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[[Category:New Reviews|Short Stories]]
[[Category:Short Stories|*]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John E FlanneryAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Our Little Secret All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Other StoriesStephen Oram (Editors)|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=It's over eighteen months since we first encountered John Flannery and his debut collection 'Opening up new ways of shorts stories, [[Toby's Little Eden by John E Flannery|Toby's Little Eden]]. A golf course near Manchester and thinking about the characters who populated it came sharply shape of things to life and we laughed and we smiled along with themcome. Things are different in ''Our little Secret and Other Stories'' as we encounter violent death, suicide, delusion and mental illness. It's a good read but it's certainly not a comfortable one.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B007CKT6PG</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ray FawkesB0CDZRGT1M|title=One SoulSuper Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C Wallfisch
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short storiesGot a minute to be amused, alongside the collections 'Fireworks'entertained, or challenged?'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and 'American Ghosts'These 100 stories are super short. Carter's ability to take the everyday and transform it into the fantastic None is evident in stories that range from a cautionary tale of a musician more than 300 words. You can read one in love with his instrument to a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in the Snow Pavilionflash.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>}}''Some are funny. Some are poignant. All are short.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MacLeodRachel Harrison|title=Light LiftingBad Dolls|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Short stories may not be everyoneIt's cup been some time since I've read any horror. I had a couple of tea. Sometimesmisspent teen years reading Stephen King, particularly borrowing the books from a boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly with first time authors, there is an annoying tendency them to be overly experimental. Not so with Alexander MacLeodthe point that I couldn's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic t shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear of the vampires outside! Don'form' in that he is the son of novelist and t worry - this short story writer [[:Category:Alistair MacLeod|Alistair MacLeod]], but even so, the quality of this collectionisn'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 remarkable. The collection creepy, and I found most of seven that feeling came from the fact that these are stories is not overly themedabout women, living normal lives, although certain issues and concerns do reappearthat at least in part, but what binds the stories together is horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a very human approach new dieting app, going to adversitya hen party and a coping with grief.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>1803363932
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter O'DonnellB0CCCVRSGX|title=Modesty Blaise: Live BaitStories 2|author=Richard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic NovelsShort Stories|summary=WeThis is Richard F Walker're back s second volume of short stories. There are thirteen in the gritty yet glamorous world all and I took something from each of Modesty Blaise - at least, as gritty and glamorous as you could get in them. There isn't a single one that doesn't deserve to be among the Evening Standard daily comic strip in others or brings down the late 1980soverall quality. Titan have had a mammoth undertaking It can be tricky to reproduce all the original strips in handy large-format graphic novel compendia, and this latest covers three review short storieswithout giving too much away, all of which I consider greater in depth than those in the other volume so I've reviewed - [[Modesty Blaise: Sweet Caroline by Neville Colvin ll just pick two to talk about and Peter O'Donnell|Sweet Caroline]]I think they give a general flavour.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857686682</amazonuk>
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{{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.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09XZMCDVF
|title=Stories: 13 tantalising tales
|author=Richard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''A news vendor is crying out the headlines in the middle of the 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 awfully familiar…''
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, even miraculous, things can happen to ordinary people. And that ordinary doesn't mean boring or uninteresting. Form and tone varies so this little treasury of short fiction is never boring and you're never quite sure what's coming next.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tessa Hadley1737030942|title=Married LoveBag O'Goodies|author=Jolly Walker Bittick|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesAnthologies|summary=Married Love is Tessa Hadley’s second collectionSometimes, containing twelve short stories looking at (mostly) modern relationships you deserve a treat and family dynamics – many are mine was Jolly Walker Bittick's ''Bag O'Goodies''. I first encountered his writing about parents and a year ago, when I read his [[Cape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick|Cape Henry House]], a rollicking tale of what happens when five young men find a base for their grown up children and inpartying. Right now, I didn't want a full-lawslength novel, others are about couples. Flicking through the book so I turned to choose some this anthology of the best verse and/or most interesting short stories to mention, I . Bittick's writing has matured - and so have found a difficultyhis characters. Well... Almost all most of these incisive, witty stories reveal an interesting group of characters I would like to know more about after the end, sometimes from several different viewpoints, and it is hard to pick out just a few. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096427</amazonuk>them!
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam Ross1529418100|title=Ladies Bruno's Challenge and GentlemenOther Dordogne Tales|author=Martin Walker|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Adam Ross's characters are driven - but I mean that in the wrong way. They're m not the ones riding on usually a crest fan of short stories - I find it all too easy to put the book down between stories and forget to pick it up again - but I am a wave fan of motivation, steering their course through life. No, instead they are passengers, and who or whatever is at Martin Walker's [[Martin Walker's Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries in Chronological Order|Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the wheel seems temptation to have lost the satnav. So, in read ''Bruno's Challenge'Futures', a middle-aged unemployed man finds himself giving life lessons was hard to resist and a kick up the backside to a teenaged neighbour just as his own career seems about to enter its nth phase, with an airy-fairy psychic-oriented company I'm rather glad that wonI didn't ever go as far as telling him what his job might beeven try. A professor who has For those new to settle temporarily where his work takes him and not where he would likethe series, has there's an excellent introduction that will tell you all you need to wonder what know about who's who and the background to do when told of the action-packed adventures of a devil-may-care, come-what-may mechanicwhy Bruno is in St Denis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087746</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Javier MariasB08NF79QXT|title=While the Women are SleepingCherry Blossom Boutique|author=Brooke Adams|rating=4.53|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=The first thing Thirty-one-year old Liberty Rossini has had her shop, the trivially minded will note is that this is not the complete edition of While the Women are SleepingCherry Blossom Boutique, for not all just six months when she's nominated for - and wins - the stories in Retail Best Newcomer Award. She's delighted and the two people she's brought with her to the original Spanish volume are hereevent couldn't be more pleased. Sonja, her mother, is an ex-model and Brazilian: you can see where Liberty got her looks from. You might think thatJessica's because some have been hived off for a future thirty-four and Liberty's best offriend: they' compilationve known each other since university and Liberty adores Jessica's husband, Charles and their four-year-old daughter, Ava. But Life would be perfect for Liberty if this isnit wasn't the best of Javier Marias, then I don't know what isfor one thing: she misses having a man in her life. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553929</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stella GibbonsB08KKQ85FN|title=Christmas at Cold Comfort FarmBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=3.54
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=First things first. There's only one story in this collection about Cold Comfort Farm. This is 'If a story about woman approaching the farm before Flora Poste arrives, menopause can be likened to a 'prequel' if you like. It features the Starkadder family at ChristmasRottweiler in lipstick, with an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a dispute over a coffin-nail and it did make me smile. I suspect it is one for fans, however. For instance, pampered peacock about to be released into the appearance company of a teenage Dick Hawk-Monitorcarrion crows or, already in love with Elfinemore to the point, shoots a knowing wink at about to discover the devoted but would leave most readers coldreal world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528673</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew KaufmanB08CHJLNBS|title=The Tiny WifeCapturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=4.53|genre=Literary Women's Fiction|summary=It all begins with He's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a bank robberypartner at Wickham Jones, the Mayfair letting agents. Only this isnShe't your typical sort of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person s Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value that they have with themheritage library next door. These range Emilia has read [[The Secret by Rhonda Byrne|The Secret]] but she's moved on from photographs and a key through new age books like that, which leave you dependent on someone else's philosophies, to something a calculatorlittle deeper...and on taking these items he says he Charles is also taking fifty percent more of their soulsa [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, and but, above all, he's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian''. They're obviously not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get this woman out of his mind? She's not his usual type at all: it is up 's obvious to the victims his friends. And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to find the way to get their souls backhim? The relationship's obviously a non-starter, or to die trying.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>isn't it?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler Marie O'Regan and Julia DonaldsonPaul Kane (editors)|title=The GloomsterCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary=WeCurses. They've all been re therethroughout tales of faery and other fantastical folk – people being cursed to do this, or not to be able to do that. Finding fault with everything around usChildren can be cursed, and perhaps picking as can princesses on one particular irritant that gets us so rattledthe verge of marrying, tetchy and narked older people too. It seems in a way there's no escaping it. Which is why the theme of this book of short stories is such a standout – we may well think we know all we can do there is invoke "Hell and damnation!" down on all creation - includingto know about this accursed character, of coursethat demonised place, ourselvesand that other bewitched person. After all, our lot is so bad it wonWe't make anything much worsed be very wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk>1789091500
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lloyd JonesStibbe_Xmas|title=The Man in the ShedAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesHumour|summary=The title is certainly attention-grabbing and I hoped that Christmas – the book would live up time of traditional trauma. You only have to my expectations. It did. The man in 'The Man in think about the Shed' is not blessed with turkey for that – once upon a name. His name (whatever time it was leaving it is) is not important or relevant sat on the downstairs loo to defrost overnight, and if that failed the talehair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. ItNowadays it's all about ''why'' hehaving to make sure it's in the shed in the first placesuitably 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. This particular shed's in Christmas, though, is of course also a garden time of a house inhabited by a family which includes the young narratorgreat boons. It's pretty clear that the marriage is going through cash in hand for a rocky patch right now. So lot of plump people whocan hire red suits and beards, it was always a godsend for postmen with all the thank-you could reasonably wonder, is the odd one letters to aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out here in long- hand as a child, and as for the husband or the man in the shed. Jones tells us in his own way. He's a writer who catches your attention earlymakers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, or he did in my case. No fancy statements or lazy cliches but good old plain English but with flair.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848544820</amazonuk>they even try and sell them any other time of the year?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Judith Hermann0954899520|title=AliceA Winter Book|author=Tove Jansson|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tove Jansson''Alice'' is a collection of five short storiess worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, linked thematically since they all deal with written in the subject 1940s and later becoming television characters of deaththe simplicity, but they are also linked because the central characternaivety and sheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, Alicesimple 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 same in each story. So rather than feeling simple life that not only informed those child-like short stories the book has a hint trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the novel to it, yet the stories are never completed or fully told so it's a novel where you're not always sure what's going onworld might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668529X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jamil Ahmad1911115847|title=The Wandering FalconNights of the Creaking Bed|author=Toni Kan
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary="In the tangle ''Nights of crumbling, weather-beaten and broken hills, where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, Creaking Bed'' is a military outpost…" Thus begins collection of short stories by Toni Kan. The series of stories tell of the tale lives and lusts of Tor Bazan assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, the Black FalconNigeria. To Nigeria, in this desolate place come two wandererscollection, a man is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a woman seeking refugewrong look. Refuge is denied them, since it places duties Kan writes with a vitality and passion that the fort commander cannot accept, but instead he offers them shelter from the wind allows these cynical stories to achieve a glimmer of a hundred and twenty days. For as long as they want it. Shelter, and foodhope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145155</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cees Nooteboom and Ina Rilke (Translator)1529014484|title=The Foxes Come At Night And Other StoriesExhalation |author=Ted Chiang|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=There's a bold statement on Over the front cover frompast twenty-eight years, Ted Chiang has published fifteen science fiction short stories, as these magnificent stories have won twenty-seven major science fiction awards so if you are a science fiction fan it happens, one of my favourite authors, [[:Category:A S Byatt|A S Byatt]] saying is likely that Nooteboom is ''one you have already come across some of the greatest modern novelists'' so I thought that I was in for a treatwork by Ted Chiang. But I didnIf you haven't enjoy the first short story. Not the greatest of starts. I was disappointed then take this opportunity to say the least and was wondering what all the fuss was about. Then I started to read the story entitled ''Thunderstorm'' and things started to pick up. I appreciated the sparse and elegant languagedo so now. Lines such as 'Five people at an outdoor cafe: two women Trust me; your imagination will be grateful... a solitary black man ... a couple at a table nearby. Enough for a film.' How lovely and evocative is that last line, I'm thinking. I read it twice as it was so good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050230</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Gee1794467440|title=Last FlingWatchwords |author=Philip Neal
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Sue Gee is well known for her novels, but this is her first This satisfying collection of short stories. Short story collections are not for everyone. I've always enjoyed them since they fit easily into has a busy life, leaving you feeling provenance at least as beguiling as if you've lived through a whole story in just a short space the provenance of timethe antique watches that inspired it. It's easier to find the time for a quick story sometimes than to sit down with a four hundred page novel!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773061</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John E Flannery1529006031|title=Toby's Little Eden|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=John E Flannery's debut collection contains four short stories (although one is more of a novella) and a series of amusing sketches about the ground staff at a new Golf Course in north Manchester. They're more varied than they might appear at first glance and demonstrate Flannery's ability Return to get straight to the heart of the story without wasting words and to develop character as economically as possible, whilst still holding the reader's imagination. I knew as soon as I began ''The Ghostwriter'' that I wasn't going to be disappointed as a man who has written successful thrillers is possessed by the spirit of Charles Dickens. It's a neat riff on John Braine's idea that novelist wait for an idea to descend on them and Graham Greene's belief that novelists are like mediums.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445777940</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewWonderland|author=Dorothy Parker|title=The Sexes|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=From the young woman who examined her handkerchief in minute detail, to the soldier's leave which didn't live up to expectation, through the thoughts of the early hours of the morning to the actress who proved a disappointment to her fan and on to the glorious culmination of the child who should never have been called Lolita we have five wonderful short stories. They're in a book that's no bigger than most short stories but buy it and it could well be the best buy that you make this year.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014119619X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aidan Chambers|title=The Kissing GameVarious Authors
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=A WW2 naval soldier, guarding In following a young girl called Alice down the rabbit hole a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartialsfew years ago, is forced to wonder if he is winning his own battles against those arriving when the first book she was in [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (150th Anniversary Edition) by Lewis Carroll and leaving. A soldier remembers calming memoriesAnthony Browne|hit 150 years of age]], and those causing tension, as he rests up before actionI found that I didn't really find too much favour with it. And The wacky-for a highly-charged young man, there may be too much risk to be found in his highthe-sake-octane downtime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532220</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Saunders|title=The Vernham Chronicles|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale is the little village of Vernham. Anyone who lives in a village will recognise -it immediatelydid not gel, with its cobbled streets and Tudor buildingsI don't remember loving it more as a child. There was some damage during But I would suggest I am the war (which might, or might not have been down perfect audience for this book. I had every chance to enjoy these short stories that come at the core from a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but tangent, that show the benefits of the gaps have been filled with some beautifuloblique glance. I've always preferred coming to an author's output through their least obvious, erallegedly throw-away pieces, mock Tudor buildings. Almost unique and nearly beautiful as it's the village is, itsame with franchises – I'd more likely go for Bree Tanner's not short novella than the star of The Vernham Chronicleswhole Twilight saga (although that remains just a hunch, for obvious reasons). The stars are the people who live 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 Vernham.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907499598</amazonuk>mind could only provide for success after success?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris Coady1846974658|title=The Lost Stories of Sherlock HolmesLong Path To Wisdom|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=It is On my travels around the world, I have a truth universally acknowledged tendency to end up in any bookshop that a successful detective character will have far too is selling English-language books, and while I buy as many cases in his career second-hand escapist tales as the next person, what I'm really looking for it to be at all realistic. The worst case in point are is the 'local' – the Hardy Boyscookbook maybe, who have had two hundred or more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literarythe maps definitely, but no less busy it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed many times that he did not write down above all that man's exploits: the folk tales. Tony Reynolds here gives us eight more casesIf I ever get to Burma, making HolmesI won' workload even more impressivet need to hunt, I can read before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685618</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Polly SamsonB077969HN8|title=Perfect Lives|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The eleven short stories in Perfect Lives are about a group of people living in an English seaside town. Each story of challenged relationships, devastating discoveries and objects and people with a history is carefully and beautifully crafted, stands alone and works well in its own right, but the connections between all the stories offer an extra, fascinating dimension. Each story made me want to look at the others again to understand how they all connect, to piece together the different bits of people's lives in each story. This format also offers an opportunity to see some of the characters from several different perspectives, and perhaps make the short stories more satisfying to those who are dissatisfied by their brevity, as some of the same characters reappear, so offering some of the advantages of the novel while staying in the short story form. There are four stories told in 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 a variety of narrative viewpoints – women, men, a little boy, a teenage girl, first and third person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1860499929</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAlternative Medicine|author=Shena Mackay|title=The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected StoriesLaura Solomon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This volume of Laura Solomon's publisher describes the short storiesin ''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, first published in 2008 but new in paperback, has a lot I've come to offer those familiar with Shena Mackaytwo conclusions about the book: what the publisher says is correct - and I really enjoyed it. The comedy is not ''too''s previous work black and readers coming to her stories for the first time, with surrealism is gentle and perhaps best described as a generous thirty six stories - thirteen recent stories collected twist or flick of reality when you were least expecting it. Your comfort zones are going to be invaded in book form for the first time are combined with twenty three from Shena Mackay's previous collectionsnicest possible way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099469677</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sheila O'Flanagan9386897504|title=A Season to Remember|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 Tales of the year. Normally the Lodge is a full house. But then a slow Love and steady trickle starts as our characters book in - and the story starts proper, so to speak.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDisability|author=John Mortimer|title=Rumpole at ChristmasLaura Solomon
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This book is as slim as one of RumpoleI's beloved packets ve always believed that less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a great deal of cigars skill and it can also be read in the time it takes an average turkey talent to cook in write a short story which holds the oven on Christmas Dayreader and keeps them coming back for more. A handful There are far too many collections of festive, short stories is covered in this book with its appealing front coverwhich are all too easy to put down and forget after you've read a couple of pieces. Most I've recently read a couple of the stories have been previously published elsewhere, mainly in novellas by Laura Solomon - [[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] and [[Hell'The Strand Magazines Unveiling by Laura Solomon|Hell' but also in some of the national newspaperss Unveiling]] and enjoyed them, so I was intrigued to see what she could do with an even shorter form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039779</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Raymond Carver1986586898|title=BeginnersGoing To The Last: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=K D Knight
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary= One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholicIn 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. Carver In ''A Grey Day's characters tend ' an owner struggles with the problem of whether or not to drink excessively, and run his stories often examine horse in the Gold Cup when the negative impact ground is against him. My favourite was ''The Story of drinking on his central characterH''s relationships, the story of Foinavon. But nowadays, what we talk about when we talk about Carver H is depicted as a kind horse who only wanted to please people. After changing hands on various occasions he came to the role yard of his editorJohn 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, Gordon Lisha pile-up occurred at the 23rd fence.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540320< Foinavon, who had been many lengths adrift, cleared the fence and galloped to the line, winning the race at odds of 100/amazonuk>1.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colm Toibin9386897296|title=The Empty FamilyHell's Unveiling|author=Laura Solomon|rating=43.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In his first book since the pitch-perfect A little while ago I really enjoyed [[Brooklyn Marsha's Deal by Colm ToibinLaura Solomon|BrooklynMarsha'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'', Colm Toibin once more examines but the great Irish theme 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 exile and homecoming as a 'goody two shoes' in his new collection of short storiesHell). Although a strong person, she'The Empty Familys 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. As Then, of course, there are all the title suggests, many other children who are not only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to the stories also revolve around family relationshipsdevil's evil ends. He's out to prey on their fears and weaknesses and as with many foster children, and their sweet and sour Natureself-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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918172</amazonuk>
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