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[[Category:New Reviews|Short Stories]]
[[Category:Short Stories|*]]__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Andrew Kaufman|title=The Tiny Wife|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It all begins with a bank robbery. Only this isn't your typical sort of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person in the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value that they have with them. These range from photographs and a key through to a calculator...and on taking these items he says he is also taking fifty percent of their souls, and it is up to the victims to find the way to get their souls back, or to die trying.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson|title=The Gloomster|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We've all been there. Finding fault with everything around us, and perhaps picking on one particular irritant that gets us so rattled, tetchy and narked all we can do is invoke "Hell and damnation!" down on all creation - including, of course, ourselves. After all, our lot is so bad it won't make anything much worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk- Remove -->}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lloyd JonesGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Man in the ShedAccidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The title is certainly attention-grabbing and I hoped that the book would live up to my expectations. It did. The man in 'The Man This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the Shed' is not blessed word: spellbinding with a name. His name (whatever it is) is not important or relevant to the tale. It's all about ''why'' he's its fantastical, magical elements and charming in the shed in the first placeits gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. This particular shed's in a garden of a house inhabited Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a family which includes the young narrator. It's pretty clear wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the marriage is going through a rocky patch right now. So who, you could reasonably wonder, is the odd one out here - the husband or the man in the shed. Jones tells us in his own way. He's a writer who catches your attention early, or he did in my case. No fancy statements or lazy cliches but good old plain English but with flairworld.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848544820</amazonuk>1804271470
}}
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=There's a bold statement Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on the front cover from, as it happens, one of my favourite authors, [[gritty realities:Category:A S Byatt|A S Byatt]] saying that Nooteboom is ''one of the greatest modern novelists'' so I thought that I was in for a treat. But I didn't enjoy the first short story. Not the greatest her settings include an abandoned field full of starts. I was disappointed disused refrigerators due to say the least an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and was wondering what a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all the fuss was aboutwithin Argentina. Then I started to read the story entitled ''Thunderstorm'' and things started to pick up. I appreciated The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the sparse and elegant language. Lines such as 'Five people at an outdoor cafe: two women ... supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a solitary black man ... a couple at a table nearby. Enough for a film.' How lovely and evocative is that last line, I'm thinking. I read it twice as it was so goodsimilarly tangible texture.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050230</amazonuk>1803511230
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Last FlingWhite Nights|rating=45
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Sue Gee is well known for her novelsAs always in Dostoyevsky, but this the character work is her first collection of short storiessublime. Short story collections are not for everyone. I've always enjoyed them since they fit easily into One is never left wondering what a busy life, leaving you character is thinking or feeling as if you've lived through a whole story in just a short space of timebecause Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. It's easier to find the time for a quick story sometimes than to sit down with a four hundred page novel!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773061</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen SimpsonAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=In-Flight EntertainmentAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=I am always thrilled to see that Helen Simpson has brought out a ''Opening up new book. I am a big fan ways of thinking about the shape of her crisp, funny, observant short storiesthings to come. So I picked up 'In Flight Entertainment' with some anticipation. I was not disappointed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546124</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dorothy ParkerB0CDZRGT1M|title=The SexesSuper Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C Wallfisch|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=From the young woman who examined her handkerchief in ''Got a minute detailto be amused, entertained, to the soldieror challenged?'''s leave which didn't live up to expectation, through the thoughts of the early hours of the morning to the actress who proved a disappointment to her fan and on to the glorious culmination of the child who should never have been called Lolita we have five wonderful These 100 stories are super short stories. They're None is more than 300 words. You can read one in a book thatflash.''''s no bigger than most Some are funny. Some are poignant. All are short stories but buy it and it could well be the best buy that you make this year.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014119619X</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William StyronRachel Harrison|title=The Suicide RunBad Dolls
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=A WW2 naval soldierIt's been some time since I've read any horror. I had a couple of misspent teen years reading Stephen King, guarding borrowing the books from a prison island boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly with them to the point that I couldn't shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear of the vampires outside! Don't worry - this short story collection isn't like that! It doesn't have those found guilty at courtmartialsjump scares, is forced and I didn't have to wonder if he read it during daylight hours only! But it is winning his own battles against those arriving creepy, and leaving. A soldier remembers calming memoriesI found most of that feeling came from the fact that these are stories about women, living normal lives, and those causing tensionthat at least in part, the horrors arises from very normal situations such as he rests up before action. And for a highly-charged young manbreakup, trying a new dieting app, there may be too much risk going to be found in his high-octane downtimea hen party and a coping with grief.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532220</amazonuk>1803363932
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John SaundersB0CCCVRSGX|title=The Vernham ChroniclesStories 2|author=Richard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=HumourShort Stories|summary=Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale This is the little village Richard F Walker's second volume of Vernhamshort stories. Anyone who lives There are thirteen in a village will recognise it immediately, with its cobbled streets all and Tudor buildingsI took something from each of them. There was some damage during isn't a single one that doesn't deserve to be among the war (which might, others or might not have been brings down to a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps have been filled with some beautiful, er, mock Tudor buildingsoverall quality. Almost unique and nearly beautiful as the village isIt can be tricky to review short stories without giving too much away, itso I's not the star of The Vernham Chroniclesll just pick two to talk about and I think they give a general flavour. The stars are the people who live in Vernham.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907499598</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1739593901
|title=22 Ideas About The Future
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.''
I've got a couple of confessions to make. I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and then forget to return to the book. There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are purely incidental. So, what did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it. }}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris CoadyB09XZMCDVF|title=The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes: 13 tantalising tales|author=Richard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=It ''A news vendor is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful detective character will have far too many cases crying out the headlines in his career for it to be at all realistic. The worst case in point are the Hardy Boys, who have had two hundred or more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literary, but no less busy it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed many times that middle of the night; a wheelchair user loses touch with reality when he did not write down all that man's exploits. Tony Reynolds here gives us eight more cases, making Holmes' workload even more impressive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685618</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Polly Samson|title=Perfect Lives|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The eleven short stories tries walking around in Perfect Lives are about his imagination; a group of people living stickler for correct grammar goes back in time to correct an English seaside town. Each story of challenged relationships, devastating discoveries and objects and people with iconic quote; a history is carefully and beautifully crafted, stands alone and works well in its own right, but volunteer teacher proves the connections between all the stories offer an extra, fascinating dimension. Each story made me want ideal person to look at the others again to understand how they all connect, to piece together the different bits of people's lives have around in each story. This format also offers an opportunity to see some of a lawless village; the characters from several different perspectives, and perhaps make the short stories more satisfying to those who are dissatisfied by their brevity, as some of the same characters reappear, so offering some of the advantages of the novel while staying in the short story form. There are four stories told in new boy on the first person by an unnamed woman who pub football team is married very useful with two young sons, and then one of her sons has a story of his own (Ivan Knows). There are a variety of narrative viewpoints – women, menfeet, a little boy, a teenage girl, first and third person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1860499929</amazonuk>}}awfully familiar…''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1737030942|authortitle=Sheila Bag O'FlanaganGoodies|titleauthor=A Season to RememberJolly Walker Bittick
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionAnthologies|summary=We first meet the Lodge ownersSometimes, you deserve a likable couple. They find running their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating treat and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date so mine was Jolly Walker Bittick's ''Bag O'Flanagan gets in the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early onGoodies''. As the festive season loomsI first encountered his writing about a year ago, the unthinkable has happened. Empty rooms. They're not used to empty roomswhen I read his [[Cape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick|Cape Henry House]], at any time a rollicking tale of the yearwhat happens when five young men find a base for their partying. Normally the Lodge is Right now, I didn't want a full house-length novel, so I turned to this anthology of verse and short stories. But then a slow and steady trickle starts as our characters book in Bittick's writing has matured - and the story starts proper, so to speakhave his characters. Well...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>most of them!
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Mortimer1529418100|title=Rumpole at ChristmasBruno's Challenge and Other Dordogne Tales|author=Martin Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This I'm not usually a fan of short stories - I find it all too easy to put the book is as slim as one down between stories and forget to pick it up again - but I am a fan of RumpoleMartin Walker's [[Martin Walker's beloved packets of cigars and it can also be read Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries in Chronological Order|Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the time it takes an average turkey temptation to read ''Bruno's Challenge'' was hard to cook in the oven on Christmas Dayresist and I'm rather glad that I didn't even try. A handful of festive, short stories is covered in this book with its appealing front cover. Most of For those new to the stories have been previously published elsewhereseries, mainly in there'The Strand Magazines an excellent introduction that will tell you all you need to know about who' but also s who and the background to why Bruno is in some of the national newspapersSt Denis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039779</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Raymond CarverB08NF79QXT|title=BeginnersCherry Blossom Boutique|author=Brooke Adams|rating=4.53|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary= One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholicThirty-one-year old Liberty Rossini has had her shop, the Cherry Blossom Boutique, for just six months when she's nominated for - and wins - the Retail Best Newcomer Award. Carver She's characters tend to drink excessively, delighted and his stories often examine the negative impact of drinking on his central charactertwo people she's relationshipsbrought with her to the event couldn't be more pleased. But nowadays Sonja, her mother, what we talk about when we talk about Carver is the role of his editoran ex-model and Brazilian: you can see where Liberty got her looks from. Jessica's thirty-four and Liberty's best friend: they've known each other since university and Liberty adores Jessica's husband, Charles and their four-year-old daughter, Gordon LishAva. Life would be perfect for Liberty if it wasn't for one thing: she misses having a man in her life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540320</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colm ToibinB08KKQ85FN|title=The Empty Family|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=In his first book since the pitch-perfect [[Brooklyn by Colm Toibin|Brooklyn]], Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme of exile and homecoming in his new collection of short stories, 'The Empty Family'. As the title suggests, many of the stories also revolve around family relationships, and their sweet and sour Nature.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918172</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBut Never For Lunch|author=Kurt Vonnegut|title=Look at the BirdieSandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Kurt Vonnegut died ''If a couple of years ago after woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a sci fi writing career spanning over fifty years; he was well-known for his humanist views. This collection of unpublished short stories shows Vonnegut at his dark bestRottweiler in lipstick, his theme, individuals out for themselves in an uncaring society. A colleague at The Bookbag [[Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut|recently wrote]] that Kurt Vonnegut's early writing is his strongest. If that is soAmbassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the company of carrion crows or, then this collectionmore to the point, illustrated with cartoons by about to discover the author, will be good news for real world of bus timetables and paying his many fansown gas bills.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548852</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lydia DavisB08CHJLNBS|title=The Collected Short Stories of Lydia DavisCapturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=53|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=As you might expect with short storiesHe's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a partner at Wickham Jones, the themes are as varied as Mayfair letting agents. She's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in the heritage library next door. Emilia has read [[The Secret by Rhonda Byrne|The Fears of Mrs OrlandoSecret]] but she' to s moved on from new age books like that, which leave you dependent on someone else'Mothers' and of courses philosophies, I have my own particular favouritesto something a little deeper. Most Charles is more of these short stories cover a couple of pages[[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, but others are merely a sentence or two, above all, he's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian''. AndThey're obviously not at all compatible, for me, the less on the page, the more impart the words usually haveso why can Charles not get this woman out of his mind? She's not his usual type at all: it's obvious to his friends. In short (no pun intended) there would seem And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to be something for everyone in these 700+ pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114504X</amazonuk>him? The relationship's obviously a non-starter, isn't it?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kelly LinkMarie O'Regan and Paul Kane (editors)|title=Pretty MonstersCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales|rating=34.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=It goes without sayingCurses. They're there throughout tales of faery and other fantastical folk – people being cursed to do this, but the greatest thing about fantasy fiction is or not to be able to do that one . Children can go anywhere with itbe cursed, as can princesses on the verge of marrying, and do anythingolder people too. So It seems in a young man can easily try and dig his girlfriend up and retrieve some poetry he romantically left with her - only to have a hairy evening as a resultway there's no escaping it. There can be Which is why the theme of this book of short stories is such a psychic link between a young ladstandout – we may well think we know all there is to know about this accursed character, called Onion and doomed to die in a terrorist attackthat demonised place, and his cousin while she works as slave in an odd community of wizardsthat other bewitched person. Several worlds can We'd be accessed through an elderly woman's handbag, for better or worsevery wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847677843</amazonuk>1789091500
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=A L KennedyStibbe_Xmas|title=What BecomesAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesHumour|summary=Christmas – the time of traditional trauma. You're three stories into this collection and two people only have cut their hands open preparing food - to think about the turkey for that – once upon a man with love drooping away from his marriagetime it was leaving it sat on the downstairs loo to defrost overnight, making soupand if that failed the hair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. Nowadays it's all having to make sure it's suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that you can go and visit it, and anotherget too friendly with it to want to eat it. Christmas, a greengrocerthough, preparing stock and thinking about his own relationship. But there is no pattern to thatof course also a time of great boons. Four stories It's cash in hand for a lot of plump people who can hire red suits and there have been two bursts of non-sequitur comedy. Why your fruit might be ruined by stray fingersbeards, and it was always a godsend for postmen with all the thoughts of thank-you letters to aunties you saw twice a woman decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a flotation tankchild, remembering Doctor Who, locked parental doors - and as for the urban myths makers of gerbils. But there's still no pattern - Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and that's sell them any other time of the point of these combined stories. Life and all of its emotions does not live to rule.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009949406X</amazonuk>year?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0954899520|title=A Winter Book
|author=Tove Jansson
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In her home country of Finland – Tove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and no doubt throughout much later becoming television characters of the rest of Europe which is not quite so sniffy about foreign literature as Britain tends to be – Jansson is generally recognised as an author of talentsimplicity, skill, verve naivety and wit sheer 'goodness' that extended far beyond the Moomin Troll would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, simple stories , simple goodness. What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was a serious writer…that she wrote for which she is best known in this country. Those children's books were first published in England sixty years ago and have remained in print ever since (adults as well as being adapted children…and that she had a feeling for just about every other medium going), the natural world and a joy they are too, the simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but it is only recently that we have been granted went far beyond any fantasy of how the pleasures of reading her fiction for adultsworld might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095489958X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Grisham1911115847|title=Ford CountyNights of the Creaking Bed|author=Toni Kan
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=When I think ''Nights of John Grisham I tend to think firstly the Creaking Bed'' is a collection of lawyersshort stories by Toni Kan. Well, actually, I think The series of stories tell of Tom Cruise first to be honest, the lives and then the whole lawyer thing. I expect surprising twists lusts of an assortment of characters living in and longaround Lagos, detailed plotsNigeria. This Nigeria, in this collection, however, is a book imbued with its very own heart of short stories so has to work differentlydarkness. There isn't room within Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a short story for wrong look. Kan writes with a lengthy, twisting plot, vitality and so Grisham has to rely on other skills to make them work. My feeling was passion that some do and some don't. Set in America's Deep South all the allows these cynical stories revolve around to achieve a rather mixed bag glimmer of characters from Ford County, with hope.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529014484|title=Exhalation |author=Ted Chiang|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Over the everpast twenty-present lawyers but also gamblerseight years, murderersTed Chiang has published fifteen science fiction short stories, con artists, drunks and scoundrelsthese magnificent stories have won twenty-seven major science fiction awards so if you are a science fiction fan it is likely that you have already come across some of the work by Ted Chiang. If you haven't then take this opportunity to do so now. Trust me; your imagination will be grateful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099545780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Harvey1794467440|title=A Darker Shade of BlueWatchwords |author=Philip Neal|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=There are eighteen This satisfying collection of short stories covering has a provenance at least as beguiling as the East Midlands, those parts provenance of London you'd generally really rather avoid and rural East Anglia. You'll see broken families, revenge killings, prostitution and drugs. There's corruption – not unusual when you have an overstretched police force and underpaid men and women staffing the antique watches that inspired it. And then there are the people who, in spite of everything, fight for justice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548232</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Feaver1529006031|title=Love Me TenderReturn to Wonderland|author=Various Authors
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=A woman remembers her dead husband playing Love Me Tender (In following a young girl called Alice down the song made famous by Elvis Presley) on his tenor horn. She is in rabbit hole a dazefew years ago, feeling when the grief first book she was in [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (150th Anniversary Edition) by Lewis Carroll and Anthony Browne|hit 150 years of age]], I found that I didn't really find too much favour with it. The wacky-for-the bereaved widow she is-sake-of-it did not gel, and I don't remember loving it more as a child. But I would suggest I am the betrayal of perfect audience for this book. I had every chance to enjoy these short stories that come at the deceived wifecore from a tangent, and that show the guilt benefits of having murdered himthe oblique glance. The title story of this collection is all I've always preferred coming to an author's output through their least obvious, allegedly throw-away pieces, and it's the same with franchises – I'd more moving and startling because likely go for Bree Tanner's short novella than the whole Twilight saga (although that remains just a hunch, for obvious reasons). For another thing, there was every reason to expect some kind of its understated stylegreatness here – with Carroll much loved by millions, and what is not said as well as what is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521288</amazonuk>surely pieces written with that love in mind could only provide for success after success?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aravind Adiga1846974658|title=Between the AssassinationsThe Long Path To Wisdom|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''Between On my travels around the Assassinations'' is world, I have a collection of short stories set in the fictional South Indian town of Kittur, which is almost certainly Mangalore (where the Adiga grew tendency to end up). But the plight of the residents can be found in any Indian city bookshop that is selling English- which language books, and while I buy as many second-hand escapist tales as the next person, what I imagine is Adiga's point of setting it in a fictional location. The twelve stories are vaguely interlinked (there are some recurring characters) but m really looking for the most part the stories stand alone. The time period is set between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and 'local' – the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991cookbook maybe, although like the locationmaps definitely, but above all: the time period and the assassinations of the title have little bearing on the events themselvesfolk tales. If I ever get to Burma, I won't need to hunt, I can read before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871236</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David EaglemanB077969HN8|title=Sum: Tales from the Afterlives|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAlternative Medicine|author=James Lasdun|title=It's Beginning To HurtLaura Solomon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=ItLaura Solomon's Beginning to Hurt is publisher describes the short stories in ''Alternative Medicine'' as ''black comedy with a twist of surrealism''. I'm rather glad that I didn't see this until ''after'' I'd finished reading as I'm not normally a collection fan of sixteen short storieseither, all bound together by but I've come to two conclusions about the book: what the theme of hurt in various formspublisher says is correct - and I really enjoyed it. It The comedy is James Lasdunnot ''s third collection too'' black and the surrealism is gentle and perhaps best described as a twist or flick of short stories and, chances are, if reality when you were least expecting it. Your comfort zones are a fan of going to be invaded in the short story then you will have read something by him beforenicest possible way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512327</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Porter9386897504|title=The Theory Tales of Light Love and MatterDisability|author=Laura Solomon
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Both the book cover and its title are enticing, quirky, eye-catching. Personally, I'm ve always believed that less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a fan great deal of most things American including American fiction, so I couldn't wait skill and talent to start readingwrite a short story which holds the reader and keeps them coming back for more. I was not disappointed. Porter introduces us There are far too many collections of short stories which are all too easy to characters, many put down and forget after you've read a couple of whom would probably be described as deeply flawedpieces. He shares the darker side I've recently read a couple of modernnovellas by Laura Solomon -day American life with the reader - which is far from the bright lights of glitzy New York or the sun-drenched beaches of California. You could say that this is all about real life. To underline his point, Porter[[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] and [[Hell's Unveiling by Laura Solomon|Hell's characters are mostly local folks (Unveiling]] and enjoyed them, so I was intrigued to use a favourite American word) shuffling through life as best they cansee what she could do with an even shorter form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408982X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Kelman1986586898|title=If it is Your LifeGoing To The Last: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=K D Knight|rating=34.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In the opening story, a man whose wife has deserted him visits Sandown with little money but comes away with cash in his pocket - and his wife. In ''If This Is Your LifeA Grey Day'' an owner struggles with the problem of whether or not to run his horse in the Gold Cup when the ground is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writingagainst him. Kelman doesn My favourite was ''t really do The Story of H'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story that gives its title of Foinavon. H is depicted as a kind horse who only wanted to this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about please people . After changing hands on various occasions he came to the edge yard of societyJohn Kempton. H (or Foinavon) was entered in the Grand National and considered a no-hoper. He addresses issues such as class In one of the most dramatic runnings of the race, politicsa pile-up occurred at the 23rd fence. Foinavon, genderwho had been many lengths adrift, age cleared the fence and ill healthgalloped to the line, winning the race at odds of 100/1.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142423</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Golden (Editor)9386897296|title=Zombie: An Anthology of the Undead|rating=5|genre=Horror|summary=Anyone who enjoys a good horror story and likes zombie films will love this book, which is a collection of nineteen short stories by a variety of authors. I have to admit that I have only heard of one of the authors before - [[:Category:Mike Carey|Mike Carey]], who writes the [[The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor) by Mike Carey|Felix Castor]] novels - but I am not an avid reader of the genre and donHell't doubt that the authors will be known to readers more familiar with it. Despite this unfamiliarity, I thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories, with just one or two seemingly not up to scratch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749952539</amazonuk>}} {{newreviews Unveiling|author=Katie Fforde (Editor) and Sue Moorcroft (Editor)|title=Loves Me, Loves Me NotLaura Solomon|rating=43.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=What A little while ago I really enjoyed [[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] and I was delighted by the opportunity to read the sequel, ''Hell's Unveiling''. It's probably not much of a feast is presented spoiler to say that Marsha bested the devil in these forty stories from well-loved and prolific romantic authors''Marsha's Deal'', celebrating but the fiftieth anniversary devil is not one to take defeat lying down. He's out to wage war on Planet Earth and particularly on Marsha (who's thought of the Romantic Novelistsas a 'goody two shoes' Associationin Hell). In Although a Whostrong person, she's Who vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. Daniel is framed for a crime he didn't commit and sent to juvenile detention and refused permission to return to live with Marsha. Then, of the genrecourse, there are writers from every age group, including one or two all the other children who might even have been founder members are not only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to the RNAdevil's evil ends. He's out to prey on their fears and weaknesses and as with many foster children, back in 1960their self-esteem is very fragile. My advice This is to sip through no small-scale operation, either - the stories slowlydevil has set up a training complex on earth, rather than gobbling them up quickly and suffering from indigestioncomplete with an elevator to Hell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303373</amazonuk>
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