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[[Category:Short Stories|*]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Beckler|title= The Road More Travelled: Tales of those seeking refuge|rating= 5|genre= Short Stories|summary= ''The Road More Travelled'' is an anthology of short stories - and one poem - written in response to the refugee crisis as it exploded across our TV screens and newspapers throughout 2015. To the horror of the authors, the language used by many was aggressive and dehumanising, describing this mass of desperate people as a swarm or a horde. The stories together form a response to this othering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993147224</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|authorisbn= Ransom RiggsAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title= Tales of the Peculiar|rating= 5|genre= Teens|summary= A fork-tongued princess. A boy who can control the currents of the sea. Cannibals who feast on the limbs of a village of peculiars. These are just a few of the brilliant stories to be found in ''Tales of the Peculiar'', all of which hold mystical information about the peculiar world - a place familiar to many of us since its first introduction by Ransom Riggs in [[Miss PeregrineAll Tomorrow's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs|Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children]]. The stories in this collection explore peculiar history and folklore in a wonderfully imaginative way, and also include some beautiful illustrations to accompany each of the tales.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141373407</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=I'll Be Home For ChristmasFutures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Zephaniah Greenaway and OthersStephen Oram (Editors)

|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=Publisher Little Tiger and homelessness charity Crisis have got together and produced ''I'll Be Home For Christmas'' - an anthology Opening up new ways of short stories from some of the most popular writers on the UK YA scene. The stories are connected by thinking about the theme shape of home. What does home mean to you? Is it your house, the physical place where you live? Is it your family? Your friends? Home can mean different things to different people, can't it? The book opens with a powerful poem by Bookbag favourite, Benjamin Zephaniahcome. The following stories are disparate - some telling tales of hardship and fear, some warming the cockles of your heart. But all of them are about ''home''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847157726</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Rebecca Schiff|title= The Bed Moved|rating= 5|genre= Short Stories |summary= Rebecca Schiff's collection of short stories was a revelation. It has everything I want from a collection: humour, (often of the black variety), heartbreaking sadness, and moments of shocking clarity. These stories feel like the revealing of the inner workings of a young American woman's psyche. In fact, in the last short piece, entitled ve heard it said that 'technology'Write What You Know'is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, it feels I must confess that the narrator/author is telling us the experiences which there have led to this collectionbeen more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I only know about parent death and sluttiness', she tells usm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. She goes on to talk about her knowledge Some of Jewish people who are assimilated, liberal and sexual guilt, and I think it is no exaggeration to say that these are the underlying themes to practically all of the stories here- frankly - quite frightening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147363184X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Simon Van Booy|title= Tales of Accidental Genius|rating= 5|genre= Short Stories|summary=A diverse Of course, haunting I could research the possibilities and humorous collection of short fiction, Simon Van Booy offers a collection of stories highlighting how human genius can emerge through acts of compassion. With characters ranging from an eccentric film director, an aging Cockney bodyguard, the teenage child of Nigerian immigrants, a divorced amateur magician probabilities and a Beijing street vendor, end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they'Tales of Accidental Genius'' takes re talking about or the reader on many, incredible journeys, latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and conveys more who could deliver information in a few pages than many authors would struggle to do in a whole novelway I could understand. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749716</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Amnesty International|title= Here I Stand|rating= 5|genre= Teens|summary= Every so often Amnesty International gets together a number of great authors and produces an anthology of writing. This time, they've done it for younger readers with ''Here I Stand''. Twenty-five contributions explore where we are with human rights in today's society: the sacrifices many made to win them; the sacrifices that still need to be made to spread them; how, where and why these rights are under attack and how deep is the need to defend them. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>140635838X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Anna Metcalfe|title= Blind Water Pass and other stories|rating= 5|genreisbn= Short Stories|summary= Anna Metcalfe's debut collection of short stories is a treasure trove of language, cultures, and beautifully written prose. The stories are bound together with a loose theme of communication, or miscommunication, across characters and cultures, and the narrators of these stories are as different as human beings themselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473631815</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Wendy BrandmarkB0CDZRGT1M|title= He Runs the Moon|rating= 3.5|genre= Super Short Stories |summary= This is the first time I had read any of Wendy Brandmark's fiction, and I was intrigued at the theme of the stories. She sets out writing short stories about different cities in the US, Denver, Bronx, New York, Cambridge and Boston, but also weaves in setting the stories in different eras. So we have a collection of stories ranging from the 1950's to the 1970's.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907320601</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Birgul Oguz|title= Hah|rating= 3|genre= Literary : Flash Fiction|summary= I was interested to receive this book for review as I knew it was written in a modern, interesting style, being effectively a collection of short stories, but appearing more in a novel structure. I was, however, rather disappointed with the book. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within the stories, I felt disconnected from the narrator, who is the daughter of a recently deceased man who was involved in a Turkish military coup in 1980. There is therefore a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution'', and the way this had affected the daughter's upbringing and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into a seemingly disconnected wander through the town, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be in love with her. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Chuck Palahniuk|title=Make Something Up|rating=5|genre=Short Stories |summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to the reputation of the author, and the baggage his name brings to the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But a lot of the contents don't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price is Right''-, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on the level and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been taken.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Martin Edwards (editor)|title=Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries (British Library Crime Classics)Mark C Wallfisch

|genre=Crime (Historical)Short Stories|summary=I'm not big on short stories'Got a minute to be amused, but two factors nudged me towards this book. Firstlyentertained, itor challenged?''s broadly golden age crime, ''These 100 stories are super short. None is more than 300 words. You can read one of my weaknesses and secondly, the editor is [[in a flash.''''Some are funny. Some are poignant. All are short.'' Question:Category:Martin Edwards|Martin Edwards]], how do you review flash fiction? How do you give a man whose knowledge flavour of golden age crime a fully rounded little story if that story is probably unsurpassed and he's done us proud, not only with his selection, but with told in fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try to draw out themes from all the half-page biographies flash fictions in a book of the writers, which precede each story. Therethem? I don's just enough t know! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there to allow you to place the really isn't a fixed definition of flash fiction but that for this collection, author and to direct you to other works if you're temptedMark C Wallfisch has gone for a three hundred word limit. ItThat's an elegant selection, from the well known and the less well known, all set about a single page in and around the country houseyour average paperback.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712309934</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe AbercrombieRachel Harrison|title=Sharp EndsBad Dolls

|summary=The first story we hear from the Shore, It's been some time since I've read any horror. I had a group couple of isolated islands off misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing the coast of Virginia, is books from Chloe, whoa boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly with them to the point that I couldn's telling her sister about what she overheard in t shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear of the store. vampires outside! SheDon't worry - this short story collection isn'd been there buying chicken necks so t like that they could go crabbing. ! Normally they used bacon rinds, but theyIt doesn'd already eaten t have those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered jump scares, and I didn''they done cut his thang clean off''. The girls are motherless t have to read it during daylight hours only! But it is creepy, and Chloe is fiercely protective I found most of her little sister Renee. She's that feeling came from the first of the strong fact that these are stories about women we'll encounter , living normal lives, and that at least in these storiespart, the horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a new dieting app, which interlink going to give a greater picturehen party and a coping with grief.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1803363932

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Higgins ClarkB0CCCVRSGX|title=Death Wears a Beauty MaskStories 2|author=Richard F Walker

|summary=In 1972, Mary Higgins Clark began writing a novella entitled This is Richard F Walker''Death Wears a Beauty Masks second volume of short stories.'' She struggled with the story There are thirteen in all and put it aside, where it lay forgotton for several decadesI took something from each of them. When the author rediscovered the manuscript amongst some old files, she decided There isn't a single one that she liked it and was ready doesn't deserve to complete be among the long-awaited endingothers or brings down the overall quality. ''Death Wears a Beauty Mask'' joins some of her other works, both old and new, in an entertaining collection of It can be tricky to review short stories full of mystery without giving too much away, so I'll just pick two to talk about and suspenseI think they give a general flavour.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471143228</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danielle McLaughlin1739593901|title=Dinosaurs on Other Planets22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Science Fiction|summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground running, I ''Our future will dispense with any major preamblebe more complex than we expected. We start with a tale Instead of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and the influence of automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.'' I've got a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point couple of viewconfessions to make. An ancient input shows how alien, I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and then forget to return to the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts of destructionbook. But men can There's got to be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had very compelling hook to try and abandonkeep me engaged. Then there'All About Alice' – thats science fiction: far too often it's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – midtechnology which takes centre stage along with the world-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? building. And we complete a lap of It's human beings who fascinate me: the calendar with technology and the wintry tale world scape are purely incidental. So, what did I think of a man unable to tell his work superiors book of the problems he faces at home – a new hometwenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, recently built like so many one sees while driving round IrelandI loved it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Christopher FowlerB09XZMCDVF|title= Bryant and May - London's GloryStories: 13 tantalising tales|author=Richard F Walker|rating= 4|genre= CrimeShort Stories|summary=In ''A news vendor is crying out the headlines in the depths middle of the last [[Bryant night; a wheelchair user loses touch with reality when he tries walking around in his imagination; a stickler for correct grammar goes back in time to correct an iconic quote; a volunteer teacher proves the ideal person to have around in a lawless village; the new boy on the pub football team is very useful with his feet, and May – The Burning Man by Christopher Fowler|B&M review I wrote]] I said awfully familiar…'' Of course This collection of thirteen short stories by Richard F Walker has a lot to offer the eclectic reader. Tying them together is the idea that remarkable and strange, it's unbelievableeven miraculous, farcicalthings can happen to ordinary people. But then you donAnd that ordinary doesn't come to a Bryant mean boring or uninteresting. Form and tone varies so this little treasury of short fiction is never boring and May story for realism. You come for absurdity.you're never quite sure what' Naturally, I stand by that comments coming next. Fowler has concocted his characters and has no shame in shunting them up and down the time-line of British history as he sees fit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857523457</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1737030942|title=Chance Developments: Unexpected Love StoriesBag O'Goodies|author=Jolly Walker Bittick|rating=54|genre=General FictionAnthologies|summary=Sometimes, if you deserve a treat and mine was Jolly Walker Bittick's ''Bag O'Goodies''. I'm in first encountered his writing about a cafe year ago, when I read his [[Cape Henry House by myselfJolly Walker Bittick|Cape Henry House]], I like to watch the people around me and imagine stories about a rollicking tale of what happens when five young men find a base for their livespartying. Just Right now, I didn't want a single sentencefull-length novel, overheard, can lead so I turned to wonderous tales this anthology of mystery verse and intrigue whilst I sip my cappuccino! So I was delighted to sit down to read the latest offering from AMS, not only because he wrote it, but because he wrote it after looking at 5 different black and white photographs, and then imagining the short stories behind them. Who are all these people, and what are their stories? Each story is unique, Bittick's writing has matured - and yet they all so have one abiding linkhis characters. Well..love.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973295</amazonuk>most of them!

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joannah Yacoub1529418100|title=When Mr Putin Stole My Painting: Ten Short StoriesBruno's Challenge and Other Dordogne Tales|author=Martin Walker|rating=3.54

|summary=Put yourself, if necessary, in the mind of someone wanting to publish their first collection I'm not usually a fan of short stories. What do you choose as - I find it all too easy to put the contents – besides just saying the best available? Do you try book down between stories and find forget to pick it up again - but I am a theme, or connecting happenstance or style, fan of Martin Walker's [[Martin Walker's Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries in Chronological Order|Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the temptation to read ''Bruno's Challenge'' was hard to pin them together? resist and I'm rather glad that I didn't even try. Are they based on For those new to the series, there's an excellent introduction that will tell you now, someone else somewhen else, or all the diverse people and places you have once met? Joannah Yacoub seems need to have gone for know about who's who and the latterbackground to why Bruno is in St Denis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373971</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eoin Colfer (editor)B08NF79QXT|title=Once Upon a PlaceCherry Blossom Boutique|author=Brooke Adams|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers Women's Fiction|summary=You know the bit of Thirty-one-year old Liberty Rossini has had her shop, the blurb on every ''Artemis Fowl'' bookCherry Blossom Boutique, where Eoin Colfer had it said about how you pronounce his name? That wasnfor just six months when she't the intention of an ups nominated for -andwins -coming author to be recognisable; rather, it was pridethe Retail Best Newcomer Award. Pride in She's delighted and the difference of it, of two people she's brought with her to the Irishness of itevent couldn't be more pleased. IrelandSonja, it seems to meher mother, is more full than usual of people, things an 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 ideasLiberty adores Jessica's husband, Charles and places that are different by dint of their singular nationality – and so many deserve to have pride attached to themfour-year-old daughter, Ava. The places might not Life would be the famous ones, but they can be the source of pride, and of stories, which is where this compilation of short works perfect for Liberty if it wasn't for the young comes one thing: she misses having a man in, with the authors invited to select their chosen place and write about ither life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>191041137X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie HannahB08KKQ85FN|title=The Visitors BookBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=3.54|genre=ParanormalShort Stories|summary= Sophie Hannah's The Visitors Book is 'If a short anthology of modern stories with a supernatural twist. There is not woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a hammy gothic turret Rottweiler in sight as her characters experience their mundanelipstick, day-an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to-daybe released into the company of carrion crows or, 21st century business -- a children's birthday partymore to the point, a visit about to a boyfriend, neck pain, discover the school runreal world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills. Now'' You don't get many better opening sentences than that, ghost stories based on ordinary people leading ordinary lives can do you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador's Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|Sorting the Priorities]] and we learned what it was like to be very unsettling indeed, making overly imaginative readers look over their shoulder at moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the bus stop, or giving them goosebumps time has come for HE to retires and for no apparent reasonSandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador... They have left The Career and settled in Rome. So I was curious to see what Sophie Hannah Well 'settled' rather overstates the situation and their dog, a writer I much admireBeagle, would make has no intention of this particular materialslowing down any time soon, despite being sixteen and deaf.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908745525</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marina WarnerB08CHJLNBS|title=Fly Away HomeCapturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams

|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=How would you subvert He's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a fairy tale? You know enough of them and enough about them to do itpartner at Wickham Jones, so think on itthe Mayfair letting agents. Would you give a mermaid a smartphone? Would you pepper them with pop starsShe's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and perhaps let them be witness to archivist in the Schadenfreude caused heritage library next door. Emilia has read [[The Secret by a cave thatRhonda Byrne|The Secret]] but she's sacred to native Canadians? Would moved on from new age books like that, which leave you, in the light of their characters usually being routine, interchangeable tropes, give them a closely-observed personality – as seen here in a teacherdependent on someone else's interior thoughts when faced with philosophies, to something a piece of East Anglian lore? little deeper. Would you take the exoticism of the east, and Egypt in particular, and see it in the light Charles is more of a musical teacher on a zero-hours contract who ends up muttering to [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, directing traffic in the middle of the roadbut, above all, or from the remove of an elderly man with he's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian'swollen feet in orthopaedic sandals'. They' with a message from the pastre obviously not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get this woman out of his mind? Certainly these two are She's not the standard Arabian Nightshis usual type at all: it's obvious to his friends. And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to him? The relationship's obviously a non-styled pieces…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630381</amazonuk>starter, isn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rose TremainMarie O'Regan and Paul Kane (editors)|title= The American LoverCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales|rating= 4.5|genre= Short Stories Fantasy|summary= Having never read a Rose Tremain book beforeCurses. They're there throughout tales of faery and other fantastical folk – people being cursed to do this, I was interested or not to start be able to do that. Children can be cursed, as can princesses on the verge of marrying, and older people too. It seems in a way there's no escaping it. Which is why the theme of this collection book of short storiesis such a standout – we may well think we know all there is to know about this accursed character, that demonised place, and that other bewitched person. I wasnWe't disappointed, and it quickly became clear why she has won so many literary awards for her workd be very wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548445</amazonuk>1789091500

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Ursula K Le GuinStibbe_Xmas|title= The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass RoseAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe|rating= 4.5|genre= Science FictionHumour|summary=IChristmas – 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's all having to make sure it'll start by saying s suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that I think the SF Masterworks series are pretty much always you can go and visit it, and without fail get too friendly with it to want to eat it. Christmas, though, is of course also a really interesting readtime of great boons. IIt've bought quite s cash in hand for a few from this publisher now lot of plump people who can hire red suits and I find they will beards, it was always pick interesting titles from a godsend for postmen with all the science fiction genre, making them a great place thank-you letters to start if aunties you are either just dipping saw twice a decade that your toe into science fiction parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, and as for the first makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and sell them any other time or if you're looking to build up your collection.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147320576X</amazonuk>of the year?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Maeve Binchy0954899520|title= A Few of the GirlsWinter Book|author=Tove Jansson|rating= 5|genre= Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary= I was excited about reviewing a brand new collection Tove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters of Maeve Binchy short stories the simplicity, naivety and I wasnsheer 't disappointedgoodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. As her widower states in the introductionSimple drawings, Binchy had an extraordinary talent for telling powerful and compassionate simple stories, and simple goodness. What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was a true storyteller with an amazing outputserious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a feeling for the natural world and the simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might be. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409161412</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ann Cleeves (editor)1911115847|title=The Starlings and Other StoriesNights of the Creaking Bed|author=Toni Kan

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Six authors, known collectively as 'The Murder Squad', and their six accomplices were given twelve photographs Nights of the remote landscape Creaking Bed'' is a collection of Pembrokeshire by acclaimed photographer David Wilson and asked to come up with a short story inspired stories by what they sawToni Kan. Some The series of stories tell of the stories will be more to your taste than otherslives and lusts of an assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria, as is only to be expected in such a varied anthologythis collection, but none is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are weak killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Kan writes with a vitality and if you enjoy crime short passion that allows these cynical stories then this book could be to achieve a real treatglimmer of hope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909823740</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Walter M Miller Jr1529014484|title= Dark BenedictionExhalation |author=Ted Chiang|rating= 5|genre= Science Fiction|summary= Walter M. Miller Jr is rightly placed among Over the past twenty-eight years, Ted Chiang has published fifteen science fiction giants H.G. Wellsshort stories, Michael Moorcock, and Philip K. Dick in the ''Masterworks'' series, a large selection of genrethese magnificent stories have won twenty-defining writers and works at the centre of what is now such seven major science fiction awards so if you are a popular and diverse range of literatures, films, and television productions. Miller is considered one of the finest science fiction writers fan it is likely that you have already come across some of the 1950s, and in ''Dark Benediction'work by Ted Chiang. If you haven', fourteen of t then take this author's best short stories are brought together in one collectionopportunity to do so now. Trust me; your imagination will be grateful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473211948</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elizabeth McCracken1794467440|title= ThunderstruckWatchwords |author=Philip Neal|rating= 54

|summary= I chose to review this This satisfying collection of short stories with no prior knowledge has a provenance at least as beguiling as the provenance of the author's work – often the best way antique watches that inspired it. Philip Neal lost a watch. It was a watch he was fond of and had been told was like a 1930s Cartier. Instead of mourning its loss, he began to do collect vintage watches that resembled it, though I am aware . And that McCracken's work comes highly commendedhow he became a watch collector. An eBay purchase led him to the Antique Watch Company watch repairers in Clerkenwell. After reading these storiesThe eBay purchase was a fake, I can see why but the friendship that grew between the buyer and the repairer of watches was not and I am already looking forward to reading more the seed of her workan idea for a book was born.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592975</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Pete Bellotte1529006031|title= The Unround CircleReturn to Wonderland|author=Various Authors|rating= 24.5|genre= Short Stories|summary= As short story collections go, this is In following a young girl called Alice down the rabbit hole a fairly ambitious bundlefew years ago, some 22 stories running to a total 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 nearly four hundred pagesage]], I found that I didn't really find too much favour with it. YouThe wacky-for-the-sake-of-it did not gel, and I don'll gather 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 that come at the core from a tangent, that show the benefits of the fact that oblique glance. I'm starting ve always preferred coming to an author's output through their least obvious, allegedly throw-away pieces, and it's the same with the statistics that franchises – I didn't instantly fall in love with Bellotted more likely go for Bree Tanner's writingshort novella than the whole Twilight saga (although that remains just a hunch, for obvious reasons).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910533092</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= Mary Higgins Clark (editor)1846974658|title= Manhattan Mayhem – New Crime Stories from the Mystery Writers of AmericaThe Long Path To Wisdom|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker|rating= 54|genre= CrimeShort Stories|summary= On my travels around the world, I was unsure how have a tendency to open this review. I heart Manhattanend up in any bookshop that is selling English-language books, big time. and while I am always attracted to any work set in Manhattanbuy as many second-hand escapist tales as the next person, but what I don’t want to pigeonhole this remarkable collection of stories into a slot that says 'only m really looking for Manhattan loversis the 'local'. Far from it – it is a superb collection featuring the highest standards of both mystery writing and cookbook maybe, the maps definitely, but above all: the form of short storyfolk tales. If I ever get to Burma, I won't need to hunt, I can read before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>159474761X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ivan VladislavicB077969HN8|title=101 DetectivesAlternative Medicine|author=Laura Solomon|rating=34.5

|summary=101 Detectives had me baffledLaura Solomon's publisher describes the short stories in ''Alternative Medicine'' as ''black comedy with a twist of surrealism''. The book comprises of 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 stories which explore multiple themes from either, but I've come to two conclusions about the book: what the perspective of one personpublisher says is correct - and I really enjoyed it. The stories are comedy is not ''too'' black and the surrealism is gentle and perhaps best described as varied as the characters presenting the tale to a twist or flick of reality when youwere least expecting it. This exquisitely written book leaves you asking many questions and pondering many ideas Your comfort zones are going to be invaded in the nicest possible way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276568</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Laurie R King and Leslie Klinger (editors)9386897504|title=In the Company Tales of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes CanonLove and Disability|author=Laura Solomon

|summary=Well, I've always believed that's one way to get less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a heck great deal of skill and talent to write a lot of attention to your series of short story which holds the reader and keeps them coming back for more. There are far too many collections, for sure – get the estate of the author you're respecting to take you to court with the idea that the works cannot be published – the characters short stories which are so firmly established and entrenched, but established and entrenched as their property and therefore cannot be artistically reinterpreted, revived or otherwise returned all too easy to at all until full put down and final copyright statutes have expiredforget after you've read a couple of pieces. Never mind that the characters – one S Holmes I've recently read a couple of novellas by Laura Solomon - [[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] and [[Hell's Unveiling by Laura Solomon|Hell's Unveiling]] and Dr JH Watson – hardly have parallels in how often they already have been mimicked. Never mind the fact that the estate of Conan Doyle enjoyed them, so I was paid off in order for the first book intrigued to released. Still, the case was won and this sequel is in our handssee what she could do with an even shorter form. Is it worth all the legal documents? What is the important verdict, at the end of the reading day?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178329843X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jessie Greengrass 1986586898|title=An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It Going To The Last: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=K D Knight|rating=34.5

|summary=The title In the opening story, which appears firsta 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'', is exactly what it says on the tin: one hunter's story of travelling Foinavon. H is depicted as a kind horse who only wanted to remote islands please people. After changing hands on various occasions he came to take part in massive culls the yard of great auks, until they were simply goneJohn Kempton. It's always hard to believe that species that once numbered H (or Foinavon) was entered in their millions, such as the passenger pigeon, could go extinct so quickly, but when you read about the brutal slaughter tactics here – swinging clubs Grand National and boiling birds alive – you can see how considered a flightless bird was a sitting targetno-hoper. The narrator makes no real attempt to defend himself: In one of the birds were there for most dramatic runnings of the taking; that was that. Stillrace, he regrets their extinction, because 'in any loss you can see a shadow of pile-up occurred at the way that you will be lost yourself23rd fence.' (Those interested in Foinavon, who had been many lengths adrift, cleared the great auk's extinction may also want fence and galloped to read the 2013 novel ''The Collector line, winning the race at odds of Lost Things'' by Jeremy Page100/1.)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473610850</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colin Barrett9386897296|title=Young SkinsHell's Unveiling|author=Laura Solomon|rating=43.5

|summary=WeA little while ago I really enjoyed [[Marsha're taken into s Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] and I was delighted by the opportunity to read the lives sequel, ''Hell's Unveiling''. It's probably not much of a spoiler to say that Marsha bested the youthful inhabitants of small town Ireland devil in seven short stories of differing styles ''Marsha's Deal'', but a shared settingthe devil is not one to take defeat lying down. Barrett writes He's out to wage war on Planet Earth and particularly on Marsha (who's thought of as a doorman at 'goody two shoes' in Hell). Although a suburban nightclubstrong person, known she's vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. Daniel is framed for a crime he didn't commit and respected by all the locals, although we only read about a brief affair sent to juvenile detention and his vulnerabilityrefused permission to return to live with Marsha. Another tale portrays a young rocker and his emotional state Then, of course, years after an incident that scarred him both physically and mentally and made him there are all the talk other children who are not only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to the towndevil's evil ends. Other tales all share the same focus He's out to prey on people their fears and weaknesses and as with many foster children, their self-esteem is very fragile. This is no small but meaningful personal events in their lives-scale operation, either - the devil has set up a training complex on earth, complete with an elevator to Hell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959742X</amazonuk>