Short Stories & Anthologies

A collection of very short stories by a variety of renowned authors including Ray Bradbury, Chekov, De la Mare, Dostoyevsky, Aldous Huxley, Poe, Steinbeck and Tolstoy

Aesop's fables embody truths so powerful, and are popular with both adults and children. This collection includes the individual fables of the fox and the grapes, the dog in the manger, the wolf in sheep's clothing and many others.

In each of the twelve stories in After the Funeral, small events have huge consequences. Heloise's father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her forties, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy. Two estranged sisters cross paths at a posh hotel and pretend not to recognize each other.

Janie's bohemian mother plans to marry a man close to Janie's own age - everything changes when an accident interrupts the wedding party. A daughter caring for her elderly mother during the pandemic becomes obsessed with the woman next door; in the wake of his best friend's death, a man must reassess his affair with the friend's wife. Teenager Cecilia wakes one morning on vacation with her parents in Florence and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes. As psychologically astute as they are emotionally dense, these stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality and dreams. 

For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away.

 Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm. 'When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,' says Frog. 'And right now he is very, very angry.'

A collection of 23 short stories, of which 14 are previously unpublished. Witty and dark, Owens' prose shocks and delights.

Seven hilarious and surprising stories spiced with a twist in the tail

Twelve original short stories in which Jeffrey Archer plays a subtle cat-and-mouse game with the reader. They end, more often than not, with collective whiskers twitching in surprise.

Stories and animals have long travelled the same routes. Through our heritage of charming, quirky and profound tales, you will find yourself re-acquainted with Britain's wondrous fauna. Find out how hedgehog ended up with spines and what makes him scuttle so fast, discover how pigs saved a prince from leprosy and why the wealthy lord was so intent on capturing the black fox. Sharon Jacksties' wonderful book combines traditional stories, little-known zoological facts and true anecdotes to create a treasure trove of stories for animal lovers of every kind.

Ten page-turning short stories from a variety of writers including Matt Haig, Andy McNab and Philippa Gregory. With stories about everything from an agoraphobic man who helps a woman who has been mugged, to a child that has survived her house being bombed in the war, there is a story for everyone to enjoy. Quick Reads.

Elderly ladies living fantasy lives, and betrayed wives wreaking revenge are just some of the characters in these entertaining short stories.

After years of living in exile, Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 and published a series of eight powerfully paired stories. These groundbreaking works join Solzhenitsyn's already available fiction as some of the most powerful literature of the twentieth century.

Short stories dealing with the position of women in America at the beginning of l9th century;

In this collection of dark, funny and bizarre short stories, Alexei Sayle's characters are vividly, wryly - and occasionally disturbingly - portrayed. Their voices, and the stories they have to tell will remain in the mind for a long, long time. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

An anthology of short stories from the best crime writers in Britain. X rated, contains offensive language.

A collection of the best stories published in 2011 by British writers; it includes contributions from Hilary Mantel, Lee Rourke, Robert Edric, Michele Roberts and Salley Vickers, amongst others. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

An excellent collection, offering the reader a wide range of recent stories. Featuring: Elizabeth Baines, Ailsa Cox, Claire Dean, Jay Griffiths, David Grubb, Christopher Priest, Joanne Rush, Mick Scully, amongst others.

Some of the great classic shorts stories inspired by women. This empowering selection explores the many experiences and complexities of womanhood, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad. It includes Ladies in Lavender by William J Locke, the inspiration for the film of the same name starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

Some of the great classic short stories inspired by women. This empowering selection explores the many experiences and complexities of womanhood.

This empowering selection of classic stories inspired by women explores the many experiences and complexities of womanhood. It includes Happy Women by Louisa May Alcott and The Singing Lesson by Catherine Mansfield.

A delightful collection of short stories from a master storyteller.

Pearlman writes about the predicaments odd, wry, funny and painful of being human. Her view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments. Her characters inhabit terrain that all of us recognize, one defined by anxieties and longing, love and grief, loss and exultation.

Included in these twelve stories; a waiter divulges a shocking life of crime to his ex-wife; a woman repeats the story of her parents' unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy; a schoolgirl regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her; and in the title story, a middle-aged accountant offers his reasons for ending a love affair.

The criminal impulse may be present in the most routine or intimate situation. Murder, passion, and lost innocence are all contained in these stories. Ruth Rendell probes behind the patterns of everyday life to pinpoint the frailties, desires, deceptions and guilty secrets of human beings.

A collection of short stories including the tale of a young school boy who teaches a beekeeper to read during a visit to his aunt’s country house and another about a gang of boys planning a wicked deed on a beach.

These delightful short stories were written in the 1940's and 50's to keep the family solvent, hence the title of the collection!

A delightful collection of short stories from an author better known for her historical novels. A TV chef who specializes in outrageous cakes tempts a monk; a surprise visitor invites mayhem into the perfect minimalist flat; and a woman explains her unique view of straying husbands.

Four stories by Truman Capote – ‘Breakfast at Tiffany's’ ; ‘House of Flowers’; ‘A Diamond Guitar’ and ‘A Christmas Memory’.

In every detective's life there are cases that can't be discussed. This collection of Bryant & May stories not only sheds light on eleven previously unseen investigations but also contains everything you need to know about the two octogenarian detectives and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

The men in Bullfighting are each concerned with loss in different ways – of their place in their world, of power, virility, love – of the boom days and the Celtic Tiger. ‘The stories, his memories, were wearing out’ the narrator of the title story thinks, ‘and there was nothing new replacing them.’ The stories move from classrooms to graveyards, local pubs to bullrings; featuring an array of men at their working day and at rest, taking stock and reliving past glories. In the first, ‘Recuperation’, a man sets off for a prescribed walk around his neighbourhood, the sights triggering memories and recollections of his wife, his children, and his younger days. In ‘Animals’, George remembers caring for his children’s many pets, his efforts to spare them grief when they die or disappear, looking, in the eyes of his wife, like a hero, like ‘your man from ER’. But now his kids are reared and he’s unemployed, and he’s slowly getting used to that. ‘Suffer, your man Krugman said, when he was asked how Ireland should deal with the next 10 years. Well, this is George, suffering.’ Brilliantly observed, funny and moving, the stories in Bullfighting present a new vision of contemporary Ireland, of its woes and triumphs, and of the Irish middle-aged male confronting new realities. It is a masterful new collection from one of the country’s greatest writers.

Set in Germany during the Nazi regime and tells of the persecution of Jews in the 1930s and '40s.

With titles like 'A Story of Stolen Salamis', 'Letters to a Frozen Pea Manufacturer', 'A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates', and 'Can't and Won't', the stories in this new collection illuminate particular moments in ordinary lives and find in them the humorous, the ironic and the surprising. Above all the stories revel in and grapple with the joys and constraints of language - achieving always the extraordinary, unmatched precision which makes Lydia Davis one of the greatest contemporary writers on the international stage.

Set for the most part in London, Cornwall and the South Coast, the stories included in this collection are proof that one of the great masters of the short story is still, in his late eighties, at the height of his powers; and one of them, "Cocky Olly" - the story of two runaway children - is widely considered to be among the very best he has written.

A collection of short stories in which Deborah Moggach writes of life and times in a caravan park, harassed teenagers and harangued fathers, a rock star writing his memoirs, opera lovers and young lovers.

Twelve new stories from one of the best short story authors. The theme of this collection is missed opportunities!

Entertaining short stories from the author of 'Cold Comfort Farm' (10223).

Originally published in the 1930s and 1940s, these stories by the incomparable Angela Thirkell relate merry scenes of a trip to the pantomime; escapades on ice; a Christmas Day gone awry and an electrifying afternoon for Laura Morland and friends at Low Rising, not to mention the chatter of the arty set at a London private view.