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[[Category:New Reviews|Short Stories]]
[[Category:Short Stories|*]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{Frontpage
|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover
|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
 
I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CDZRGT1M
|title=Super Short Stories: Flash Fiction
|author=Mark C Wallfisch
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''Got a minute to be amused, entertained, or challenged?''
''These 100 stories are super short. None is more than 300 words. You can read one in a flash.''
''Some are funny. Some are poignant. All are short.''
 
Question: how do you review flash fiction? How do you give a flavour of a fully rounded little story if that story is told in fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try to draw out themes from all the flash fictions in a book of them? I don't know! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there really isn't a fixed definition of flash fiction but that for this collection, author Mark C Wallfisch has gone for a three hundred word limit. That's about a single page in your average paperback.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel Harrison
|title=Bad Dolls
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=It's been some time since I've read any horror. I had a couple of misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing the books from a 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 jump scares, and I didn't have to read it during daylight hours only! But it is creepy, and I found most of that feeling came from the fact that these are stories about women, living normal lives, and that at least in part, the horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a new dieting app, going to a hen party and a coping with grief.
|isbn=1803363932
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= B0CCCVRSGX
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=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 spoiler to say that Marsha bested the devil in ''Marsha's Deal'', but the 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 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 crime he didn't commit and sent to juvenile detention and refused permission to return to live with Marsha. Then, of course, there are all the other children who are not only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to the devil'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. This is no small-scale operation, either - the devil has set up a training complex on earth, complete with an elevator to Hell.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1979217440
|title=Marsha's Deal
|author=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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva], a rare disease which turned parts of her body to bone when they were damaged. Finally, she was unable to stand her life any longer and went to Dignitas, the Swiss euthanasia clinic. She'd thought that would be the end, but after cremation, her body went straight to hell and she found herself face-to-face with the devil. And that was when she made the pact. In exchange for details about some of those who had been close to her - their strengths and weaknesses - she would be reborn on the same day to the same parents but would live her life free of disease.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=150690551X
|title=Roses in December
|author=Matthew de Lacey Davidson
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''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 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:
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Onymouse_Quick
|title=Quick and Quirky: Short Stories with Quips!
|author=Fred Onymouse and Ann Onymouse
|rating=1.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Quick, and indeed, quirky, are positive attributes, I'm sure you'd agree – apart from perhaps in surgeons. I like things that have a quirk, and I approve of the quicky. I've been dabbling 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.
}}
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