John Lanchester

The residents of Pepys Road, London, all receive an anonymous postcard one day with a simple message: 'We Want What You Have'. Who is behind it? What do they want? As the mystery deepens, the world around Pepys Road is turned upside down and all of its residents' lives change beyond recognition over the course of the next year.

This is the story of four people whose lives are intertwined and span over seventy years. Tom Stewart, Sister Maria, Dawn Stone and Matthew Ho all live and work in one of the world's great cities, Hong Kong - the Fragrant Harbour.

Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments - stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the ghastly schlock, uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this, 729 more nights. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else. He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the Others are. But somewhere, in the dark cave of his mind, he thinks: wouldn't it be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if you had to fight for your life?