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Twelve short stories by one of New Zealand's best-loved poets are collected here. Set in the south, they are spare pieces of prose, showing an eye for detail and for the ironies of life.

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In Truth or Dare we follow, spell-bound, as chance encounters bring violent pasts roaring into the present; we wait on tenterhooks as a woman sits by her husband's hospital bed as both their lives hang in the balance; we watch anxiously as a homeless man begs a woman with her life and career stretching ahead of her not to jump to her death. By turns comedic, heart-wrenching and moving, these stories paint powerful pictures of pain, love and empathy, and celebrate the power we have over one another. From the rain-soaked waterways of London to the bustling streets of Dhaka, Truth or Dare is a stunning collection that spans two continents and sees the best and worst in both.

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It won’t take you long to see why Jane Tyson Clement’s short stories have become perennial favorites for adults and children alike. Written with a measured beauty that recalls Tolstoy and Tolkien, these tales are rich in allegorical symbolism and evocation of mood. They are infused throughout with the thrill of expectancy, a sense that something new is on the way, and a certainty that God is seeking us, just as we seek him. In an age where cleverness often counts more than substance, Clement’s stories offer a break from all the noise.

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Four festive stories from P. D. James, the 'Queen of Crime'From a Christmas murder at a country house to an illicit affair and a questionable inheritance, P. D. James's trademark sparkling prose illuminates the secrets that lurk beneath the surface at enforced family gatherings. These puzzle-box mysteries are perfect cosy reading for the darkest days of the year!Including two early cases for Adam Dalgleish - star of the major TV series, DalgleishWhat readers are saying:'A sheer delight.' 5* reader review'Four of the best of P D James short stories. All set around Christmas and all expertly planned, written and executed!' 5* reader review'Perfect for a dark wintry evening.' 5* reader review'Very entertaining, and I loved it.' 5* reader review

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Share in fifty years of a really remarkable cat… Mog is everyone’s favourite family cat! Come play with her in this collection of funny and warm-hearted stories especially for younger readers, in paperback for the first time. From the creator of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Mog the Forgetful Cat comes this bumper collection filled with four delightful family adventures about a really remarkable cat, perfect for her younger fans! Now in paperback from the very first time. Contains:Mog and MeMog in the GardenMog’s KittensMog’s Family of Cats Mog the Forgetful Cat was first published fifty years ago, and Mog has been delighting children all over the world with her adventures ever since. These books are the perfect gifts for boys, girls and families everywhere!

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Described by Herman Melville as being “as deep as Dante”, ‘Young Goodman Brown’ is set during the Salem witch trials and features the sort of narrative ambiguities and troubling uncertainties over the reality of events that Hawthorne was known for, leading readers to ponder what they have read long after the last page has been turned. Rich in allegory and symbolism, and suffused with darkness, tragedy, satire and the supernatural, the tales in this collection, written by a master of the short-story genre, delve into the conflict between good and evil, explore the concept of Original Sin and bring to life the moralistic and superstitious early days of the New England colonies.

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When the Americans Mr and Mrs Otis and their four children move into Canterville Chase, its previous occupant Lord Canterville warns them that the ghost of his ancestor still haunts the house. Their disbelief is soon shattered by the nightly sound of rattling chains in the hallways and the appearance of mysterious bloodstains in the living room. However, the ghost struggles to intimidate his new victims, as they counter his ghoulish behaviour with typically transatlantic pragmatism, offering lubricator for his chains and cleaning up the stains with detergent. As the spirit is deserted by his capacity to scare, Virginia, the Otises’ daughter, gets to know him and learns the tragic tale behind his sad fate. Sparkling with his trademark wit, this classic tale is one of Oscar Wilde’s finest stories and is presented here with three other comic mystery stories, ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, ‘The Sphinx without a Secret’ and ‘The Model Millionaire’, all of which were first published together in 1891.

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In Bulgakov’s ‘Diaboliad’, the modest and unassuming office clerk Korotkov is summarily sacked for a trifling error from his job at the Main Central Depot of Match Materials, and tries to seek out his newly assigned superior, responsible for his dismissal. His quest through the labyrinth of Soviet bureaucracy takes on the increasingly surreal dimensions of a nightmare. This early satirical story, reminiscent of Gogol and Dostoevsky, was first published in 1924 and incurred the wrath of pro-Soviet critics. Along with the three other stories in this volume, which also explore the themes of the absurd and bizarre, it provides a fascinating glimpse into the artistic development of the author of The Master and Margarita.

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Three seasonal stories set in Paris at Christmas, from the celebrated creator of Inspector Maigret.It is Christmas in Paris, but beneath the sparkling lights and glittering decorations lie sinister deeds and dark secrets... This collection brings together three of Simenon's most enjoyable Christmas tales, newly translated, featuring Inspector Maigret and other characters from the Maigret novels. In 'A Maigret Christmas', the Inspector receives two unexpected visitors on Christmas Day, who lead him on the trail of a mysterious intruder dressed in red and white. In 'Seven Small Crosses in a Notebook', the sound of alarms over Paris send the police on a cat and mouse chase across the city. And 'The Little Restaurant in Les Ternes (A Christmas Story for Grown-Ups)' tells of a cynical woman who is moved to an unexpected act of festive charity in a nightclub - one that surprises even her...

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The legendary enchantment of Rip Van Winkle in the Kaatskill Mountains; the gruesome end of Ichabod Crane, who met the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow; the spectre bridegroom who turned out to be happily substantial; the pride of an English village and the come-uppance of the over-zealous Mountjoy - these witty, perceptive and captivating tales range from fantasy to romance.

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John Updike was a master storyteller, and this collection, from his final years, reveals that up to the end he remained the finest short-story writer of his generation.'Magnificent, exhilarating, crisply evocative, rippling with irony. Updike's genius can be seen on peak form. With this book, a talent that burnt brightly goes out in a blaze of brilliance' Sunday Times'A haunting valedictory alive with characteristic preoccupations: small-town life; "domestic duplicity"; travel; aging rituals; and the transience of existence. This is a collection filled with nuanced observations, descriptive flair and sentences that stop you in your tracks' Metro

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Deadly forces are about to be awakened …In the degenerate, unliked backwater of Dunwich, Wilbur Whately, a most unusual child, is born. Of unnatural parentage, he grows at an uncanny pace to an unsettling height, but the boy’s arrival simply precedes that of a true horror: one of the Old Ones, that forces the people of the town to hole up by night, fearful for their lives, by day able only to trace the wreckage wrought by the gigantic, unseen monster.In this and other tales of the macabre, H. P. Lovecraft weaves unearthly fantasies of creatures beyond conception – existing between the spaces of the dimensions we know.

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Leskov’s stories of Russian life are explosions of imagination. Peopled by outsized characters including serfs, princes, Gypsy girls, horse dealers, nomadic Tartars and garrulous storytellers, Leskov’s writing exuberantly fables the national character of his age. For the first time, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation brings Leskov’s original storytelling and irresistible voice to life.

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A. B. Guthrie Jr. is best known for his historical fiction; his classic novel The Way West earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Guthrie had the ability to create memorable yet believable characters, was skillful in his use of narration and point of view, and possessed a notable flair for describing the landscape of the American West. It is unsurprising, perhaps, that Guthrie also had a deft talent for short fiction. The Big It and Other Stories collects his diverse shorter tales, written between 1946 and 1960.Often relying on a few recorded facts as a springboard for his lively and sympathetic imagination, Guthrie explores many of his favorite themes—communion between man and nature, the test of manhood, resilience in the face of new or dangerous situations—with a sure and steady hand that always holds the reader’s interest. Full of humor and excitement, The Big It and Other Stories showcases Guthrie’s art in a new genre and spotlights the love for the West and for westerners that is the hallmark of his writing.

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In a dilapidated and isolated old house, something peculiar seems to happen whenever the town’s bestial exterminator visits. On a seemingly bucolic country estate, the head of the household is a living corpse obsessed with other corpses. An adolescent boy who passes his days in private dream worlds experiences a sexual awakening spurred by his family’s scandalous tenant. In these and other stories, the modernist writer Alexei Remizov offers a panorama of Russian mythology, the supernatural, rural grotesques, and profound religious faith in fiery revolutionary settings.Alexei Remizov was one of the greatest writers of the Russian symbolist movement of the early twentieth century. In the thirteen stories collected in this volume, his exceptional stylistic achievements are on full display. Equally drawing on rural colloquial speech, the language of Russian fairy tales, and the customs of the Old Believers and Russian Orthodoxy, they transport the reader into a mysterious world in between uncanny folktales and encroaching modernity. The Little Devil and Other Stories includes works from across Remizov’s career, encompassing his thematic preoccupations and stylistic experimentation. Antonina W. Bouis’s translation captures Remizov’s many registers to offer English-language readers a sampling of a remarkable Russian writer.

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This first ever queer history of St Ives weaves together biography with art and social history to shine new light on a pivotal era in the development of British modernism. At its centre is the sculptor John Milne (1931–1978), who arrived in the town in 1952 to work as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth. Hidden behind 20-foot-high granite walls, Milne’s house, Trewyn, became a meeting point for queer figures from the arts as well as the scene of legendary parties. The large cast – both queer and otherwise – featured in Queer St Ives and Other Stories includes artists Francis Bacon, Alan Lowndes, Marlow Moss, Patrick Procktor, Mark Tobey, Keith Vaughan and Brian Wall; Whitechapel Art Gallery director Bryan Robertson; actors Keith Barron and Richard Wattis; potter Janet Leach; and writers Tony Warren and Richard Blake Brown. There is also the extraordinary Julian Nixon, a queer Everyman whose involvement in the group has been little explored until now. Based on original interviews and previously unpublished letters and diaries, Queer St Ives and Other Stories reveals a fascinating, previously undocumented history, adding vital new insights into the history of this fabled Cornish art colony. Publication supported by the Paul Mellon Centre.

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Good-bye, Son and Other Stories, Janet Lewis’s only collection of short fiction, was first published in 1946, but remains as quietly haunting today as it was then. Set in small communities of the upper Midwest and northern California in the ’30s and ’40s, these midcentury gems focus on the quiet cycles connecting youth and age, despair and hope, life and death. A mother’s encounters with her deceased son, an aging woman sitting with the new knowledge of her troubled older sister’s death, and a teenager disillusioned by her own mortality are among the characters, mostly women and girls, whom Lewis delivers. Her understated style and knack for unadorned observation embed us with them as they reckon with the disquieting forces—incomprehensible and destructive to some, enlightening to others—that move us from birth, through life, to death. In the process, Lewis has crafted a paean to the living.

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Gripping stories of myth, folklore and magic:Two step-brothers share one nightmare; red gloves that reach for your throat; a changing room where a stranger asks to swap lives with you; and a ghost in the rain... An expert storyteller weaves nine spells. Fear mixed with wit, heart and magic.

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A boy is killed on a government minister's orders as part of his mission to clean up the country and others made complicit must explore their consciences; a youth gets ready to play his role in the country's lucrative kidnap business; a sister tries to make peace with the parents of the white American girl her brother has murdered; a gangster makes his posthumous lament: Trinidad in all its social tumult is ever present in these stories, but so too are the lives of those with private griefs: a woman mourning the still-birth of her child; a mother grieving the loss of her breasts and trying to protect her children from the knowledge of her cancer.The stories in this collection range across Trinidad's different ethnic communities; across rural and urban settings; include the moneyed elite (and the illicit sources of new wealth) and the poor scrabbling for survival; locals and expatriates; the certainties of rational knowledge bumps up against the mysteries of the unseen and the uncanny.What ties the collection together are not only the characters who thread their way across different stories, and the intensive focus on women's lives, but Sharon Millar's achievement of a distinctively personal voice: cool, unsentimental and empathetic; a keen sense of place and her ability to bring it to the reader's eyes. If irony is the only way to inscribe contemporary Trinidad, there is also room for both generous humour and the possibility of redemption.

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Whether set in the Jamaican past or the Miami present, whether dealing wittily with sexual errantry, inventively with manifestations of the uncanny (when Brother Belnavis tangles with a vampire), or disturbingly with teenage homophobia, Geoffrey Philp's second collection displays again the gold stamp of the born story-teller. But beyond their capacity to engage and entertain the reader, these are the multi-layered stories of a perceptive and humane observer of contemporary life. In particular, an acute empathy with troubled childhoods and adolescence offers adult readers a rewarding reconnection with the turbulence of earlier selves. There is great variety here – a lively mash-up of genres and styles. There are stories that work with quietly understated stealth – casual talk around a game of dominoes in 'Beeline Against Babylon' reveals a deep undercurrent of affection between father and son – and stories that have a ragga boldness and laugh-out-loud inventiveness, but throughout them all there runs the signature of an engaging personal voice.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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Set in the Caribbean - from Jamaica to Trinidad, Barbados to Dominica, the author's birthplace - this sparkling collection of stories from one of the Caribbean's foremost cultural activists is full of surprises, both in style and intent. Written across five decades, the characters and plots have a compelling intimacy and warmth that reflect the tragedies and triumphs of the region. As Colin Channer, the Jamaican writer and founder of the Calabash festival puts it: 'With this collection, he is allowing us into the attic and cellar of his imagination, where he has stored astonishing histories and legacies. We are all the richer for his generosity, storytelling, grace, and for the artistic impulse beating at these stories' heart.'

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With this newly translated version of The Running Boy, the fiction of Megumu Sagisawa makes its long-overdue first appearance in English. Lovingly rendered with a critical introduction by the translator, this collection of three stories, written in 1989, sits on the thinnest part of Japan's economic bubble and provides and cautionary glimpse into the malaise of its impending collapse. From the aging regulars of a shabby snack bar in "Galactic City" to the mental breakdowns of "A Slender Back," and the family secrets lurking within the title story between them, Sagisawa offers a trilogy of laser-focused character studies. Exploring dichotomies of past versus present, young versus old, life versus death, and countless shades of meaning beyond, she elicits vibrant commonalities of the human condition from some of its most ennui-laden examples. A curious form of affirmation awaits her readers, who may just come out of her monochromatic word paintings with more colorful realizations about themselves and the world at large. Such insight is rare in a writer so young, and this book is a fitting testament to her premature death, the legacy of which is sure to inspire a new generation of readers in the post-truth era.

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Julia Donaldson is the author of some of the world's best-loved children's books, including modern classics The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child, which together have sold over 17 million copies worldwide, and the hugely successful What the Ladybird Heard adventures. Julia also writes fiction, including the Princess Mirror-Belle books illustrated by Lydia Monks, as well as poems, plays and songs and her brilliant live shows are always in demand. She was Children's Laureate 201113 and has been honoured with a CBE for Services to Literature. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between West Sussex and Edinburgh.Axel Scheffler is a star illustrator whose instantly recognizable, warm and witty illustrations have achieved worldwide acclaim and numerous awards. In addition to his picture books, Axel is the illustrator of wonderful novelty and gift books for Macmillan, such as the bestselling The Bedtime Bear, The Tickle Book and Mo

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An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the fault-lines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales.

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Three Children's stories, linked by their Irish background and all withe the real Irish fairy-tale flavour. Written by Bryan Guinness and illustrated by Anne Yates, this collection was originally published in the 1950s and is reprinted as a facsimile.

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Everyone's favourite accident-prone dragon, Zog, is now available on CD with a whole host of fabulous friends! Join Zog and the Flying Doctors, The Smeds and The Smoos, Tiddler, The Scarecrows' Wedding and, of course, Zog in five fantastic stories and songs by the superstar duo, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. This gorgeous CD box-set is perfect for entertaining children on long car journeys, or for simply sharing stories at any time of the day. Five favourite stories from the superstar creators of The Gruffalo and Zog Each CD includes the full story, a listening game and song, all acted superbly by the incomparable Oscar-nominated Imelda Staunton The set includes Zog, Zog and the Flying Doctors, The Smeds and The Smoos, Tiddler and The Scarecrows' Wedding

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O Chonghui crafts historically-rooted yet timeless tales imagining core human experiences from a female point of view. Since her debut in 1968, she has formed a powerful challenge to the patriarchal literary establishment in Korea, and her work has invited rich comparisons with the achievements of Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, and Virginia Woolf. These nine stories range from O Chonghui's first published work, in 1968, to one of her last publications, in 1994. Her early stories are compact, often chilling accounts of family dysfunction, reflecting the decline of traditional, agrarian economics and the rise of urban, industrial living. Later stories are more expansive, weaving eloquent, occasionally wistful reflections on lost love and tradition together with provocative explorations of sexuality and gender. O Chonghui makes use of flashbacks, interior monologues, and stream-of-consciousness in her narratives, developing themes of abandonment and loneliness in a carefully cultivated, dispassionate tone. O Chonghui's narrators stand in for the average individual, struggling to cope with emotional rootlessness and a yearning for permanence in family and society. Arguably the first female Korean fiction writer to follow Woolf's dictum to do away with the egoless, self-sacrificing "angel in the house," O Chonghui is a crucial figure in the history of modern Korean literature, one of the most astute observers of Korean society and the place of tradition within it.

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A collection of stories about love from the New York Times bestselling author of Every Day and Two Boys Kissing. They met on a plane / at Starbucks / in class. It was a set-up / it was completely random / they were dancing. It was love at first sight / it took time / it was a disaster! Love is a complicated, addictive, volatile, scary, wonderful thing. Many of the stories in this collection started out as gifts for the author's friends. From the happy-ever-after to the unrequited, they explore the many aspects of the emotion that has at some time turned us all inside out and upside down. David Levithan is no stranger to exploring love in all its complexity and variety as showcased in Boy Meets Boy, Every Day, Another Day, and Two Boys Kissing. 'Every Day is a wonder: a wholly original premise racing along with a generous heart towards a perfect ending. The best YA makes a place for its readers, and there are few writers as warmly generous as David Levithan.' Patrick Ness, award-winning author of the Chaos Walking trilogy and A Monster Calls David is the New York Times best-selling author of Boy Meets Boy and Marly’s Ghost. While among his many collaborations are Will Grayson, Will Grayson with Fault in Our Stars author John Green, and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist with Rachel Cohn, which became a major film. Tiny Cooper from Will Grayson, Will Grayson, now has his own novel: Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story. David is also a highly respected children’s book editor, whose list includes many luminaries of children’s literature, including Garth Nix, Libba Bray and Suzanne Collins. He lives and works in New York.

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