Showing titles in Short Stories

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter...

Life is so unfair, and it sends many things to try Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs and pillar of the Institute of Romance Philology in the proud Bavarian city of Regensburg. There is the undeserved rise of his rival (and owner of a one-legged...

Journey across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe. Listen to the words of the Old Gods that ruled The Raven Tower. Learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls. And so much more, in this masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.

‘Brilliantly funny, emotional and uplifting’ Miranda Dickinson A funny and heartwarming debut for fans of Celia Imrie and Dawn French. Evie Gallagher is regretting her hasty move into a care home. She may be seventy-five and recently widowed, but she’s absolutely not dead yet. And so, one...

England is a maritime nation. Our folklore and history is peppered with tall tales of the high seas: mysteries of the great ocean, the unknown world beneath the surface of the salt sea, and the liminal coast where the sea-gods meet our lives on the land. Here is a collection of traditional folk tales from the coasts and seas of England. Lisa Schneidau retells the old stories with a contemporary twist: dragons and monsters, sailor heroes and ghost ships, mermaids and shapeshifters.

In this striking and bleak, yet luminous debut collection, Nathan Ballingrud, winner of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award, uses the trappings of the Gothic and the uncanny to investigate a distinctly American landscape: The loneliest and darkest corners of contemporary life. Ballingrud’s stories are love stories. They’re also monster stories. Sometimes the monsters collected here are vampires or werewolves.

“Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-twentieth-century common. [Just an Ordinary Day] is a gift to a new generation.”—San Francisco Chronicle Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill...

The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The listener decides.

Sleep-deprived fathers conjuring phantoms; sharp-toothed children and stolen skulls; persecuted young women drawn to self-immolation. Organized crime sits side-by-side with the occult in Buenos Aires—a place where reality and the supernatural fuse into strange, new shapes. These acclaimed gothic tales follow the wayward and downtrodden, revealing the scars of Argentina's dictatorship and the ghosts and traumas that have settled in the minds of its people. Provocative, brutal and uncanny, Things We Lost in the Fire is contemporary gothic at its darkest and best.

This sharp, funny collection of stories begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In Third Floor Rising' she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity. With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.

From the opening story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind - to sleep with another man - Antarctica draws you into a world of obsession, betrayal and fragile relationships.

King's brand new fiction title: a captivating collection of tales with dark - and light - twists from the master of this wonderful form. What would you do if your everyday world were turned upside down in an instant? Here are 12 riveting stories about relationships with unexpected twists. Be very careful what you wish for.

What is the real world? Does it exist, or is it merely a means of keeping another reality at bay? Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks...

This collection of twelve short stories will draw the listener into each story, whether it is Old Love, the tale of two undergraduates at Oxford in the thirties and their bitter rivalry that ends in a memorable love story or Broken Routine, which tells of an insurance claim advisor and his...

Iris Harper has lived in Pendleford for decades. The local witch is mistrusted by the townsfolk, but that doesn't stop some coming to her begging for potions, spells and quick-fixes. As time has marched on suddenly Iris is aware that her days are beginning to fade. Her sumptuous garden is turning against her, the sweet scent of rot potent and now a young girl has come begging for a solution at her door. Yet, the problem she brings causes Iris to remember a man from long ago - the man she loved, the man she could never trust.

The Plumberry School of Comfort Food by Cathy Bramley was originally published as a four-part serial. This is the complete story in one audiobook, read by Colleen Prendergast. Verity Bloom hasn't been interested in cooking anything more complicated than the perfect fish finger sandwich ever since she lost her best friend and baking companion two years ago. But an opportunity to help a friend lands her right back in the heart of the kitchen. The Plumberry School of Comfort Food is due to open in a few weeks' time....

The fourteen short stories in To Cut a Long Story Short show Jeffrey Archer’s great skills with a wide variety of character, of subject and of setting, but all with that trademark twist in the tale. Every reader will have their own favourites: the choices run from love at first sight across the train tracks to the cleverest of confidence tricks, from the quirks of the legal profession - and those who are able to manipulate both sides of the Bar - to the creative financial talents of a member of Her Majesty’s diplomatic service - but for a good cause.

All you need in order to get a great night’s sleep tonight is a story. See, as fast as the human race is evolving, we still haven’t discovered a more efficient way to help our brains relax and achieve a calmer mental state than good ole storytelling. If you are having trouble falling asleep, this audiobook is for you. It combines two magnificent bedtime stories with relaxing sounds of nature that will knock you out faster than any medication your doc has the authority to prescribe. Just a few minutes and you’ll be on your way to the best night’s sleep you’ve had in months.

Here We F--king Go (HWFG) is the much-anticipated follow up to Chris McQueer's hilarious, award-winning debut short story collection, Hings. In HWFG your fave Sammy gets a job, and Angie goes to Craig Tara. Plans are made to kick the f--k out of Kim Jong-Un. You'll find answers to the big questions in life: what happens when we die? What does Brexit actually mean? Why are moths terrifying? What are ghosts like to live with? It's just a load more short stories n that. hwfg x

A Twist of the Knife is Peter James’s gripping collection of thirty short stories, combining tales from Short Shockers: Collection One and Two. With each twist of the knife, a chilling new journey begins . . . From a woman intent on bizarre revenge to a restaurant critic with a morbid fear of...