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[[Category:New Reviews|Short Stories]]
[[Category:Short Stories|*]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anita DesaiAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The Artist of DisappearanceAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Science Fiction|summary=Anita Desai's ''The Artist Opening up new ways of Disappearance'' is a collection thinking about the shape of three novellas with several satisfying unifying featuresthings to come. All are set in modern day India, all involve some looking back in time and all three involve some consideration of the creative art - who it is for, what happens to it once it leaves the artist's control and who 'owns' it. Most of all, each one is beautifully written, with strong characters and evocative descriptions of personal loss. In terms of length each is relatively short - around 50 pages long - but after each one you feel that you've been engrossed in the story just as much as if you had read a novel of more conventional length.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553953</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gerry WellsB0CDZRGT1M|title=Kicking the Hornets' NestSuper Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C Wallfisch
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=WWII books about the RAF and the Navy are quite common. Books about Special Operations Executive and similar organisations proliferate. Stories about the army are fewer and try as I might I really couldn't think of one which was other than incidentally about tank crew'Got a minute to be amused, entertained, so when the opportunity came I or challenged?''had'' to These 100 stories are super short. None is more than 300 words. You can read one in a flash.'Kicking the Hornets' Nest' particularly as it's written by an author who crewed a Sherman tank in Operation Overlord, back in June 1944Some are funny. I had just a couple of nagging doubtsSome are poignant. It's a book of All are short stories. Would I find it easy to pick up - and out down again? The big worry was whether or not this was going to be a macho action story, which wouldn't really be my cup of tea at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780881568</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Simpson|title=A Bunch of Fives|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=I will come straight out with it at the top of this review and state that I am a big fan of Helen Simpson. So this book, which is a selection of five stories from each of her five collections, is right up my street. All I’ve got to do now is convince you that you need to read it too!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099561573</amazonuk>}}'
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francis BennettRachel Harrison|title=The Crabber StoriesBad Dolls
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=John White was known to everyone as Crabber - a nickname which he once earned and which then stuck - and he grew up on the shores of Long Island in the nineteen-fifties. It was a close-knit community and a 's been some time when children had more freedom than they are likely to be allowed nowsince I've read any horror. We watch as Crabber grows from being I had a boy still suffering from the death couple of his elder brother when we first met him through to a time when he's old enough to go on a hunting trip on misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing the mainland with books from a local family. He tells his own stories, as truthfully as he can boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly with them to the sort point that I couldn't shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear of insight which children have before life injects its cynicism.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00737IKIW</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephanie Tillotson and Penny Thomas|title=All Shall be Well|rating=4.5|genre=Anthologies|summary=Twenty five years the vampires outside! Don't worry - a quarter of a century - is a long time. this short story collection isn't like that! Itdoesn's an incredible length of time as an independent publishert have those jump scares, particularly one which specialises in publishing the best in Welsh womenand I didn's writingt have to read it during daylight hours only! But it is creepy, but and I found most of that's exactly what Honno have achieved. To celebrate feeling came from the occasion they've published this anthology of twenty five short fact that these are stories about women, living normal lives, and non-fiction pieces. They've previously been seen that at least in part, the numerous anthologies published by Honno but when combined they give an interesting horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a new dieting app, going to a hen party and enlightening insight into the work of these great writersa coping with grief.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906784337</amazonuk>1803363932
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marshall MooreB0CCCVRSGX|title=The Infernal Republic|rating=Stories 2|genre=Short Stories|summary=''The Infernal Republic'' is a collection of short stories containing a mixture of general fiction, horror and fantasy published by Signal8Press, an imprint of author Marshall Moore's own publishing company Typhoon Media Ltd. Now normally I wouldn't pay much attention to who publishes the books I read, but in this case I'm making an exception because I can't honestly believe that any traditional publisher would have put out this book in this form. The whole collection is so badly crying out for a good editor that it actually ended up making me angry in places.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9881516404</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marc Nash|title=52FFRichard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=52FF This is a collection Richard F Walker's second volume of short stories in the flash fiction format. If you're new to flash fiction, you should know there are various definitions but here, Marc Nash chooses a format of under 1,000 words. This gives him some leeway and so the pieces There are thirteen in a wide variety of styles - some experimental - but all and I took something from each of them exploring . There isn't a single central metaphor and all with a darkness one that doesn't deserve to be among the others or brings down the overall quality. It can be tricky to review short stories without giving too much away, so I'll just pick two to talk about them which is sometimes explicit and sometimes only emerges after you've had time to I think and digestthey give a general flavour. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>B005IHMZR6</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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Etgar KeretB09XZMCDVF|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door Stories: 13 tantalising tales|author=Richard F Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In the opening, titular story, Keret is forced by several people to create, and alter, a short short story. It's a plain metaphor for the history of Israel, but it proves that this modern Scheherazade 'A news vendor is not too far removed geographically from crying out the original. And what follows are probably headlines in the sort middle of short, tantalising, open-ended, rough-round-the-edges and surreal results of being compelled to carry on telling tall tales on night; a nightly basis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186674</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ray Fawkes|title=One Soul|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=When reading this it soon becomes very clear we're reading not one, but nineteen, stories. With each page divided into wheelchair user loses touch with reality when he tries walking around in his imagination; a regular 3x3 grid there are eighteen images on each double page spread, and every one shows stickler for correct grammar goes back in time to correct an episode, or iconic quote; a beat, of a different character's life volunteer teacher proves the ideal person to have around in turn, from being a babe-in-arms to death. However, lawless village; the way they join up - everyone's figurative moment comes at once, at times new boy on the artist's heavy black ink makes all eighteen images coincide into one image - proves there pub football team is a separate, individual tale around and behind the others, one which will end very useful with the most delightful moral - that the ability to be anything one imagines is in our DNA.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1934964662</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angela Carter|title=Burning Your Boats|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short stories, alongside the collections 'Fireworks'his feet, 'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and awfully familiar…'American Ghosts'. Carter's ability to take the everyday and transform it into the fantastic is evident in stories that range from a cautionary tale of a musician in love with his instrument to a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in the Snow Pavilion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander MacLeod1737030942|title=Light LiftingBag O'Goodies|author=Jolly Walker Bittick|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesAnthologies|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 MacLeodyou deserve a treat and mine was Jolly Walker Bittick's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic 'form' in that he is the son of novelist and short story writer Bag O'Goodies''. I first encountered his writing about a year ago, when I read his [[:Category:Alistair MacLeodCape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick|Alistair MacLeodCape Henry House]], but even a rollicking tale of what happens when five young men find a base for their partying. Right now, I didn't want a full-length novel, so, the quality of I turned to this collection, is remarkable. The collection anthology of seven verse and short stories is not overly themed, although certain issues . Bittick's writing has matured - and concerns do reappear, but what binds the stories together is a very human approach to adversityso have his characters. Well...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>most of them!
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529418100|authortitle=Peter OBruno'Donnells Challenge and Other Dordogne Tales|titleauthor=Modesty Blaise: Live BaitMartin Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Married Love is Tessa Hadley’s second collection, containing twelve I'm not usually a fan of short stories looking at (mostly) modern relationships and family dynamics – many are about parents and their grown up children and in-laws, others are about couples. Flicking through I find it all too easy to put the book down between stories and forget to choose some pick it up again - but I am a fan of Martin Walker's [[Martin Walker's Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries in Chronological Order|Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the best temptation to read ''Bruno's Challenge'' was hard to resist and/or most interesting stories to mention, I have found a difficulty'm rather glad that I didn't even try. Almost all of these incisive For those new to the series, witty stories reveal there's an interesting group of characters I would like excellent introduction that will tell you all you need to know more about after who's who and the end, sometimes from several different viewpoints, and it background to why Bruno is hard to pick out just a fewin St Denis. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096427</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam RossB08NF79QXT|title=Ladies and GentlemenCherry Blossom Boutique|author=Brooke Adams|rating=4.53|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=Adam RossThirty-one-year old Liberty Rossini has had her shop, the Cherry Blossom Boutique, for just six months when she's characters are driven nominated for - and wins - but I mean that in the wrong wayRetail Best Newcomer Award. TheyShe're not s delighted and the ones riding on a crest of a wave of motivation, steering their course through lifetwo people she's brought with her to the event couldn't be more pleased. NoSonja, instead they are passengersher mother, is an ex-model and who or whatever is at the wheel seems to have lost the satnavBrazilian: you can see where Liberty got her looks from. So, in Jessica's thirty-four and Liberty's best friend: they'Futuresve known each other since university and Liberty adores Jessica's husband, a middle-aged unemployed man finds himself giving life lessons Charles and a kick up the backside to a teenaged neighbour just as his own career seems about to enter its nth phase, with an airytheir four-fairy psychicyear-oriented company that won't ever go as far as telling him what his job might beold daughter, Ava. A professor who has to settle temporarily where his work takes him and not where he Life would like, has to wonder what to do when told of the action-packed adventures of be perfect for Liberty if it wasn't for one thing: she misses having a devil-may-care, come-what-may mechanicman in her life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087746</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Javier MariasB08KKQ85FN|title=While the Women are SleepingBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The first thing ''If a woman approaching the trivially minded will note is that this is not menopause can be likened to a Rottweiler in lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the complete edition company of While carrion crows or, more to the Women are Sleepingpoint, for not all about to discover the stories in the original Spanish volume are here. You might think that's because some have been hived off for a future 'best real world of' compilationbus timetables and paying his own gas bills. But if this isn't the best of Javier Marias, then I don't know what is. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553929</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael MorpurgoB08CHJLNBS|title=War: Stories of ConflictCapturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=43|genre=Confident ReadersWomen's Fiction|summary=Throughout historyHe's Charles Devereaux, war has blighted society thirty-eight and had long lasting impacts on not only those directly involved but a partner at Wickham Jones, the innocent bystanders tooMayfair letting agents. This collection of stories She's Emilia, twenty-nine, edited librarian and archivist in the heritage library next door. Emilia has read [[The Secret by the magnificent Michael Morpurgo himselfRhonda Byrne|The Secret]] but she's moved on from new age books like that, which leave you dependent on someone else's philosophies, looks to explore the impacts something a little deeper. Charles is more of war on individual soldiersa [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, but, above all, families and especially childrenhe's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian''. Every story approaches conflicts from a different angle and They're obviously not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get this ensures woman out of his mind? She's not his usual type at all: it's obvious to his friends. And given that even though there are a good number of short stories in the bookEmilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, you will never why does she feel as if it is becoming repetitive or dull. drawn to him? The stories do relationship's obviously a good job of conveying just how multinon-faceted and complex the concept of war is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447205014</amazonuk>starter, isn't it?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew KaufmanMarie O'Regan and Paul Kane (editors)|title=The Tiny WifeCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionFantasy|summary=It all begins with a bank robberyCurses. Only this isnThey't your typical sort re there throughout tales of bank robbery since the robber demands faery and other fantastical folk – people being cursed to do this, or not money but instead each person in the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value to be able to do that they have with them. These range from photographs and a key through to a calculator...and Children can be cursed, as can princesses on taking these items he says he is also taking fifty percent the verge of their soulsmarrying, and older people too. It seems in a way there's no escaping it . Which is up to why the victims theme of this book of short stories is such a standout – we may well think we know all there is to find the way to get their souls backknow about this accursed character, that demonised place, or to die tryingand that other bewitched person. We'd be very wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>1789091500
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia DonaldsonStibbe_Xmas|title=The GloomsterAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionHumour|summary=WeChristmas – 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've s all been there. Finding fault with everything around us, having to make sure it's suitably free-range and perhaps picking on one particular irritant organic – but not too organic that gets us so rattledyou can go and visit it, tetchy and narked all we get too friendly with it to want to eat it. Christmas, though, is of course also a time of great boons. It's cash in hand for a lot of plump people who can do is invoke "Hell hire red suits and damnation!" down on beards, it was always a godsend for postmen with all creation the thank-you letters to aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long- includinghand as a child, and as for the makers of courseMeltis Newberry Fruits – well, ourselves. After all, our lot is so bad it won't make anything much worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk>did they even try and sell them any other time of the year?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lloyd Jones0954899520|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>}} {{newreviewA Winter Book|author=Judith Hermann|title=AliceTove 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 EdenReturn to Wonderland|author=Various Authors|rating=34.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=John E FlanneryIn following a young girl called Alice down the rabbit hole a few years ago, when the first book she was in [[Alice's debut collection contains four short stories Adventures in Wonderland (although one is more of a novella150th Anniversary Edition) by Lewis Carroll and a series Anthony Browne|hit 150 years of amusing sketches about the ground staff at a new Golf Course in north Manchesterage]], I found that I didn't really find too much favour with it. They're more varied than they might appear at first glance and demonstrate Flannery's ability to get straight to The wacky-for-the heart -sake-of the story without wasting words -it did not gel, and to develop character I don't remember loving it more as economically as possible, whilst still holding the reader's imaginationa child. But I knew as soon as would suggest I began ''The Ghostwriter'' that am the perfect audience for this book. I wasn't going had every chance to be disappointed as enjoy these short stories that come at the core from a man who has written successful thrillers is possessed by tangent, that show the spirit benefits of Charles Dickensthe oblique glance. ItI've always preferred coming to an author's a neat riff on John Braineoutput through their least obvious, allegedly throw-away pieces, and it's idea that novelist wait the same with franchises – I'd more likely go for an idea to descend on them and Graham GreeneBree Tanner's belief short novella than the whole Twilight saga (although that novelists are like mediumsremains just a hunch, for obvious reasons).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445777940</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?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dorothy Parker1846974658|title=The SexesLong Path To Wisdom|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker|rating=54
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=From On my travels around the young woman who examined her handkerchief in minute detailworld, I have a tendency to the soldier's leave which didn't live end up to expectationin any bookshop that is selling English-language books, through and while I buy as many second-hand escapist tales as the thoughts of next person, what I'm really looking for is the early hours of 'local' – the morning to cookbook maybe, the actress who proved a disappointment to her fan and on to the glorious culmination of maps definitely, but above all: the child who should never have been called Lolita we have five wonderful short storiesfolk tales. TheyIf I ever get to Burma, I won'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 yeart need to hunt, I can read before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014119619X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aidan ChambersB077969HN8|title=The Kissing GameAlternative Medicine|author=Laura Solomon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=A WW2 naval soldier, guarding Laura Solomon's publisher describes the short stories in ''Alternative Medicine'' as ''black comedy with a twist of surrealism''. I'm rather glad that I didn't see this until ''after'' I'd finished reading as I'm not normally a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartialsfan of either, is forced but I've come to wonder if he two conclusions about the book: what the publisher says is winning his own battles against those arriving correct - and leavingI really enjoyed it. A soldier remembers calming memories, The comedy is not ''too'' black and the surrealism is gentle and those causing tension, perhaps best described as he rests up before actiona twist or flick of reality when you were least expecting it. And for a highly-charged young man, there may be too much risk Your comfort zones are going to be found invaded in his high-octane downtimethe nicest possible way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532220</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Saunders9386897504|title=The Vernham Chronicles|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale is the little village Tales of Vernham. Anyone who lives in a village will recognise it immediately, with its cobbled streets Love and Tudor buildings. There was some damage during the war (which might, or might not have been down to a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps have been filled with some beautiful, er, mock Tudor buildings. Almost unique and nearly beautiful as the village is, it's not the star of The Vernham Chronicles. The stars are the people who live in Vernham.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907499598</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDisability|author=John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris Coady|title=The Lost Stories of Sherlock HolmesLaura Solomon
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=It is a truth universally acknowledged I've always believed that less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a successful detective character will have far too many cases in his career for it great deal of skill and talent to be at all realistic. The worst case in point are write a short story which holds the Hardy Boys, who have had two hundred or reader and keeps them coming back for more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literary, but no less busy it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed There are far too many times that he did not write collections of short stories which are all too easy to put down all that manand forget after you's exploitsve read a couple of pieces. Tony Reynolds here gives us eight more casesI'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 enjoyed them, making Holmes' workload so I was intrigued to see what she could do with an even more impressiveshorter form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685618</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Polly Samson1986586898|title=Perfect LivesGoing To The Last: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=K D Knight
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The eleven short stories in Perfect Lives are about In the opening story, a group of people living 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 English seaside town. Each story owner struggles with the problem of challenged relationships, devastating discoveries and objects and people with a history is carefully and beautifully crafted, stands alone and works well whether or not to run his horse in its own right, but the connections between all Gold Cup when the stories offer an extra, fascinating dimensionground is against him. Each story made me want to look at the others again to understand how they all connect My favourite was ''The Story of H'', to piece together the different bits story of Foinavon. H is depicted as a kind horse who only wanted to please people's lives in each story. This format also offers an opportunity After changing hands on various occasions he came 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 yard of the same characters reappear, so offering some of the advantages of the novel while staying in the short story formJohn Kempton. There are four stories told H (or Foinavon) was entered in the first person by an unnamed woman who is married with two young sons, Grand National and then considered a no-hoper. In one of her sons has a story the most dramatic runnings of his own (Ivan Knows). There are a variety of narrative viewpoints – women, menthe race, a little boypile-up occurred at the 23rd fence. Foinavon, a teenage girlwho had been many lengths adrift, first cleared the fence and third persongalloped to the line, winning the race at odds of 100/1.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1860499929</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shena Mackay9386897296|title=The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected StoriesHell's Unveiling|author=Laura Solomon|rating=43.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This volume of short stories, first published in 2008 but new in paperback, has a lot to offer those familiar with Shena MackayA little while ago I really enjoyed [[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's previous work Deal]] and readers coming I was delighted by the opportunity to her stories for read the first timesequel, with a generous thirty six stories - thirteen recent stories collected in book form for the first time are combined with twenty three from Shena Mackay''Hell's previous collectionsUnveiling''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099469677</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sheila O It'Flanagan|title=A Season s probably not much of a spoiler to Remember|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=We first meet say that Marsha bested the Lodge ownersdevil in ''Marsha's Deal'', a likable couplebut the devil is not one to take defeat lying down. They find running their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating He's out to wage war on Planet Earth and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date so Oparticularly on Marsha (who's thought of as a 'goody two shoes'Flanagan gets in the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early onHell). As the festive season loomsAlthough a strong person, the unthinkable has happenedshe's vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. Empty roomsDaniel is framed for a crime he didn't commit and sent to juvenile detention and refused permission to return to live with Marsha. They're Then, of course, there are all the other children who are not used only targeted but - worst of all - subverted to empty rooms, at any time of the yeardevil's evil ends. Normally the Lodge He's out to prey on their fears and weaknesses and as with many foster children, their self-esteem is a full housevery fragile. But then a slow and steady trickle starts as our characters book in This is no small-scale operation, either - and the story starts properdevil has set up a training complex on earth, so complete with an elevator to speakHell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>
}}
