3 cups of coffee. That’s maximum. 2 is preferable. And none after 4pm. 3 sets of press-ups (20 per set) 3 sets of sit-ups (25 per set) 3 sets of squats (15 per set) 3 times to go outside. That is also a maximum. Once to run and once to shops. If you feel a
When Josh knelt and presented the ring, the first question Hélène considered – other than the obvious – was, “am I going to have to kill his mother?” So far she’d mastered her rage. Three years of the relationship, two and a half trying to extricate him from the strange, devious little woman who bore
A fly landed on the bottom of the saucepan that was resting on the drainer. Which was allowed. Because it was on the bottom of the saucepan, not inside it, unlike the fly that had greeted Cora when she’d opened the butter dish on Tuesday morning. It had been dead on its back, right in
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. The above is the blurb that accompanied John Lanchester’s latest offering, a short story collection that
I use collections pretty much as a shopping list. And there is nothing I love more than the feeling of discovering what a new author (to me anyway) has to offer, and I find that through these collections I’ve found a great many writers that have now become a staples of my reading and bookshelves.
Night falls heavy behind drawn yellow curtains, as the silent face watches me grieve. My father used to keep a small transistor radio in the kitchen, a Zenith from sometime in the 1960’s with brushed silver dials and buttons. As a child it was already an antique, the sound it created hollow and tinny, like
Little Paranoias is a short story collection form horror author Sonora Taylor, a collection that is gripping, original and bang on the money for those that prefer the dark slice of horror. What I loved about the collection is that it is a mixture of short stories and flash fiction and this device that is
Me and Shady Granger playing grownup. Me and he. Just past 12 years old. Me chugging an empty whiskey bottle and him fake-smoking a cigarette. Pretending we are like our own parents. His family came from over there. Forbidden part of town. Part of town where the poor folks live, my daddy always said, and
After departing in a blaze of mediocrity, Graham Vasey returned to St. Joseph’s Junior School only twice in his life. The first time, it was being renamed the Graham Vasey Junior School, in dedication to his Booker Prize-winning success. He had sprung from such humble origins; he thanked his schooldays, in several interviews, as a
You’ve just walked in the door, stripped off your Lycra and turned on the shower when you see it: the toe. Not an ordinary toe; not a toe attached to a foot attached to a leg attached to a body. No. This is a severed toe. Freshly severed. It’s upright and propped against the wall.
