are flawed and human, prickly and curious, and remarkably distinct. Through their questions, complaints, arguments, and apologies, The Running Trees explores the intricacies of human interaction, and the difference between what we say and what we mean.” -- Shashi Bhat, author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth“An anthology of unique stories that ... delve into the chaotic, tangled aspects of imperfect yet quintessentially human characters. A brisk read that lingers long in the memory, The Running Trees is highly recommended.” * Midwest Book Review *
£14.39
Goose Lane Editions Skin
Book Synopsis
£17.99
Great Plains Publications Ltd Winning Chance: Stories
Book SynopsisIn the stories in Winning Chance, Katherine Koller explores second chances, how we find them, and how we find the courage to take them. Whether they are contractors running into an ex while on the job, a busy mother pursuing community theatre, or a family building an illegal ice rink after an environmental collapse, Katherine Koller has created empathetic portraits of characters searching to connect.
£13.46
Great Plains Publications Ltd Vermin: Stories
Book SynopsisThe stories in Vermin are linked by themes of loss, longing and music: a restaurant server in a Tofino restaurant reflects on the nature of men in her past and present; a woman prepares to marry a brooding artist unpopular with both her parents and her small town community; a new homeowner has strange encounters witha previous owner who is struggling to let go. Stories in this collection have appeared in Joyland, The Saturday Evening Post, Room, The Antigonish Review and other journals and anthologies.Trade Review"These are well-made stories that offer convincingly conflicted characters. A hospitable, entertaining read. Alberta Viewspart of the strength in Hahnels often funny, occasionally sad and always intriguing collection is that they take readers in all sorts of directions. Calgary HeraldVermin is an immersive collection of short stories that demonstrate a notable breadth of talented writing. Anne Logan, Ive Read ThisHahnel is keenly aware of the daily suffering of life, and once in a while, of the sought-for moments of forgetfulness of a troubled place, or of a desperate, short-lived bliss. But there are no lyric flights here, the prose is unadorned, straight-forward and clear, what is unsaid often more important than what is, and her characters are on the move, often aimlessly, from one unsatisfactory situation to another, while their friends become drifters and vanish and reappear and vanish again. These are touching, gentle stories about the lives of women and girls who arent lucky in their beginnings or backgrounds, nor particularly wise, and yet, their stories, with their rare and tiny triumphs, resonate. Sharon Butala, author of Season of Fury and WonderWith remarkable range, Lori Hahnel captures women who experience disappointment and alienation, heartbreak and oppression. The delight of the collection comes in the way Hahnels fully realized protagonists a lively cast of outsiders and rebels continue, despite lifes adversity, to find the strength to live authentically. VERMIN is a treasure from one of Albertas bright lights. Angie Abdou, author of Home Ice: Reflections of a Reluctant Hockey MomIn these stories, Lori Hahnel reimagines the subject of love. In the time of parasites her flawed and transient characters attempt to find coherence in their lives. Hahnel never overstays or overplays. With the sure hand and clear eye of a surgeon, she cuts to the quick, dissects and reveals moments of truth in the lies people tell each other and in the lies they tell themselves. Writing with classical dispassion, she doesnt moralize, disapprove or romanticize. Instead, she sees and selects and exposes the wilderness of the human heart. Cecelia Frey, author of Lovers Fall Back To Earth and recipient of the Golden Pen Lifetime Achievement Award"
£13.46
Great Plains Publications Ltd Alternate Plains: Stories of Prairie Speculative
Book SynopsisA man runs for his life from the promise of death held by trees; a lost VHS tape offers footage of a lost, grisly history; a diaspora clings to magical shards of home and more in this collection of genre fiction by authors from across the Canadian Prairies. Adam Petrash is an author and editor from Winnipeg. He is the co-editor of the speculative fiction anthology, Parallel Prairies: Stories of Manitoba Speculative Fiction, and the author of a novella, The Ones to Make it Through. His work has appeared in journals throughout North America.
£11.96
Great Plains Publications Ltd Homebodies: Stories
Book Synopsis"What does it mean to be at home? Are we ever truly alone in our houses? In Twisted, a woman loses her best friends daughter while an old acquaintance is on trial for murder; Nectar and Nickle introduces readers to a young girl who digs up the corpse of the family cat and comforts herself with macabre fairy tales. She meets a boy in the woods and turns him into part of her game. In Garden Bed secrets are buried in the garden plot with the best of intentions, but they are dug up by a fox who watches and sees everything. Haunted bodies, haunted houses, and haunted relationships colour this collection to show us that our homes are not our own. We are only guests. "Trade ReviewSurfaces deceive. LeBlancs deliciously creepy stories revel in pushing past the limitations of the body, of the domestic, and of the known even when this means guts are going to spill. In the tradition of writers such as Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Lisa Tuttle, these stories disorient and slide from the familiar and dreamy and into the nightmarish in the most thrilling of ways. LeBlanc kidnaps the reader and takes them on an unforgettable, screamingly great ride. Suzette Mayr, winner of the Giller PrizeAmy LeBlancs Homebodies is like a slow, sliding kaleidoscope of dreams. A series of glimpses into strained, disjointed families and communities, the book follows a network of disquieting characters with woundsboth figurative and very literalthat fester and pulse. The stories feel like admissions, like muffled secrets passed behind closed doors. They are fragmented but nonetheless fulldense and swollen with the characters blunted fears, their stark needs. LeBlancs writing is a shudder running through the body: a sensation that is visceral, reflexive, and inescapable. Like a boa snake constricting, like peristalsis, these stories will swallow you whole. Erica McKeen, author of TearAmy LeBlancs uncanny, open-ended stories perfectly capture the ambiguous anxieties of our pandemic times. This is an engrossing, contemporary, well-arranged collection with novelistic immersiveness. Seyward Goodhand, author of Even That Wildest HopeIn Homebodies, Amy LeBlanc moves time forward and backward, and mostlyunderneathfamilies, lovers, cats and friends. In these stories, growing up doesnt lighten the dark, understanding doesnt sweeten the lot, sadness and despair compete with spirit for space. Its LeBlanc who makes darkness palatable with her poignancy and poetic touch. Dont plan on putting Homebodies down after you pick it up. Susie Moloney, author The Thirteen and The Dwelling
£11.96
Caitlin Press The Crooked Thing
Book SynopsisFor fans of Alice Munro and Carol Shields comes an emotional and hopeful collection of short stories that delve into the tragedies that befall each of us in the search for goodness and meaning. The English poet, William Blake said, joy and woe are woven fine. So it is in The Crooked Thing. A collection of intense and emotional stories, there are traumas and betrayals, loves and losses, missed opportunities and discoveries, and above all, hope. In tales delicate and steely, a troubled young ferryman finds himself with an unexpected passenger, a songbird finds its voice, a mother learns to let go of her son and, after a chance encounter, an aging ballerina dances again. In her debut story collection, Mary MacDonald brings each narrator to face their own existence, taking the reader into darkness, passing through fear and resistance, to seek redemption and freedom. At their core these are love stories; they move us, disturb us, and upend our beliefs, to show us characters not all that different from ourselves.
£10.44
Caitlin Press Music from a Strange Planet: Stories
Book SynopsisOff-beat, provocative, philosophical, Music from a Strange Planet traces the fault lines of identity and emotional attachment. Grief, tenderness, and longing soak the pages, admitting the reader into the intimate places of the heart: An awkward child envisions herself as a darkling beetle; an unemployed business analyst prefers water-walking over rebranding himself; after being kidnapped, a psychologist rejects the idea of marrying herself; and in the squatters district, a biogenetically-altered couple visits an attic to observe a large cocoon. From the ruins of a dystopian city to the inner self-created landscapes of a coma victim, this unique story collection places characters at the core of their vulnerabilities. With a masterfully crafted tone and a register that ranges from contemplative to comic, the subversive, immersive stories in this collection brim with humanity. Expect your planet to tilt a little to the strange after reading this engaging, vivid and incisive collection of stories.
£16.19
Caitlin Press This Unlikely Soil
Book SynopsisIn This Unlikely Soil, prize-winning writer Andrea Routley delivers stories of queer women navigating love and life against the lush, isolated backdrop of Canada?s West Coast. A dog that bites, a bear suffering from a hemorrhoid, an aggressive willow tree, berried-up Dungeness crabs and erotic mussels? The dense West-Coast landscape of This Unlikely Soil echoes the fraught search for connection of the rural-dwelling queer characters in this quintet of novellas. Finalist for the Malahat Review Novella Prize, this sophomore collection from Lambda Literary Award-finalist Andrea Routley explores the queer state of wandering, violence, and loss with surprising humour and compassion.
£16.99
NeWest Press Ezra's Ghosts: Stories
Book SynopsisAward-winning author Darcy Tamayose returns with Ezra''s Ghosts, a collection of fantastical stories linked by a complex mingling of language and culture, as well as a deep understanding of grief and what it makes of us. Within these pages a scholar writes home from the Ryukyu islands, not knowing that his hometown will soon face a deadly calamity of its own. Another seeker of truth is trapped in Ezra after her violent death, and must watch how her family-and her killer-alter in her absence. The oldest man in town, an immigrant who came to Canada to escape imperial hardships, sprouts wings, and a wounded journalist bears witness to his transformation. Finally, past and present collide as a researcher reflects on the recent skinwars that have completely altered the world''s topography. Binding the stories together is an intersection of arrival and departure-in a quiet prairie town called Ezra.
£15.29
Huia Publishers Huia Short Stories 11: Contemporary Maori
Book SynopsisHere are the best short stories and novel extracts from the 2015 Pikihuia Awards for Maori writers as judged by Witi Ihimaera, Sir Wira Gardiner and Poia Rewi. The book contains the stories from the finalists for Best Short Story written in English, Best Short Story written in Maori and Best Novel Extract. For more than ten years, the Maori Literature Trust and Huia Publishers have organised this biennial writing competition to promote Maori stories and writers. The awards and the publication of finalists' stories have become popular as they celebrate Maori writing and uncover little-known writers.
£18.95
Quercus Publishing Signs and Wonders
Book Synopsis'Signs and Wonders' documents a couple's divorce after twenty-six years of marriage; in 'Robbing the Cradle', a teacher desperate to conceive resorts to the most extreme measures imaginable; and 'The Stepmother's Story' sees a young woman experience every parent's worst nightmare while on holiday in Edinburgh. These are but three of the stories in a collection showcasing Alix Ohlin's matchless characterization and raw readability. The reader reaches the end of one story, feels sad to leave its cast behind, yet are buoyed when, mere moments later, they find themselves equally engrossed in the next offering.Trade Review'I loved these touching, deeply human stories ... Nothing short of marvelous' Jay Parini. * Jay Parini *'Contains much to admire ... individual stories leave their mark and [Ohlin] is in command of her unifying theme: the risk and unavoidable pain of relationships' Literary Review. * Literary Review *'Unputdownable: crisp, focused, lovely and lasting' Marie Claire. * Marie Claire *'These stories are smart, tough, deeply felt and beautifully delivered, without one wasted word' Richard Bausch. * Richard Bausch *Table of ContentsSigns and Wonders. Forks. Robbing the Cradle. The Stepmother's Story. The Idea Man. Who Do You Love? The Teacher. Vigo Park. The Only Child. Three Little Maids. You Are What You Like. A Month of Sundays. The Cruise. The Assistants. Bruno. Fortune-Telling.
£6.74
Vintage Publishing Medusa’s Ankles: Selected Stories from the Booker
Book SynopsisA luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. ByattWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELLMirrors shatter at the hairdressers when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real.Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and travel from Ancient myth to an English sweet factory, a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, a Turkish bazaar to a fairytale palace. Driven by curiosity, Byatt takes her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary and the gloss of the fantastical, to a place rich in ideas, vivid in colour and wholly unforgettable.'A cabinet of curiosities... Glitteringly beautiful. Byatt is a vivid colourist' Sunday Times'A cerebral extravaganza, bristling with ideas' Spectator 'These little stories by one of Britain's foremost grandes dames of the writing world are a delightful surprise, packing a much greater punch than many full-length novels... They are moving, thought-provoking, witty and shocking all at once' Sunday TelegraphTrade ReviewIt was a pleasure to be reacquainted with 'Medusa's Ankles'... There's an echo of Iris Murdoch here, herself the subject of several books by Byatt -- Miranda France * Literary Review *
£20.00
Vintage Publishing Old Babes in the Wood: The #1 Sunday Times
Book SynopsisAtwood's first new fiction publication since The Testaments, this deeply personal collection includes a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love -- and what comes afterThe stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales.The glorious range of Atwood's creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns delight, illuminate and quietly devastate.'Gripping... a writer in full possession of her powers' Financial Times'These reflections on marriage, mortality and many-tentacled aliens show Atwood's mastery of the short form' Guardian'She's Margaret Atwood, and she can do anything' Ann Patchett'There is no greater living writer' Daily Telegraph'The outstanding novelist of our age' Sunday Times 'A living legend' New York Times Book ReviewTrade ReviewVitality and virtuosity have been the hallmarks of Atwoods literary career - and, as Old Babes in the Wood, published in her 84th year, shows, triumphantly continue to be so... Mortality shadows the book. Vivacity makes it shine -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *If you consider yourself and Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You've been missing out * New York Times Book Review *Atwood shows mastery of the short form . . . [The] stories unwrap what TS Eliot called the gifts reserved for age. There are chips and fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness -- Sam Leith * Guardian *A gripping read... Old Babes in the Wood is further evidence of a writer in full possession of her powers. Atwood will never struggle to find readers, but this collection really is worth their attention * Financial Times *Atwood... is a brilliant and spiky storyteller who can seamlessly turn big issues into page-turners... These are Atwood's most personal tales so far * Sunday Times *The Booker winner writes beautifully about ageing and death . . . the silence after the best stories here is akin to how she describes the aftermath of a calamitous event -- John Self * The Times *Nell and Tig are the ageing couple whose small dramas and deep feelings bookend this new story collection... brought achingly to life and sharpened by Atwood's dry wit and wily wisdom * Mail on Sunday *To be honest, we would read anything this woman writes, but Old Babes in the Wood is one of her best * Glamour *This set of interweaving short stories is a perfect way to get a more bite-sized read... There's a story in here that everyone can relate to * Woman & Home *The inimitable author of The Handmaid's Tail is spectacular at short stories * i *Atwood...writes infectiously... page after page proving that...[her] lavish literary talents remain wholly undiminished * Reader's Digest *[Old Babes in the Wood] showcase[s] Atwood's spiky wit and imagination * Sunday Express *The 15 stories in this collection from the stellar Margaret Atwood are book-ended by the touching, tender, grief-tinged tales of Tig and Nell -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we're stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it's Margaret Atwood . . . Long may she reign * New York Times Book Review *As affecting as any of Atwood's strongest work * Wired *
£19.80
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Prayer for the Living
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Unbound In Other Words
Book SynopsisA shift in the nature of light reveals an eighth colour in the visible spectrum. A boy befriends the last tree in the natural world. A single mother finds help at the darkest point of her life. A young man finds himself trapped in a university overrun by crows.These stories and more form In Other Words, an anthology as diverse as the writers themselves. Some cover trauma, societal issues and stigma; others offer fragments of hope and light. Some reach back in time while others transport us to another dimension altogether. There is heartbreak, wit, humour, poignancy and above all a mastery of the imagination.What these transcendent stories share is that they were created by autistic writers, people often dismissed as unimaginative or incapable of creativity – a myth that has persisted for generations. This collection hopes to shatter those stereotypes, those misconceptions and misunderstandings, and the perception that one must be neurotypical to be afforded a voice in the arts.
£12.39
