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[[Category:Short Stories|*]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Laurie R King and Leslie Klinger (editors)AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=In the Company of Sherlock HolmesAll Tomorrow's Futures: Stories Inspired by the Holmes CanonFictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=Well, that's one way to get a heck 'Opening up new ways of a lot thinking about the shape of attention things to your series of short story collections, for sure – get the estate of the author come.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're respecting to take you to court with the idea that the works cannot be published – the characters are so firmly established and entrenched, but established and entrenched as their property and therefore cannot be artistically reinterpreted, revived or otherwise returned to at all until full and final copyright statutes have expiredeighteen. Never mind Well, I must confess that the characters – one S Holmes and Dr JH Watson – hardly there have parallels been more than a few decades of technology in how often they already have been mimickedmy lifetime. Never mind I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the fact feeling that the estate it's all getting away from me. Some of Conan Doyle was paid off in order for the first book to releasedit is - frankly - quite frightening. StillOf course, I could research the case was won possibilities and this sequel is in our hands. Is it worth all the legal documents? What is the important verdict, at the probabilities and end of up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the reading day?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178329843X</amazonuk>latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jessie Greengrass B0CDZRGT1M|title=An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It Super Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C Wallfisch|rating=34.5

|summary=The title story''Got a minute to be amused, which appears firstentertained, or challenged?''''These 100 stories are super short. None is exactly what it says on the tin: more than 300 words. You can read one hunterin a flash.'s story of travelling to remote islands to take part in massive culls of great auks, until they were simply gone'''Some are funny. Some are poignant. All are short. It's always hard to believe that species that once numbered in their millions, such as the passenger pigeon, could go extinct so quickly, but when ' Question: how do you read about the brutal slaughter tactics here – swinging clubs and boiling birds alive – review flash fiction? How do you can see how give a flightless bird was flavour of a sitting target. The narrator makes no real attempt fully rounded little story if that story is told in fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try to defend himself: draw out themes from all the birds were flash fictions in a book of them? I don't know! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there for the taking; that was that. Still, he regrets their extinction, because really isn'in any loss you can see t a shadow fixed definition of the way flash fiction but that you will be lost yourselffor this collection, author Mark C Wallfisch has gone for a three hundred word limit.That' (Those interested s about a single page in the great auk's extinction may also want to read the 2013 novel ''The Collector of Lost Things'' by Jeremy Pageyour average paperback.)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473610850</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colin BarrettRachel Harrison|title=Young SkinsBad Dolls

|summary=WeIt're taken into the lives s been some time since I've read any horror. I had a couple of misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing the youthful inhabitants of small town Ireland in seven short stories of differing styles but a shared setting. Barrett writes of books from a doorman boy I fancied at a suburban nightclub, known school and respected by all scaring myself half silly with them to the point that I couldn't shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear of the localsvampires outside! Don't worry - this short story collection isn't like that! It doesn't have those jump scares, although we and I didn't have to read it during daylight hours only read about a brief affair and his vulnerability. Another tale portrays a young rocker and his emotional state! But it is creepy, years after an incident that scarred him both physically and mentally and made him the talk I found most of that feeling came from the town. Other tales all share fact that these are stories about women, living normal lives, and that at least in part, the same focus on people horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a new dieting app, going to a hen party and small but meaningful personal events in their livesa coping with grief.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959742X</amazonuk>1803363932

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=B ReidB0CCCVRSGX|title=Beyond the Trees of Gulavstadt: A Gothic Short StoryStories 2|author=Richard F Walker

|genre=Politics and SocietyShort Stories|summary=Amy works for Claralingua, a London education company that runs English schools all over the world, and Amy This is travelling to Gulavstadt, a remote town in Eastern Europe, to inspect one Richard F Walker's second volume of the schoolsshort stories. Gulavstadt is a town of myths There are thirteen in all and the setting I took something from each of them. There isn't a recent horror film, single one that doesn''The Thing Behind t deserve to be among the Trees'', exploiting them - featuring medieval, flesh-eating ghouls with mouths lined with others or brings down the sharpest of teethoverall quality. But myths donIt can be tricky to review short stories without giving too much away, so I't bother Amy..ll just pick two to talk about and I think they give a general flavour.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00U9I7KNI</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Dorthe Nors|title=Karate Chop, I've got a couple of confessions to make. I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and Minna Needs Rehearsal Space|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The reviewer picks up then forget to return to the book.<br>The book is called There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then there'Minna Needs Rehearsal Spaces science fiction: far too often it''.<br>The book is entirely made out of ones the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-sentence paragraphsbuilding.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are very seldom poetic, but normally are grammatically correct sentencespurely incidental.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs on the whole have just one verb So, unless regarding that from reported or unreported speech.<br>The book concerns what did I think of a middle-aged musician and composer who does indeed need rehearsal space.<br>The book concerns a woman who suddenly gets more space than she wants when her boyfriend leaves her.<br>The boyfriend's departure causes a lot of people crowding around Minnatwenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, which causes a problem.<br>The problem might be resolved by a trip away from her city flat.<br>The title of the book might be ironicI loved it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271198</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Malorie BlackmanB09XZMCDVF|title=Love HurtsStories: 13 tantalising tales|author=Richard F Walker

|genre=TeensShort Stories|summary=''Love Hurts'' A news vendor is all about heartache but it doesn't leave you bereft. Mixed crying out the headlines in are enough moments the middle of heartsease (and heart's joy!) 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 keep you believing in love. And we all want correct an iconic quote; a volunteer teacher proves the ideal person to believe have around in lovea lawless village; the new boy on the pub football team is very useful with his feet, donand awfully familiar…'t we? If you are one of the few who don't, you might as well look away now. The rest  This collection of us are in for thirteen short stories by Richard F Walker has a treatlot to offer the eclectic reader. This anthology has been gathered Tying them together by Children's Laureate Malorie Blackmanis the idea that remarkable and strange, one of our favourite YA authors here at Bookbageven miraculous, and certainly one who understands exactly how things can happen to write about the highs ordinary people. And that ordinary doesn't mean boring or uninteresting. Form and lows tone varies so this little treasury of love as it short fiction is experienced by young peoplenever boring and you're never quite sure what's coming next.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552573973</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eliza Robertson1737030942|title=WallflowersBag O'Goodies|author=Jolly Walker Bittick

|genre=Short StoriesAnthologies|summary=Eliza Robertson won the Man Booker Scholarship Sometimes, you deserve a treat and Curtis Brown Prize while completing her MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. mine was Jolly Walker Bittick's ''WallflowersBag O'Goodies' is already a bestseller in Robertson's native Canada. There is quite some variety across the seventeen stories. Broadly speaking I first encountered his writing about a year ago, thoughwhen I read his [[Cape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick|Cape Henry House]], there are a few themes: moving on from loss, finding love in the midst rollicking tale of gentle madnesswhat happens when five young men find a base for their partying. Right now, and interactions with the natural worldI didn't want a full-length novel, often on the edge so I turned to this anthology of Canadaverse and short stories. Bittick's British Columbia wildernesswriting has matured - and so have his characters. Well...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408856794</amazonuk>most of them!

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edith Pearlman1529418100|title=HoneydewBruno's Challenge and Other Dordogne Tales|author=Martin Walker

|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us I'm not usually a compilation fan of short stories that have only been seen separately in magazines over - I find it all too easy to put the years. This follows on from the huge success book down between stories and forget to pick it up again - but I am a fan of Martin Walker's [[Martin Walker'Binocular Vision'' (s Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries in 2013), the short story collection that led to Ms Pearlman being presented with the National Critics' Circle Award. Chronological Order|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Leslie Charteris and John Telfer (narrator)|title=Enter Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the Saint|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=When you think of thrillers written by a man in his early twenties there's a temptation to believe that the books might not be, well, top drawer, but that would be a mistake. The first of read ''Bruno'The Saints Challenge'' novels was published in 1928 when Leslie Charteris was just twenty one hard to resist and this collection of stories is dated 1930I'm rather glad that I didn't even try. You might expect For those new to the rambunctious adventurer we meet, but not the subtleties of the slightly world-weary man of the worldseries, there's an excellent introduction that will tell you all-knowing you need to know about who's who and the evils background to which men (and women) can sink, but they're all there. Admittedly the Saint why Bruno is more boisterous and less subtle than he will become - but that speaks more about the later works than this bookin St Denis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00OS74GQU</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J Robert LennonB08NF79QXT|title=See You In ParadiseCherry Blossom Boutique|author=Brooke Adams

|genre=Short StoriesWomen's Fiction|summary=Lennon writes with a relaxedThirty-one-year old Liberty Rossini has had her shop, the Cherry Blossom Boutique, easy style for just six months when she's nominated for - and his characters are instantly recognisable as people from everyday walks of life, without being in any way stereotypicalwins - the Retail Best Newcomer Award. Many of She's delighted and the two people in these stories are dealing she's brought with normal frustrations, and Lennon is cleverly detached enough not her to make them individuals that youthe event couldn're obviously supposed to root for (the only exception is the industrialist in the eponymous talet be more pleased. Sonja, her mother, who is an archetypal capitalist fat cat)ex-model and Brazilian: you can see where Liberty got her looks from. There are some very clever characterisations – in Jessica's thirty-four and Liberty'Weber’s Heads best friend: they've known each other since university and Liberty adores Jessica's husband, for exampleCharles and their four-year-old daughter, the narrator is a flawed individual whose opinions of his housemate are gradually revealed to be unreliable and unfairAva. For me, the most unsettling story is ''No Lifewould be perfect for Liberty if it wasn'', because it portrays t for one thing: she misses having a decent couple at the mercy of people more powerful and influential than themman in her life. There is no supernatural or bizarre element at work here, just ordinary characters at the mercy of social power.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781253358</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rebecca LeeB08KKQ85FN|title=Bobcat and Other StoriesBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=3.54

|summary=The first story in ''Bobcat'' is If a woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a Rottweiler in lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the company of carrion crows or, more to the title storypoint, and this alone is worth about to discover the price real world of admissionbus timetables and paying his own gas bills. Plaster it with prizes'' You don't get many better opening sentences than that, put it do you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador's Wife in anthologies; it deserves every accolade it can get. However, [[Sorting the last story echoes Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|Sorting the first, Priorities]] and we learned what it was like to be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the five tales in between are strangely repetitive, most with Midwestern North American narrators time has come for HE to retires and 1980s university settingsfor Sandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador... Moreover, all seven are They have left The Career and settled in Rome. Well 'settled' rather overstates the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety situation and their dog, Beagle, has no intention of perspectiveslowing down any time soon, despite being sixteen and deaf.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kelley ArmstrongB08CHJLNBS|title=Otherworld NightsCapturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=43|genre=ParanormalWomen's Fiction|summary=Kelley Armstrong revisits her hugely popular He'Otherworlds Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a partner at Wickham Jones, the Mayfair letting agents. She' series s Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in this collection the heritage library next door. Emilia has read [[The Secret by Rhonda Byrne|The Secret]] but she's moved on from new age books like that, which leave you dependent on someone else's philosophies, to something a little deeper. Charles is more of short storiesa [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, featuring many 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 the prominent characters from the serieshis mind? She's not his usual type at all: it's obvious to his friends.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356500667</amazonuk> And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to him? The relationship's obviously a non-starter, isn't it?

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robin Ince Marie O'Regan and Johnny Mains Paul Kane (editors)|title=Dead FunnyCursed: An Anthology of Dark Fairy Tales

|genre=HorrorFantasy|summary=In a world Curses. They're there throughout tales of nightmares, disasters, death faery and ignominy there is a book called ''Dead Funny''. Invented purely other fantastical folk – people being cursed to satisfy the remit built into its titledo this, it collects some horror stories written by comediansor not to be able to do that. Children can be cursed, both household names and those more up-and-coming. Like all horror books it comes out at as can princesses on the time verge of year best suited for horror – Halloweenmarrying, when we read with the darkest corners and older people too. It seems in our rooms, with the longest evenings outside – but is only suited for Halloween because a way there's no escaping it is a worthless, hellish piece of dross. It never excites, it Which is why the most self-serving vanity project, and the only funny thing about it is that some idiot ever decided it was worth publishing. Now I know you know, courtesy theme of those bright shiny stars alongside this review, that this volume, Dead Funny, is not ''that'' Dead Funny. But just bear in mind the horror story this could have been, if these pages were not so surprisingly adept at taking those said nightmares, disasters, deaths and ignominy and presenting them to us so competently.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773762</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou|title=Black Greek Coffee|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=If your experience book of Greece short stories is as such a tourist then you'll almost certainly standout – we may well think of it in terms of history, mythology and startlingly white buildings against sapphire blue sky and sea. It looks idyllic, but we know all there's a darker side is to Greek lifeknow about this accursed character, explored by Konstantina Souzou-Kyrkouthat demonised place, in ''Black Greek Coffee'' - a neat metaphor for the lives she looks at: sharp, bitter but ultimately addictiveand that other bewitched person. In twenty three short stories she illuminates the chauvinism and superstition, the concepts of ''honour'We' and the status of women, the dominance of religion and the lives led by ''ordinary'' people. They sound like grand themes, but the stories are grounded in domesticity and there will d be few people - in any country - who have not been touched by one of the problemsvery wrong.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784620351</amazonuk>1789091500

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Stibbe_Xmas|title=Doctor Who: 12 Doctors 12 StoriesAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Malorie Blackman, Holly Black and othersNina Stibbe

|genre=Confident ReadersHumour|summary=How long do you keep your birthday presents for? A week, a month, a year Christmas – or life? Is that the time-scale different, perhaps, when you're nearly a thousand years old? I only ask because Doctor Who is, of course, both 51 (in our earthly, televisual representation) and 900 and more in human years as a charactertraditional trauma. In 2013 we were given a great book You only have to think about the turkey for that gave us – once upon a story for every Doctor Who we've seen time it was leaving it sat on TVthe downstairs loo to defrost overnight, in honour of and if that failed the 50th birthday proceedingshair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. But now is a year onNowadays it's all having to make sure it's suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that you can go and visit it, and we're a further Doctor down the lineget too friendly with it to want to eat it. And so what was '11 DoctorsChristmas, though, 11 Stories' is now of course also a time of great boons. It'12 Doctors, 12 Stories'. So while many s cash in hand for a lot of us would have cherished plump people who can hire red suits and kept said birthday presentbeards, it was always a godsend for postmen with all the only addition is the lastthank-you letters to aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, which like the rest was available and as an e-book. So it's worth revisiting what I said about for the book last makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and sell them any other time, then chucking in of the (what might only be temporarily) concluding story at the end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141359889</amazonuk>year?

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0954899520|title=Problems with PeopleA Winter Book|author=David GutersonTove Jansson|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Tove Jansson''Problems with People'' is a meandering exploration s worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters of the relationshipssimplicity, big naivety and smallsheer '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 we form across she was a lifetime. Ranging from serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that of parent she had a feeling for the natural world and the simple life that not only informed those child to that between landlord and tenant, Guterson’s observation -like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the complexities and nuances involved in how we navigate these personal links is extremely sharp and true to lifeworld might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408859963</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1911115847|title=Burnt Tongues: An Anthology Nights of Transgressive Short Storiesthe Creaking Bed|author=Chuck Palahniuk, Dennis Widmyer and Richard ThomasToni Kan

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Saying certain things out loud just don’t sound right''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is a collection of short stories by Toni Kan. Some things are so disturbing or politically incorrect that you are best off leaving them inside your head, or better yet not thinking The series of stories tell of them at all. When these words are spoken they could lead to the sensation lives and lusts of Burnt Tongue; an aftereffect assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria, in this collection, is imbued with its very own heart of knowing what you said was darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a wronglook. Are you prepared Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to enter the world achieve a glimmer of Transgressive Fiction that aims to disturb, alienate, disgust and question?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178329552X</amazonuk>hope.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529014484|title=The Best British Short Stories 2014Exhalation |author=Nicholas Royle (editor)Ted Chiang

|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=I’m a keen reader and I like a massive tome. But every Over the past twenty-eight years, Ted Chiang has published fifteen science fiction short stories, these magnificent stories have won twenty-seven major science fiction awards so often, I drift into if you are a mode of finding science fiction fan it hard to settle to anything and at such times, I like to read short stories. I also enjoy them when I’m horribly busy and don’t is likely that you have already come across some of the time work by Ted Chiang. If you haven't then take this opportunity to read much moredo so now. Trust me; your imagination will be grateful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773673</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1794467440|title=Any Other MouthWatchwords |author=Anneliese MackintoshPhilip Neal

|summary=With This satisfying collection of short stories has a title like ''Any Other Mouth'', you know from provenance at least as beguiling as the provenance of the outset antique watches that this is, shall we say, inspired it. Philip Neal lost a watch. It was a watch he was fond of and had been told was like a rather niche book1930s Cartier. It’s not all about orificesInstead of mourning its loss, thoughhe began to collect vintage watches that resembled it. And that's how he became a watch collector. Partially autobiographical, this is An eBay purchase led him to the messy, ludicrous, wildly entertaining story of Antique Watch Company watch repairers in Clerkenwell. The eBay purchase was a girl who’s just a little bit different. Okfake, make but the friendship that grew between the buyer and the repairer of watches was not and the seed of an idea for a lot differentbook was born.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754575</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Revenge1529006031|authortitle=Yoko Ogawa and Stephen Snyder (translator)|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=A woman waits for a long time at a village bakery, her mind only on the strawberry shortcakes she wants to buy, and the strange reasons that make the purchase so important to her. A boy is invited by a girl at school Return to a posh French restaurant – with strawberry shortcakes on the menu – in order for him to provide moral support as she meets her estranged father for the first time. Nearby, a woman enjoys an unusual relationship with her elderly landlady, who keeps finding unusually-shaped carrots in her vegetable garden. A man reflects on an unusual relationship with a writer who for a couple of years at least was a step-mum to him, even as she went dotty in talking to herself. Unusual relationships, vegetables, motives – and strawberry shortcakes – are prevalent in this fascinating look at a sunlit yet dark world, which makes for a superlatively clever read.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553937</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=Dead Man's HandWonderland|author=John Joseph Adams (editor)Various Authors|rating=4.5

|summary=''Dead ManIn following a young girl called Alice down the rabbit hole a few years ago, when the first book she was in [[Alice's Hand'Adventures in Wonderland (150th Anniversary Edition) by Lewis Carroll and Anthony Browne|hit 150 years of age]], I found that I didn' features short stories t really find too much favour with themes ranging from time travel and vampires to theology; at first glance it definitely appears to be an eclectic mix. These stories are linked by The wacky-for-the genre -sake-of the weird west-it did not gel, which is defined by its elasticityand I don't remember loving it more as a child. John Joseph Adams' helpful introduction outlines the main features of But I would suggest I am the weird west and provides a clear, insightful guide to perfect audience for this little-known genrebook. Far I had every chance to enjoy these short stories that come at the core from being mismatcheda tangent, that show the eclectic nature benefits of this collection is in fact the greatest strength of the weird west genreoblique glance. Unconstrained by narrow generic conventions I've always preferred coming to an author's output through their least obvious, the authors in this collection have plundered the deepest depths of their imaginations. The result? A colourfulallegedly throw-away pieces, memorable and, above all, it's the same with franchises – I'imaginatived more likely go for Bree Tanner'' collection s short novella than the whole Twilight saga (although that remains just a hunch, for obvious reasons). For another thing, there was every reason to expect some kind of fiction.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783295465</amazonuk>greatness here – with Carroll much loved by millions, surely pieces written with that love in mind could only provide for success after success?

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1846974658|title=The ListenerLong Path To Wisdom|author=Tove Jansson|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Until very recently Jansson was probably only known in the English-speaking world for her Moomin stories. Then along came ''Sort of'' books and their wonderful translators, foremost among them: Thomas Teal. And we started to understand what it was about the woman…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908745363</amazonuk>}}{{newreview <!-- 19/5 -Jan->|author=Lightfall Literary Agency (Editor)|title=The Obsidian Poplar and Other StoriesPhilipp Sendker

|summary=On my travels around the world, I'll confess have a tendency to end up in any bookshop that is selling English-language books, and while I buy as many second-hand escapist tales as the next person, what I was a little nervous about 'm really looking for is the 'The Obsidian Poplar and Other Storieslocal''. There's a common misconception that short stories are easy - something run off quickly before – the author gets on with doing cookbook maybe, the proper job of a full-length workmaps definitely, but above all: the truth is rather differentfolk tales. A short story has none of the luxuries of a longer work: plot development has If I ever get to be done quicklyBurma, characters have I won't need to come off the page. Every word must earn its keep. A book hunt, I can be written - a short story must be ''crafted''. But what made me particularly nervous here was that all the authors are students - and the editor was convinced that there are ten of them who are good enough to be included in the bookread before I go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00JH1B94E</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De CataldoB077969HN8|title=JudgesAlternative Medicine|author=Laura Solomon

|summary=ILaura Solomon'll confess that it was s publisher describes the name short stories in ''Alternative Medicine'' as ''black comedy with a twist of [[:Category:Andrea Camilleri|Andrea Camilleri]] which brought me to this booksurrealism''. I'm rather glad that I didn't see this until ''after'' I'd finished reading as I'm not normally a long-time fan of his Inspector Montalbano series and a recent reading of a spin-off [[Montalbanoeither, but I's First Case by Andrea Camilleri|novella]] had proved ve come to me that two conclusions about the book: what the concise nature of his fullpublisher says is correct -length novels was no flukeand I really enjoyed it. In The comedy is not ''Judgestoo'' we had another novella - worth buying for its own sake - black and the bonus of two more stories from better-than-decent Italian authors. All that was needed was surrealism is gentle and perhaps best described as a glass twist or flick of wine and a comfortable chairreality when you were least expecting it. Did Your comfort zones are going to be invaded in the book live up to expectation?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052977</amazonuk>nicest possible way.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=9386897504|title=Lying Under the Apple TreeTales of Love and Disability|author=Alice MunroLaura Solomon|rating=4.5

|summary=Munro packs an extraordinary amount into I've always believed that less-able writers produce longer books: it takes a great deal of skill and talent to write a short story. Some of which holds the reader and keeps them are quite long coming back for short stories, and they more. There are not the sorts far too many collections of short stories that might suit reading on your daily commute; they demand more attention than that. Her observations of human behaviour which are acute, all too easy to put down and the most innocuous of them will set forget after you thinking 've read a great dealcouple of pieces. Most of the stories warrant I've recently read a pause for thought and need a little time for absorption couple of detail.novellas by Laura Solomon - [[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099593777</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewMarsha's Deal]] and [[Hell's Unveiling by Laura Solomon|title=Stories of World War One|author=Tony Bradman|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=World War One, or the Great War as it was known at the timeHell's Unveiling]] and enjoyed them, so I was a cataclysmic war. Millions died and life was changed forever for the survivors - for the women of Britain, and for the working classes and ruling classes alike. 2014 is the centenary of its outbreak and the redoubtable Tony Bradman has gathered together a dozen of our best writers for young people intrigued to create see what she could do with an anthology of short stories to commemorate the anniversaryeven shorter form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408330350</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1986586898|title=Something Like HappyGoing To The Last: Short Stories About Horse Racing|author=John BurnsideK D Knight

|summary=How do you pick In the opening story, a name for a short story collection? man whose wife has deserted him visits Sandown with little money but comes away with cash in his pocket - and his wife. It seems In ''A Grey Day'' an owner struggles with the problem of whether or not to me run his horse in the Gold Cup when the ground is against him. My favourite was ''The Story of H'', the story of Foinavon. H is depicted as a kind horse who only wanted to please people. After changing hands on various occasions he came to the yard of John Kempton. H (or Foinavon) was entered in the Grand National and other stories'' addconsidered a no-on is like picking a favourite child, a promotion hoper. In one of one portion the most dramatic runnings of the content above race, a pile-up occurred at the rest23rd fence. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got a title story hereFoinavon, who had been many lengths adrift, but such is cleared the mood of the book that he seems fence and galloped to have nailed the matterline, and picked winning the most apposite namerace at odds of 100/1. ''Something Like Happy'' could in a way be the title for practically every piece here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|title=Brief Loves That Live Forever|author=Andrei Makine|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Our unnamed narrator is inspired to think back through his life on the girls and women he has been in love with, partly because of a time spent with an associate – a time marked by a seemingly most unremarkable encounter with a further woman – whom he deemed had never been loved. The associate, you see, had spent half his adult life in Soviet camps for political instruction – our narrator himself was an orphan in the 1960s' Soviet Union. This snappy volume takes us through episodes in several lives at different points during and since the second half of communist rule – and finally explains the import of that unremarkable encounter…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870493</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|authorisbn=Elizabeth Haynes9386897296|title=Promises to Keep: A Short Story|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=Jo is haunted by the death of a teenage asylum seeker whilst in police custody and she only hangs on to her fragile sanity by running. Whilst sheHell's out in the woods (where she'd been warned that she ''really'' shouldn't go) she discovered a young boy living rough and she knew that she had to do everything in her power to keep him safe. There were complications. Her partner was DS Sam Hollands who had a direct involvement with asylum seekers - and the boy living rough in the woods was the younger brother of the dead teenager. Sam wanted to get her relationship with Jo back onto an even keel, but one night she returned from work to find a stranger in her house.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00I9GXP2M</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=The Rental Heart and other FairytalesUnveiling|author=Kirsty LoganLaura Solomon

|summary=To start withA 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, are these stories strictly fairytales? ''Hell's Unveiling''. On the evidence It's probably not much of this collection, it is at times a distinction that seems open spoiler to debate, a category say that lies waiting for definition. But at Marsha bested the same timedevil in ''Marsha's Deal'', such is but the genre-switching (and at times gender-switching), that it devil is a subtitle that serves better than mostnot one to take defeat lying down. The title story examines a lifeHe's romantic history via a twist out to wage war on the idea that we give our heart away to every lover – what do we have when they are gone Planet Earth and particularly on Marsha (who's thought of as a new one takes their place? 'goody two shoes' in Hell). ElsewhereAlthough a strong person, she's vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. Daniel is framed for a landed lady takes advantage of her servant, crime he didn't commit and sent to juvenile detention and another cultured madam hires a clockwork companion refused permission to return to shrug off the suitors, live with obvious, narratively logical resultsMarsha. A medical worker and her pregnant partner share a caravan togetherThen, all the while knowing a different circumstance might be closer than first thought. We have the beginnings of love livescourse, there are all the end other children who are not only targeted but - worst of hatred, and all - subverted to the end of the world in these pagesdevil's evil ends.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773754</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes|author=George Mann (Editor)|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=Hot He's out to prey on the heels of [[Encounters of Sherlock Holmes by George Mann (Editor)|Encounters of Sherlock Holmes]] comes another collection of brand-new tales written by some of the brightest creative minds from the genres of science fiction and crime. In this anthology, Holmes and Watson are pitched headlong into twelve different mysterious scenarios their fears and invited to unravel secrets weaknesses and unmask villains as only they know howwith many foster children, their self-esteem is very fragile. During their adventures they come face to face with a mountain monster This is no small-scale operation, take either - the devil has set up a murderous boat triptraining complex on earth, meet Moriarty’s siblings and even indulge in a little space travelcomplete with an elevator to Hell. The game is afoot!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178116004X</amazonuk>