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[[Category:New Reviews|Short Stories]]
[[Category:Short Stories|*]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander MacLeodAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Light LiftingAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=Short stories may not be everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes, particularly with first time authors, there is an annoying tendency to be overly experimental. Not so with Alexander MacLeod's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic 'form' in that he is the son Opening up new ways of novelist and short story writer [[:Category:Alistair MacLeod|Alistair MacLeod]], but even so, thinking about the quality shape of this collection, is remarkable. The collection of seven stories is not overly themed, although certain issues and concerns do reappear, but what binds the stories together is a very human approach things to adversitycome.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Peter OI'Donnell|title=Modesty Blaise: Live Bait|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Weve heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're back 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 gritty yet glamorous world feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of Modesty Blaise it is - frankly - at leastquite frightening. Of course, as gritty I could research the possibilities and glamorous as you could get in the Evening Standard daily comic strip in probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the late 1980slatest conspiracy theorist. Titan have had a mammoth undertaking to reproduce all the original strips in handy large-format graphic novel compendia, I needed people I knew I could trust and this latest covers three stories, all of which I consider greater who could deliver information in depth than those in the other volume a way I've reviewed - [[Modesty Blaise: Sweet Caroline by Neville Colvin and Peter O'Donnell|Sweet Caroline]]could understand.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857686682</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon McGregorB0CDZRGT1M|title=This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like YouSuper Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C Wallfisch
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=The clue is in the Christopher Brookmyre-styled title. If the events''Got a minute to be amused, entertained, characters and circumstances in these or challenged?''''These 100 stories are known to you, then you have my sympathiessuper short. A man causes an embarrassment trying to watch his daughter's first school nativity playNone is more than 300 words. Another has You can read one in a phobia of eggs containing an avian foetus when he puts knife and fork to themflash. There's a car crash here - and there, a drowning, some arson, some theft'''Some are funny.Some are poignant.. and a lot of clues that point to some national disaster. Take all those clues as one and you eventually see this is more than just a collection of disparate All are short stories, but a very fractured, obfuscated novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809265</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Tessa Hadley|title=Married Love|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Married Love Question: how do you review flash fiction? How do you give a flavour of a fully rounded little story if that story is Tessa Hadley’s second collection, containing twelve short stories looking at (mostly) modern relationships and family dynamics – many are about parents and their grown up children and told in-laws, others are about couples. Flicking through fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try to draw out themes from all the flash fictions in a book to choose some of the best and/or most interesting stories to mention, them? I have found don't know! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there really isn't a difficulty. Almost all fixed definition of these incisiveflash fiction but that for this collection, witty stories reveal an interesting group of characters I would like to know more author Mark C Wallfisch has gone for a three hundred word limit. That's about after the end, sometimes from several different viewpoints, and it is hard to pick out just a fewsingle page in your average paperback. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096427</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RossRachel Harrison|title=Ladies and GentlemenBad Dolls|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Adam RossIt's characters are driven - but been some time since I mean that in the wrong way've read any horror. They're not the ones riding on I had a crest couple of misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing the books from a wave 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 motivationthe vampires outside! Don't worry - this short story collection isn't like that! It doesn't have those jump scares, steering their course through life. and I didn't have to read it during daylight hours only! NoBut it is creepy, instead they and I found most of that feeling came from the fact that these are passengersstories about women, living normal lives, and who or whatever is that at the wheel seems to have lost the satnav. So, least in 'Futures'part, the horrors arises from very normal situations such as a middle-aged unemployed man finds himself giving life lessons and breakup, trying a kick up the backside new dieting app, going to a teenaged neighbour just as his own career seems about to enter its nth phase, with an airy-fairy psychic-oriented company that won't ever go as far as telling him what his job might be. A professor who has to settle temporarily where his work takes him hen party and not where he would like, has to wonder what to do when told of the action-packed adventures of a devil-may-care, come-what-may mechaniccoping with grief.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087746</amazonuk>1803363932
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Javier MariasB0CCCVRSGX|title=While the Women are SleepingStories 2|author=Richard F Walker|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The first thing the trivially minded will note This is that this is not the complete edition Richard F Walker's second volume of While the Women short stories. There are Sleeping, for not thirteen in all the stories in the original Spanish volume are hereand I took something from each of them. You might think thatThere isn's because some have been hived off for t a future 'best of' compilation. But if this isnsingle one that doesn't deserve to be among the best of Javier Mariasothers or brings down the overall quality. It can be tricky to review short stories without giving too much away, then so I don't know what isll just pick two to talk about and I think they give a general flavour. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553929</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.''
{{newreview|author=Stella Gibbons|title=Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm|rating=3I've got a couple of confessions to make.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=First things first 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 only one story in this collection about Cold Comfort Farmgot to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. This is a story about the farm before Flora Poste arrives, a Then there'prequels science fiction: far too often it' if you likes the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. It features 's human beings who fascinate me: the Starkadder family at Christmas, with a dispute over a coffin-nail technology and it did make me smile. I suspect it is one for fans, howeverthe world scape are purely incidental. For instanceSo, the appearance what did I think of a teenage Dick Hawkbook of twenty-Monitortwo science fiction short stories? Well, already in love with Elfine, shoots a knowing wink at the devoted but would leave most readers coldI loved it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528673</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael MorpurgoB09XZMCDVF|title=WarStories: Stories of Conflict13 tantalising tales|author=Richard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary=Throughout history, war has blighted society and had long lasting impacts on not only those directly involved but ''A news vendor is crying out the headlines in the innocent bystanders too. This collection middle of stories, edited by the magnificent Michael Morpurgo himself, looks to explore the impacts of war on individual soldiers, families and especially children. Every story approaches conflicts from night; a different angle and this ensures that even though there are wheelchair user loses touch with reality when he tries walking around in his imagination; a good number of short stories stickler for correct grammar goes back in time to correct an iconic quote; a volunteer teacher proves the book, you will never feel as if it is becoming repetitive or dull. The stories do ideal person to have around in a good job of conveying just how multi-faceted and complex lawless village; the new boy on the concept of war pub football team is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447205014</amazonuk>}}very useful with his feet, and awfully familiar…''
{{newreview|author=Andrew Kaufman|title=The Tiny Wife|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It all begins with This collection of thirteen short stories by Richard F Walker has a bank robberylot to offer the eclectic reader. Only this isn't your typical sort of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person in Tying them together is the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value idea that they have with them. These range from photographs remarkable and a key through strange, even miraculous, things can happen to a calculator.ordinary people.And that ordinary doesn't mean boring or uninteresting.Form and on taking these items he says he tone varies so this little treasury of short fiction is also taking fifty percent of their souls, never boring and it is up to the victims to find the way to get their souls back, or to die tryingyou're never quite sure what's coming next.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson1737030942|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 wonBag O't make anything much worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGoodies|author=Lloyd Jones|title=The Man in the Shed|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 in the Shed' is not blessed with a name. His name (whatever it is) is not important or relevant to the tale. It's all about ''why'' he's in the shed in the first place. This particular shed's in a garden of a house inhabited by a family which includes the young narrator. It's pretty clear that 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 flair.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848544820</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Judith Hermann|title=AliceJolly Walker Bittick
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionAnthologies|summary=Sometimes, you deserve a treat and mine was Jolly Walker Bittick's 'Alice'Bag O' is Goodies''. I first encountered his writing about a year ago, when I read his [[Cape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick|Cape Henry House]], a collection rollicking tale of what happens when five short stories, linked thematically since they all deal with the subject of death, but they are also linked because the central character, Alice, is the same in each storyyoung men find a base for their partying. So rather than feeling like short stories the book has Right now, I didn't want a hint of the full-length novel , so I turned to it, yet the this anthology of verse and short stories are never completed or fully told so it. Bittick's a novel where you're not always sure what's going onwriting has matured - and so have his characters. Well...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668529X</amazonuk>most of them!
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jamil Ahmad1529418100|title=The Wandering FalconBruno's Challenge and Other Dordogne Tales|author=Martin Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary="In the tangle I'm not usually a fan of crumbling, weathershort stories -beaten and broken hills, where I find it all too easy to put the borders of Iran, Pakistan book down between stories and Afghanistan meet, is forget to pick it up again - but I am a military outpost…" Thus begins the tale fan of Tor Baz, Martin Walker's [[Martin Walker's Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries in Chronological Order|Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the Black Falcon. To this desolate place come two wanderers, a man temptation to read ''Bruno's Challenge'' was hard to resist and a woman seeking refuge.  Refuge is denied them, since it places duties I'm rather glad that the fort commander cannot accept, but instead he offers them shelter from the wind of a hundred and twenty daysI didn't even try. For as long as they want it. Shelterthose new to the series, there's an excellent introduction that will tell you all you need to know about who's who and foodthe background to why Bruno is in St Denis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145155</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cees Nooteboom and Ina Rilke (Translator)B08NF79QXT|title=The Foxes Come At Night And Other StoriesCherry Blossom Boutique|author=Brooke Adams|rating=4.53|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=There's a bold statement on the front cover from, as it happens, Thirty-one of my favourite authors-year old Liberty Rossini has had her shop, [[:Category:A S Byatt|A S Byatt]] saying that Nooteboom is ''one of the greatest modern novelistsCherry Blossom Boutique, for just six months when she'' so I thought that I was in s nominated for a treat- and wins - the Retail Best Newcomer Award. But I didnShe't enjoy s delighted and the first short story. Not two people she's brought with her to the greatest of startsevent couldn't be more pleased. I was disappointed to say the least Sonja, her mother, is an ex-model and was wondering what all the fuss was aboutBrazilian: you can see where Liberty got her looks from. Then I started to read the story entitled Jessica's thirty-four and Liberty'Thunderstorms best friend: they've known each other since university and Liberty adores Jessica' s husband, Charles and things started to pick uptheir four-year-old daughter, Ava. I appreciated the sparse and elegant language. Lines such as Life would be perfect for Liberty if it wasn'Five people at an outdoor cafet for one thing: two women ... she misses having a solitary black man in her life... 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 good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050230</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue GeeB08KKQ85FN|title=Last FlingBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Sue Gee is well known for her novels, but this is her first collection of short stories. Short story collections are not for everyone. I've always enjoyed them since they fit easily into 'If a busy life, leaving you feeling as if you've lived through woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a whole story Rottweiler in just lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a short space pampered peacock about to be released into the company of time. It's easier carrion crows or, more to find the time for a quick story sometimes than point, about to sit down with a four hundred page novel!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773061</amazonuk>}}discover the real world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills.''
{{newreviewYou don't get many better opening sentences than that, do you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador's Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|author=Helen Simpson|title=In-Flight Entertainment|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=I am always thrilled Sorting the Priorities]] and we learned what it was like to see that Helen Simpson be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the time has brought out a new bookcome for HE to retires and for Sandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador... I am a big fan of her crisp, funny, observant short storiesThey have left The Career and settled in Rome. So I picked up Well 'In Flight Entertainmentsettled' with some anticipationrather overstates the situation and their dog, Beagle, has no intention of slowing down any time soon, despite being sixteen and deaf. I was not disappointed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546124</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John E FlanneryB08CHJLNBS|title=Toby's Little EdenCapturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=John E FlanneryHe's debut collection contains four short stories (although one is more of a novella) Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a series of amusing sketches about partner at Wickham Jones, the ground staff at a new Golf Course Mayfair letting agents. She's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in north Manchesterthe heritage library next door. TheyEmilia has read [[The Secret by Rhonda Byrne|The Secret]] but she're more varied than they might appear at first glance and demonstrate Flannerys moved on from new age books like that, which leave you dependent on someone else's ability philosophies, to get straight to the heart something a little deeper. Charles is more of the story without wasting words and to develop character as economically as possiblea [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, but, above all, whilst still holding the readerhe's imagination. I knew as soon as I began shocked that Emilia reads ''The GhostwriterGuardian'' that I wasn. They't going to be disappointed as a man who has written successful thrillers is possessed by the spirit re obviously not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get this woman out of Charles Dickens. his mind? ItShe's a neat riff on John Brainenot his usual type at all: it's idea obvious to his friends. And given that novelist wait for an idea Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to descend on them and Graham Greenehim? The relationship's belief that novelists are like mediums.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445777940</amazonuk>obviously a non-starter, isn't it?
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorothy ParkerMarie O'Regan and Paul Kane (editors)|title=The SexesCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesFantasy|summary=From the young woman who examined her handkerchief in minute detail, to the soldierCurses. They's leave which didn't live up re there throughout tales of faery and other fantastical folk – people being cursed to expectationdo this, through the thoughts of the early hours of the morning or not to the actress who proved a disappointment be able to her fan and do that. Children can be cursed, as can princesses on to the glorious culmination verge of the child who should never have been called Lolita we have five wonderful short storiesmarrying, and older people too. They're It seems in a book thatway there's no bigger than most escaping it. Which is why the theme of this book of short stories but buy it is such a standout – we may well think we know all there is to know about this accursed character, that demonised place, and it could well that other bewitched person. We'd be the best buy that you make this yearvery wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>014119619X</amazonuk>1789091500
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aidan ChambersStibbe_Xmas|title=The Kissing GameAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensHumour|summary=Christmas – the time of traditional trauma. You dononly 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 see s all having to make sure it's suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that many short story collections in YA circlesyou can go and visit it, and get too friendly with it to want to eat it. But when they do appearChristmas, though, you often wonder why there arenis of course also a time of great boons. It't more s cash in hand for a lot of them. And this is absolutely plump people who can hire red suits and beards, it was always a godsend for postmen with all the case with The Kissing Game. Ranging from short pieces of flash fiction thank-you letters to "proper" short storiesaunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, each one will inciteand as for the makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, surprise did they even try and stimulate. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370331974</amazonuk>sell them any other time of the year?
}}
{{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, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters of the simplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness' that 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 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.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Styron1911115847|title=The Suicide RunNights of the Creaking Bed|author=Toni Kan
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=A WW2 naval soldier''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is 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, guarding a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartialsNigeria. Nigeria, in this collection, is forced to wonder if he is winning his imbued with its very own battles against those arriving and leavingheart of darkness. A soldier remembers calming memories, Danger stalks the shadows and those causing tension, as he rests up before actionpeople are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. And for Kan writes with a highly-charged young man, there may be too much risk vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to be found in his high-octane downtimeachieve a glimmer of hope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532220</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Saunders1529014484|title=The Vernham ChroniclesExhalation |author=Ted Chiang|rating=45|genre=HumourScience Fiction|summary=Set amidst Over the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale is the little village of Vernham. Anyone who lives in a village will recognise it immediatelypast twenty-eight years, with its cobbled streets and Tudor buildings. There was some damage during the war (which mightTed Chiang has published fifteen science fiction short stories, or might not these magnificent stories have been down to won twenty-seven major science fiction awards so if you are a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps science fiction fan it is likely that you have been filled with already come across some beautiful, er, mock Tudor buildingsof the work by Ted Chiang. Almost unique and nearly beautiful as the village is, itIf you haven's not the star of The Vernham Chroniclest then take this opportunity to do so now. The stars are the people who live in VernhamTrust me; your imagination will be grateful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907499598</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris Coady1794467440|title=The Lost Stories of Sherlock HolmesWatchwords |author=Philip Neal
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=It is This satisfying collection of short stories has a truth universally acknowledged that a successful detective character will have far too many cases in his career for it to be provenance at all realistic. The worst case in point are least as beguiling as the provenance of the Hardy Boys, who have had two hundred or more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literary, but no less busy antique watches that inspired it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed many times that 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=4Philip Neal lost a watch.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The eleven short stories in Perfect Lives are about It was a group watch he was fond of people living in an English seaside townand had been told was like a 1930s Cartier. Each story Instead of challenged relationships, devastating discoveries and objects and people with a history is carefully and beautifully crafted, stands alone and works well in mourning its own rightloss, but the connections between all the stories offer an extra, fascinating dimensionhe began to collect vintage watches that resembled it. Each story made me want to look at the others again to understand And that's how they all connect, he became a watch collector. An eBay purchase led him to piece together the different bits of people's lives Antique Watch Company watch repairers in each storyClerkenwell. This format also offers an opportunity to see some of The eBay purchase was a fake, but the friendship that grew between the characters from several different perspectives, buyer 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 repairer of watches was not and the advantages seed of the novel while staying in the short story form. There are four stories told in the first person by an unnamed woman who is married with two young sons, and then one of her sons has a story of his own (Ivan Knows). There are idea for a variety of narrative viewpoints – women, men, a little boy, a teenage girl, first and third personbook was born.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1860499929</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shena Mackay1529006031|title=The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected StoriesReturn to Wonderland|author=Various Authors
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This volume of short storiesIn following a young girl called Alice down the rabbit hole a few years ago, when the first published book she was in 2008 but new [[Alice's Adventures in paperbackWonderland (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-sake-of-it did not gel, has and I don't remember loving it more as a lot child. But I would suggest I am the perfect audience for this book. I had every chance to offer those familiar with Shena Mackayenjoy these short stories that come at the core from a tangent, that show the benefits of the oblique glance. I's previous work and readers ve always preferred coming to her stories for the first timean author's output through their least obvious, with a generous thirty six stories allegedly throw- thirteen recent stories collected in book form for away pieces, and it's the first time are combined same with twenty three from Shena Mackayfranchises – I'd more likely go for Bree Tanner's previous collectionsshort novella than the whole Twilight saga (although that remains just a hunch, for obvious reasons).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099469677</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=Sheila O'Flanagan1846974658|title=A Season to RememberThe Long Path To Wisdom|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We first meet the Lodge owners, a likable couple. They find running their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date so O'Flanagan gets in the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early on. As the festive season looms, the unthinkable has happened. Empty rooms. They're not used to empty rooms, at any time of the year. Normally the Lodge is a full house. But then a slow and steady trickle starts as our characters book in - and the story starts proper, so to speak.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=John Mortimer
|title=Rumpole at Christmas
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This book is as slim as one of Rumpole's beloved packets of cigars and it can also be read in the time it takes an average turkey to cook in the oven on Christmas Day. A handful of festive, short stories is covered in this book with its appealing front cover. Most of the stories have been previously published elsewhere, mainly in 'The Strand Magazine' but also in some of the national newspapers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039779</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Raymond Carver
|title=Beginners
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary= One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver On my travels around the world, I have a tendency to end up in any bookshop that is that he was an alcoholic. Carver's characters tend to drink excessivelyselling English-language books, and his stories often examine while I buy as many second-hand escapist tales as the negative impact of drinking on his central character's relationships. But nowadaysnext person, what we talk about when we talk about Carver I'm really looking for is the role of his editor'local' – the cookbook maybe, the maps definitely, but above all: the folk tales. If I ever get to Burma, I won't need to hunt, Gordon LishI can read before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540320</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colm ToibinB077969HN8|title=The Empty FamilyAlternative Medicine|author=Laura Solomon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In his first book since Laura Solomon's publisher describes the pitch-perfect [[Brooklyn by Colm Toibin|Brooklyn]], Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme short stories in ''Alternative Medicine'' as ''black comedy with a twist of exile and homecoming in his new collection 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 short storieseither, but I've come to two conclusions about the book: what the publisher says is correct - and I really enjoyed it. The Empty Familycomedy is not ''too'. As ' black and the title suggests, many 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 stories also revolve around family relationships, and their sweet and sour Naturenicest possible way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918172</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kurt Vonnegut9386897504|title=Look at the BirdieTales of Love and Disability|author=Laura Solomon
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Kurt Vonnegut died I've always believed that less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a couple great deal of years ago after skill and talent to write a sci fi writing career spanning over fifty years; he was well-known short story which holds the reader and keeps them coming back for his humanist viewsmore. This collection There are far too many collections of unpublished short stories shows Vonnegut at his dark best, his theme, individuals out for themselves in an uncaring societywhich are all too easy to put down and forget after you've read a couple of pieces. A colleague at The Bookbag I've recently read a couple of novellas by Laura Solomon - [[Armageddon in Retrospect Marsha's Deal by Kurt VonnegutLaura Solomon|recently wroteMarsha's Deal]] that Kurt Vonnegutand [[Hell's Unveiling by Laura Solomon|Hell's early writing is his strongest. If that is Unveiling]] and enjoyed them, so, then this collection, illustrated I was intrigued to see what she could do with cartoons by the author, will be good news for his many fansan even shorter form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548852</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ryunosuke Akutagawa1986586898|title=Going To The Beautiful and the GrotesqueLast: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=K D Knight|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The author, In the tongue-twisting Akutagawa is 'hailed as one of the greatest short opening story writers , a man whose wife has deserted him visits Sandown with little money but comes away with cash in world literature' says the back book cover. I was truly impressed his pocket - and very keen to get readinghis wife. The front cover is both eye-catching and colourful, thereIn ''A Grey Day''s no doubt that this book an owner struggles with the problem of whether or not to run his horse in the Gold Cup when the ground is about Japanagainst him. There is a comprehensive Introduction with its lovely title My favourite was ''A Sprig Of Wild OrangeThe Story of H'' written by , the translatorstory of Foinavon. And straight away I got H is depicted as a strong sense kind horse who only wanted to please people. After changing hands on various occasions he came to the yard of his enthusiasm for the short stories to followJohn Kempton. It is H (or Foinavon) was entered in the Grand National and considered a good leadno-in as it informs hoper. In one of the reader most dramatic runnings of the gulf which exists between Western and Japanese values (race, a gulf as big as it getspile-up occurred at the 23rd fence. Foinavon, who had been many lengths adrift, apparently) cleared the fence and of galloped to the line, winning the conservative nature race at odds of the Japanese people100/1.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0871401924</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lydia Davis9386897296|title=The Collected Short Stories of Lydia DavisHell's Unveiling|author=Laura Solomon|rating=3.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=As you might expect with short storiesA 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, the themes are as varied as 'The Fears of Mrs Orlando' to Hell's Unveiling'Mothers' and of course, I have my own particular favourites. Most It's probably not much of these short stories cover a couple of pagesspoiler to say that Marsha bested the devil in ''Marsha's Deal'', but others are merely 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 sentence or 'goody twoshoes' in Hell). AndAlthough a strong person, for me, the less on the page, the more impart the words usually haveshe's vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. In short (no pun intended) there would seem Daniel is framed for a crime he didn't commit and sent to juvenile detention and refused permission to return to be something for everyone in these 700+ pageslive with Marsha.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114504X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kelly Link|title=Pretty Monsters|rating=3|genre=Fantasy|summary=It goes without saying Then, of course, there are all the other children who are not only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to the greatest thing about fantasy fiction is that one can go anywhere with it, and do anythingdevil's evil ends. So a young man can easily try He's out to prey on their fears and dig his girlfriend up weaknesses and retrieve some poetry he romantically left as with her many foster children, their self- only to have a hairy evening as a resultesteem is very fragile. There can be a psychic link between a young ladThis is no small-scale operation, called Onion and doomed to die in either - the devil has set up a terrorist attacktraining complex on earth, and his cousin while she works as slave in complete with an odd community of wizards. Several worlds can be accessed through an elderly woman's handbag, for better or worseelevator to Hell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677843</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|author=A L Kennedy|title=What Becomes|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=You're three stories into this collection and two people have cut their hands open preparing food - a man with love drooping away from his marriage, making soup, and another, a greengrocer, preparing stock and thinking about his own relationship. But there is no pattern to that. Four stories in and there have been two bursts of non-sequitur comedy. Why your fruit might be ruined by stray fingers, and the thoughts of a woman in a flotation tank, remembering Doctor Who, locked parental doors - and the urban myths of gerbils. But there's still no pattern - and that's the point of these combined stories. Life and all of its emotions does not live to rule.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009949406X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tove Jansson|title=Travelling Light|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In her home country of Finland – and no doubt throughout much of the rest of Europe which is not quite so sniffy about foreign literature as Britain tends Move to be – Jansson is generally recognised as an author of talent, skill, verve and wit that extended far beyond the Moomin Troll stories 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 (as well as being adapted for just about every other medium going), and a joy they are too, but it is only recently that we have been granted the pleasures of reading her fiction for adults.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095489958X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Grisham|title=Ford County|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=When I think of John Grisham I tend to think firstly of lawyers. Well, actually, I think of Tom Cruise first to be honest, and then the whole lawyer thing. I expect surprising twists and long, detailed plots. This collection, however, is a book of short stories so has to work differently. There isn't room within a short story for a lengthy, twisting plot, and so Grisham has to rely on other skills to make them work. My feeling was that some do and some don't. Set in America's Deep South all the stories revolve around a rather mixed bag of characters from Ford County, with the ever-present lawyers but also gamblers, murderers, con artists, drunks and scoundrels.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099545780</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Harvey|title=A Darker Shade of Blue|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=There are eighteen short stories covering the East Midlands, those parts 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 [[Newest Spirituality and women staffing it. And then there are the people who, in spite of everything, fight for justice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548232</amazonuk>}}Religion Reviews]]

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