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{|class-"wikitable" cellpadding="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE--> <!-- Davidson -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:150690551X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/150690551X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Roses in December by Matthew de Lacey Davidson]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] You don''Roses in December'' is a collection of twenty-two short stories. And when I say short, I mean ''short'', with each just a few pages long and some brushing the flash fiction genre, such is the brevity. I think the shorter the story, the harder it is to write and the more difficult the task of engaging, then satisfying, the reader. So it is to the immense credit of Matthew de Lacey Davidson t get many better opening sentences than that I sighed in appreciation many times while reading. He has a good sense of which moments of the human experience to capture in order to make the point he wants to make. Some highlights: [[Roses in December by Matthew de Lacey Davidson|Full Review]] <!-- Onymouse -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Onymouse_Quick.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1788039122/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Quick and Quirky: Short Stories with Quips! by Fred Onymouse and Ann Onymouse]]=== [[image:1.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] Quick, and indeed, quirky, are positive attributes, I'm sure do you'd agree – apart from perhaps in surgeons. I like things that have a quirk, ? We first met His Excellency and I approve of the quicky. IThe Ambassador've been dabbling s Wife in the world of creative writing for a few years now, and whenever anyone asks what it is I mostly write, I define it with the catch-all safety net of ''flippant''. So this book should be right up my street, being as it is a bijou selection of illustrated and fairly large-print short stories. [[Quick and QuirkySorting the Priorities: Short Stories with Quips! by Fred Onymouse Ambassadress and Ann Onymouse|Full Review]] <!-- Hill -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Hill_Strange.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/147322117X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=147322117X]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Strange Weather Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Joe Hill]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Horror|Horror]], [[:Category:FantasySandra Aragona|Fantasy]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Strange Weather is a collection of four short novels all linked by, unsurprisingly, strange and cataclysmic weather. Each novel is distinct and showcases Hill's restrained yet vivid style which takes everyday events and makes them bitingly, acerbically macabre or blindingly beautiful, often switching from one sentence to Sorting the next. As Hill himself says ''the beauty of the world and the horror of the world were twined together'', never is this truer than in Strange Weather where moments of abject horror are coupled with raw beauty. [[Strange Weather by Joe Hill|Full Review]] <!-- Stibbe -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Stibbe_Xmas.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0241309824?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0241309824Priorities]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[An Almost Perfect Christmas by Nina Stibbe]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Humour|Humour]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] Christmas – the time of traditional trauma. You only have to think about the turkey for that – once upon a time it was leaving it sat on the downstairs loo to defrost overnight, and if that failed the hair-dryer shoved inside we learned what it treatment was your next best bet. Nowadays it's all having like to make sure it's suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that you can go and visit it, and get too friendly with it to want to eat it. Christmas, though, is of course also a time of great boons. It's cash in hand for a lot of plump people who can hire red suits and beards, it was always a godsend for postmen with all the thank-you letters to aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, and as for the makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and sell them any other time of the year? [[An Almost Perfect Christmas by Nina Stibbe|Full Review]] <!-- Dick -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Dick_Electric.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473223288?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1473223288]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by Philip K Dick]]=== [[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Science Fiction|Science Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] Philip K Dick's stories were originally published in the 50s, Italian Government but they are more present than past. On the big screen ''Blade Runner 2049'' relaunched the Dick-inspired cult classic time has come for HE to reviews of pure praise; retires and on slightly smaller screens, Channel 4 has adapted the author's short stories for TV. Startlingly, Dick's current relevance reaches beyond fiction and into the factual: his topics from intrusive advertising and loss of privacy Sandra Aragona to the increasing machination become The Wife of society are all headline material in today's news. It is as if half a century after their inception, Dick's electric dreams are becoming reality. [[Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams by Philip K Dick|Full Review]] <!-- Mettler -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Mettler_15Former Ambassador.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/191158636X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=191158636X]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Fifteen Minutes by Erinna Mettler]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] Our world is obsessed with celebrity culture - and in this advent of social media, the updates on celebrity come 24 hours a day, delivered to us on our televisions, our magazines, on our phones and our computers. In focusing on these heightened and airbrushed lives though, are we missing the more interesting and human stories that are out there? That's what Erinna Mettler considers in ''15 Minutes'' - short stories that feature celebrity encounters told through the eyes of ordinary, but no less compelling, characters. [[Fifteen Minutes by Erinna Mettler|Full Review]] <!-- Hodgkinson -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Hodgkinson_Dark.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273824/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: They have left;"|===[[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North by Sjon Hodgkinson Career and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)]]=== [[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Anthologies|Anthologies]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] A compilation like this should be nigh on brilliant. It's not one author's best short works, it's that of a dozen. It's not from one snapshot settled in time, as some were written the year of publication and some in the 1960sRome. It Well 's not from one tiny patch of authorsettled's desk or one set of laptop keys, but from the entire Nordic world, whether that be urban Scandinavia, rather overstates the Faroes situation and other island groupstheir dog, or Greenland. That is a world that's changing – as the Greenland-born author now living in BrooklynBeagle, and the Iraqi blood on these pages, testify. It's a world where new roads and new building works mean a family living on the edge has no intention of the forest at the beginning of the story are being surrounded by other life by the end, and with the influence of centuries of folklore featured, a lot more than that changes – sometimes it seems to be even the characters' species… [[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North by Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)|Full Review]] <!-- Solomon -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Solomon_Taking.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/8193409353/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Taking Wainui by Laura Solomon]]=== [[image:2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] This is the first slowing down any time I have come across Laura Solomon's worksoon, a New Zealand writer who has won writing prizes for both her fiction despite being sixteen and poetry. Although this book appears to be a collection of short stories, I found its format somewhat confusingdeaf. [[Taking Wainui by Laura Solomon|Full Review]] <!-- STEVEN -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Steven_Winter.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1910674508/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Winter Tales by Kenneth Steven]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] Upon opening this book you are presented with an eclectic collection of twelve short stories centred around a common theme of Winter. You are taken around the world as you read stories set in a variety of places from Helsinki to New York, Germany to Russia. Kenneth Steven cleverly utilises a key component of short stories - that you can read each story in one sitting - to his advantage as he gives each story an individual focal subject, such as bullying, ensuring that you are reading a distinct story every time you open the book. [[Winter Tales by Kenneth Steven|Full Review]]  <!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->|} {{newreview|author= Roald Dahl|title= Fear|rating= 5|genre= Short Stories|summary=Do you enjoy being scared? Featuring fourteen classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales of ghostly goings-on will have you shivering with fear as you turn the pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405933216</amazonuk>

{{Frontpage<!-- Dahl -->|isbn=B08CHJLNBS[[image:Dahl_War.jpg|lefttitle=Capturing Emilia|linkauthor=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1405933194?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creativeBrooke Adams|rating=6738&creativeASIN=1405933194]]3|genre===[[War by Roald Dahl]]===Women's Fiction [[image:5star.jpg|linksummary=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]He's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a partner at Wickham Jones, the Mayfair letting agents. She's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in the heritage library next door. Emilia has read [[:Category:AutobiographyThe Secret by Rhonda Byrne|AutobiographyThe Secret]] In warbut she's moved on from new age books like that, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahlwhich leave you dependent on someone else's time as philosophies, to something a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales little deeper. Charles is more of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity. a [[War Personal by Roald DahlLee Child|Full ReviewJack Reacher]]<br> {{newreview|author= Roald Dahl|title= Trickery|rating= 5|genre= Short Stories|summary=How underhand could you be to man himself, but, above all, he's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian''. They're obviously not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get what you wantthis woman out of his mind? In these ten tales of dark and twisted trickery Roald Dahl reveals that we are She's not his usual type at our smartest and most cunning when we set out all: it's obvious to deceive others - and, sometimes, even ourselveshis friends. Here And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, among others, youwhy does she feel drawn to him? The relationship'll read of the married couple and the parting gift which rocks their marriage, the light fingered hitchs obviously a non-hiker and the grateful motoriststarter, and discover why the serious poacher keeps a few sleeping pills in his arsenal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405933232</amazonuk>isn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Roald DahlMarie O'Regan and Paul Kane (editors)|title= InnocenceCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales|rating= 4.5|genre= Short StoriesFantasy|summary=What makes us innocent Curses. They're there throughout tales of faery and how other fantastical folk – people being cursed to do we come this, or not to be able to lose it? Featuring do that. Children can be cursed, as can princesses on the autobiographical stories telling verge of Roald Dahlmarrying, and older people too. It seems in a way there's boyhood and youth as well as four further tales no escaping it. Which is why the theme of innocence betrayed, Dahl touches on the joys and horrors this book of growing up. Among other short storiesis such a standout – we may well think we know all there is to know about this accursed character, you'll read about the wager that destroys a girl's faith in her fatherdemonised place, the landlady who has plans for her unsuspecting young guest and the commuter who is horrified to discover that a fellow passenger once bullied him at schoolother bewitched person. We'd be very wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405933259</amazonuk>1789091500

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tania HershmanStibbe_Xmas|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe

|genre=Short Stories Humour|summary=I wonChristmas – the time of traditional trauma. You only have to think about the turkey for that – once upon a time it was leaving it sat on the downstairs loo to defrost overnight, and if that failed the hair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. Nowadays it't be alone in stating s all having to make sure it's suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that reading short story collections you can be slightly awkwardgo and visit it, and get too friendly with it to want to eat it. Going through from A-ZChristmas, though, witnessing is of course also a bounty time of ideas and characters great boons. It's cash in short order hand for a lot of plump people who can be too muchhire red suits and beards, but do it was always a godsend for postmen with all the thank-you have the right letters to pick aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, and choose according to what appealsas for the makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and what sell them any other time you have to fillof the year? The sequence has carefully been considered}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0954899520|title=A Winter Book|author=Tove Jansson|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, surely. Such would appear to be written in the case here. The last time I read one 1940s and later becoming television characters of this authorthe simplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness's collectionsthat would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]simple stories, simple goodness. What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was a serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a feeling for the only real difficulty was holding back natural world and rationing them, but here you the simple life that not only get a whopping forty pieces informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of writing, they are also spread into sectionshow the world might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Kelman1911115847|title=That Was a Shiver, and Other StoriesNights of the Creaking Bed|author=Toni Kan|rating=3.54|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=This ''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is the ninth book a collection of short stories by Toni Kan. The series of stories tell of the lives and lusts of an assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria, in this authorcollection, which means he's presented just as many collections is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the short form as he has novelsshadows and people are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. You will find it hard Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to think achieve a glimmer of another hope.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529014484|title=Exhalation |author that =Ted Chiang|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Over the past twenty-eight years, Ted Chiang has been published fifteen science fiction short stories, these magnificent stories have won twenty-seven major science fiction awards so noted for longer works (what with [[How Late It Was, How Late if you are a science fiction fan it is likely that you have already come across some of the work by James KelmanTed Chiang. If you haven't then take this opportunity to do so now. Trust me; your imagination will be grateful.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1794467440|title=Watchwords |How Late It Was, How Late]] winning author=Philip Neal|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=This satisfying collection of short stories has a provenance at least as beguiling as the Booker) but who is so generous in presenting shorter pieces for provenance of the time-poor, or those antique watches that inspired it. Philip Neal lost a watch. It was a watch he was fond of and had been told was like me who see the variety in a writer1930s Cartier. Instead of mourning its loss, he began to collect vintage watches that resembled it. And that's short or less typical works how he became a watch collector. An eBay purchase led him to be the more interesting places to turnAntique Watch Company watch repairers in Clerkenwell. Opening these pagesThe eBay purchase was a fake, from but the pen friendship that grew between the buyer and the repairer of watches was not and the seed of such an esteemed pro, came with no small sense of anticipationidea for a book was born.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786890909</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529006031|title=Return to Wonderland

|title= A Change Is Gonna Come|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensShort Stories|summary= In following a young girl called Alice down the rabbit hole a few years ago, when the 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'A Change Is Gonna Comet really find too much favour with it. The wacky-for-the-sake-of-it did not gel, and I don'' is an anthology of t remember loving it more as a child. But I would suggest I am the perfect audience for this book. I had every chance to enjoy these short stories and poems interpreting that come at the core from a tangent, that show the theme benefits of change by twelve BAME writersthe oblique glance. It I've always preferred coming to an author's Stripes Publishingoutput through their least obvious, allegedly throw-away pieces, and it's response to the under-representation of BAME authors in the UK. And itsame with franchises – I'd more likely go for Bree Tanner's short novella than the whole Twilight saga (although that remains just a great responsehunch, for obvious reasons).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847158390</amazonuk> For another thing, there was every reason to expect some kind of greatness here – with Carroll much loved by millions, surely pieces written with that love in mind could only provide for success after success?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Helen Stancey1846974658|title= The Madonna of the PoolLong Path To Wisdom|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker|rating= 3.54|genre= Short Stories|summary= In most short story collectionsOn my travels around the world, an overarching theme I have a tendency to end up in any bookshop that is usually present in each of selling English-language books, and while I buy as many second-hand escapist tales as the narratives which help each story gently flow in to next person, what I'm really looking for is the next. In this debut collection Helen Stancey explores 'local' – the quiet disappointmentscookbook maybe, achievementsthe maps definitely, and complications that each of us experience through everyday lifebut above all: the folk tales. She draws attention If I ever get to Burma, I won't need to the small events and decisions that hunt, I can both disrupt and significantly alter the lives of others and ourselves, all while maintaining a delicately poetic tone throughoutread before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1912054000</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B077969HN8|title=Alternative Medicine|author=Joanna WalshLaura Solomon|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Laura Solomon's 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 fan of either, but I've come to two conclusions about the book: what the publisher says is correct - and I really enjoyed it. The comedy is not ''too'' black and the surrealism is gentle and perhaps best described as a twist or flick of reality when you were least expecting it. Your comfort zones are going to be invaded in the nicest possible way.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=9386897504|title=Worlds from Tales of Love and Disability|author=Laura Solomon|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=I've always believed that less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a great deal of skill and talent to write a short story which holds the Wordreader and keeps them coming back for more. There are far too many collections of short stories which are all too easy to put down and forget after you've read a couple of pieces. I've recently read a couple of novellas by Laura Solomon - [[Marsha's EndDeal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] and [[Hell's Unveiling by Laura Solomon|Hell's Unveiling]] and enjoyed them, so I was intrigued to see what she could do with an even shorter form. }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1986586898|title=Going To The Last: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=K D Knight|rating=4.5|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 ''A Grey Day'' an owner struggles with the problem of whether or not to run his horse in the Gold Cup when the ground is against him. My favourite was ''The Story of H'', the story of Foinavon. H is depicted as a kind horse who only wanted to please people. After changing hands on various occasions he came to the yard of John Kempton. H (or Foinavon) was entered in the Grand National and considered a no-hoper. In one of the most dramatic runnings of the race, a pile-up occurred at the 23rd fence. Foinavon, who had been many lengths adrift, cleared the fence and galloped to the line, winning the race at odds of 100/1.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=9386897296|title=Hell's Unveiling|author=Laura Solomon

|summary=We here at The Bookbag liked this authorA little while ago I really enjoyed [[Marsha's fairly recent collection of short stories, [[Vertigo Deal by Joanna WalshLaura Solomon|VertigoMarsha's Deal]]and I was delighted by the opportunity to read the sequel, ''Hell's Unveiling''. I myself missed outIt's probably not much of a spoiler to say that Marsha bested the devil in ''Marsha's Deal'', but that seemed the devil is not one to be vignettes from one charactertake defeat lying down. He's narration – here we get homosexual male narrators out to wage war on Planet Earth and particularly on Marsha (who's thought of as a 'goody two shoes' in Hell). Although a strong person, she's vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. Daniel is framed for a host morecrime he didn't commit and sent to juvenile detention and refused permission to return to live with Marsha. Then, as well as much less of course, there are all the other children who are not only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to the sadness prevalent beforedevil's evil ends. He's out to prey on their fears and weaknesses and as with many foster children, their self-esteem is very fragile. Having had This is no small-scale operation, either - the devil has set up a brief encounter training complex on earth, complete with this an elevator to Hell.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1979217440|title=Marsha's Deal|author courtesy of her entry into =Laura Solomon|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=Marsha didn't have an easy ride in life the first time around. She'd been afflicted with [[Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne|Object Lessons]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva] series, I was intrigued by her name being stamped on a selection rare disease which turned parts of shortsher body to bone when they were damaged. Was it Finally, she was unable to stand her life any longer and went to Dignitas, the ideal calling card? Swiss euthanasia clinic. LetShe's face it, d thought that would be the very short story itself can be a postcard – let's sayend, from a specific hotel or twobut after cremation, as we see hereher body went straight to hell and she found herself face-to-face with the devil. And that was when she made the pact. Perhaps I should have geared myself up, however, In exchange for such intricate writing details about some of those who had been close to her - their strengths and weaknesses - she would be reborn on said postcards – and for the exotic locations from which they came…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508105</amazonuk>same day to the same parents but would live her life free of disease.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Phillips150690551X|title=Some Possible SolutionsRoses in December|author=Matthew de Lacey Davidson

|summary=Picture ''Roses in December'' is a world where youcollection of twenty-two short stories. And when I say short, a new motherI mean ''short'', move to with each just a town where you slowly start to realise that every other woman seems a replica of you – dressing few pages long and doing as you dosome brushing the flash fiction genre, such is the brevity. Consider a place where you have a perfect other half – most literally – but I think the shorter the story, the harder it's only is to be found on an alien planet. Or how about write and the more difficult the woman who suddenly finds she can see everything and everyone else alive as having no skintask of engaging, just organsthen satisfying, tissue and bone as if everyone was having the reader. So it is to the immense credit of Matthew de Lacey Davidson that I sighed in appreciation many times while reading. He has a Gunther von Hagens plastination job? A lot good sense of these stories are hard to summarise without dropping into the voice which moments of the ''Twilight Zone'' narration, but they're not specifically genre works – they're just further examples of this author's unsettling look at human experience to capture in order to make the bizarre elements of lifepoint he wants to make.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273425</amazonuk>Some highlights:

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Cixin LiuOnymouse_Quick|title= The Wandering EarthQuick and Quirky: Short Stories with Quips!|author=Fred Onymouse and Ann Onymouse|rating= 1.5|genre= Science FictionShort Stories|summary= If anyone thought that the short story as a form had been relegated to the pages of womenQuick, and indeed, quirky, are positive attributes, I'm sure you's magazines (no disrespect) d agree – think againapart from perhaps in surgeons. One genre I like things that has always been have a stalwart supporter quirk, and encourager I approve of the short form quicky. I've been dabbling in the world of creative writing for a few years now, and whenever anyone asks what it is SciI mostly write, I define it with the catch-fiall safety net of ''flippant''. So when you pick this book should be right up my street, being as it is a collection bijou selection of Sci-fi shorts, you know that it will have just as much depth illustrated and thoughtfairly large-provoking philosophy as any similar novelprint short stories. Add to that the intrigue of seeing how the concepts are approached by someone from China which – to be polite – has a somewhat different world-view in many ways to much of the rest of the planet…and add to that an author who is not only a best-seller in his home country but has the distinction of having produced the first translated work of SF ever to win the Hugo Award…this has got to be good!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784978493</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Fleur Jaeggy and Gini Alhadeff (translator)Hill_Strange|title= I Am The Brother Of XXStrange Weather|author=Joe Hill|rating= 45|genre= Short Stories|summary=''I Am The Brother of XX'' Strange Weather is a collection of twenty one four short stories from Fleur Jaeggynovels all linked by, unsurprisingly, who expertly wields malevolence strange and spite throughout, from the evil done between husband cataclysmic weather. Each novel is distinct and wife in ''The Aviaryshowcases Hill'', a nasty tale of Oedipal menace s restrained yet vivid style which takes everyday events and viciousmakes them bitingly, although admittedly, artful crueltyacerbically macabre or blindingly beautiful, often switching from one sentence to senseless annihilation and immolation in ''The Heir''the next. Jaeggy also appears to have a particular fascination with religion, from the nun receiving a rather special sort of communion in As Hill himself says ''The Visitor'' to general references to the Church and religious devotion throughout many beauty of her stories. Family is also a recurrent theme; whether focused on the distance between siblings in the titular story, told from the point of view of a brother filled with longing world and loneliness trying to create a bond with his distant older sister, or the primal need to protect the bond between mother and son, regardless horror of the cost in ''Adelaideworld were twined together'', never is this truer than in Strange Weather where moments of abject horror are coupled with raw beauty.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508024</amazonuk>