Showing titles in Short Stories

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humor, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression.

Written by Scottish-Canadian author John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps), The Runagates Club is a collection of twelve short stories focusing on members of the eponymous London dining society.

When Brian Foley is charged with the murder of his next-door neighbour, the fastidious Arthur Cranham, it seems the case against the blustering showman is cut and dried: prints, DNA, CCTV footage - there can't be any doubt. After all - Brian and Arthur have famously been at war for years. But Jack and Sarah are convinced that the police have it wrong. With time running out, can they prove Brian's innocence and find the real killer? Set in the sleepy English village of Cherringham, the detective series brings together an unlikely sleuthing duo: English web designer Sarah and American ex-cop Jack.

‘Lauren Bravo is one of my very favourite writers’ Dolly Alderton Gwen is coasting through life. She’s in her mid-thirties, perpetually single, her friends are busy procreating in the countryside and conversations with her parents seem to revolve entirely around the council’s wheelie-bin...

Fall asleep fast a with Icelandic Fairy Tales: Soothing Bedtime Stories for Adults, an enchanting audiobook that will transport you to a serene world and effortlessly lull you into a restful slumber. This audiobook is designed to create the perfect ambiance for a restorative sleep experience.

From the bestselling and award winning 'master of the spy thriller' comes a collection of riveting short stories. When a man's wife leaves him under suspicious circumstances, he sets off in search for her, unprepared for the guilty secrets he's about to drag back into the light. A man is tempted...

A Twist of the Knife is Peter James’s gripping collection of thirty short stories, combining tales from Short Shockers: Collection One and Two. With each twist of the knife, a chilling new journey begins . . . From a woman intent on bizarre revenge to a restaurant critic with a morbid fear of...

There is a book that is shrouded in mystery. Some even say it's a myth. Within its pages is a play - one that brings madness and despair to all who read it. It is the play of the King in Yellow, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. The King in Yellow is a collection of stories interwoven loosely by the elements of the play, including the central figure himself.

On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.

'Full of kindness, even tenderness... He is a brilliant writer: opulently gossipy as few are these days, but also truthful, witty, wise and stoical' Rachel Cooke, Observer 'Everett is a brilliant writer - funny, waspish, warm and seductive' Camilla Long, The Times Richly imagined and...

Brought to you by Penguin. If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of...

When pest controller Nick Grieves and his wife Samantha are called to sleepy Seadale's dockyard in the dead of night, they expect a rat infestation, or maybe an unclaimed exotic pet. But what they find instead is a nightmare from another continent: a terrifying and unnatural creature with a hunger that can’t be contained.

They say opposites attract, but for former boxing champ and gym owner Brock Garner, having the beautiful dark-haired, tattooed, combat-boot wearing pixie Cree Redmond flitting around his club has nearly driven him mad. Brock has wanted Cree since the first time he saw her, and when he learns she has the singing voice of an angel, it speaks to another part of his heart and he's unwilling to hold back any longer. But Cree's dating a burly biker and is firmly off-limits. Or so he thinks…

Random House presents the audiobook edition of the short story The Christmas Scorpion by Lee Child, read by Jeff Harding. Jack Reacher likes to head south for the winter, to stay warm: so just before Christmas he arrives in a small town in Southern California. But the weather there is not warm...

Bolu Babalola takes the most beautiful love stories from history and mythology and rewrites them with incredible new detail and vivacity in her debut collection. Focusing on the magical folktales of West Africa, Babalola also reimagines iconic Greek myths, ancient legends from the Middle East, and stories from countries that no longer exist in our world.

The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny’s characters range from mischievous to tender. In ‘Bridesmaid, Revisited,’ Marilee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid’s dress to work. In ‘Twist and Shout,’ Ericka’s elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In ‘Turn Back, Turn Back,’ a bedtime storxy coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor’s deception. And in ‘561,’ Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband’s ex-wife move out of the family home.

***Includes bonus short story*** Introduces us to the life of John Shakespeare, Queen's Spy. ------------------------------------------------------- 'Sixteenth-century London comes alive in all its tawdriness' Daily Mail 'Beautifully done . . . alive and tremendously engrossing' Daily Telegraph...

A tourist becomes prey in this surprising journey into the secrets of a small town.

Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of 20th-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963, and still lacks proper recognition today. 

The theme that unites these stories in this dazzling first collection by Curtis Sittenfeld is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, this collection shows Sittenfeld’s knack for creating real, believable characters while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit.