Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Short Stories

In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.

Welcome to a London on the cusp of the 21st century. And meet Anthony, Alison and Lucy. Anthony is the disillusioned junior partner of a city insolvency firm; Alison is his PR-director wife; Lucy is the girl he has secretly been in love with for the past 17 years. This is the story of how Anthony and Lucy are brought together again and the emotional consequences for the people involved.

Waspish, wise, and wickedly witty, this is a collection to treasure forever. Reviewers have been describing Fay Weldon's inimitable voice for years. Now, here is Fay Weldon in her own words, selecting and introducing her favourite short stories from across her career as one of Britain's foremost contemporary novelists.

Married Love is a collection of short stories to treasure, a masterful new work from one of the UK's most accomplished storytellers. Lottie announces that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is 19 but looks five years younger. Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a lecturer at Lottie's university, 45 years her senior. We follow as Lottie's life unfolds; it is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments.

Here's a modern romantic comedy about love, loyalty, and limos from GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips. A Day to Remember is Jo's successful business, but when her right-hand man, Steve, runs away with their receptionist and the limo, Jo is left to pick up the pieces. Bookings are a mess, her home life is in chaos, and then her son accidentally damages the new neighbour's Mercedes. Far from a day to remember, it's turning into a week she'd rather forget.

As the summer break begins, lifelong friends Norah and Daisy are looking forward to one last summer together. That is until they fall under the spell of charismatic newcomer Jack Hannay. But as the summer draws to a close, Daisy refuses to accept that it is over. She insists on one last visit to Jack's boat, where something so horrific happens, it leaves them suffering the effects for years to come....

This fabulous, far-reaching book breathtakingly captures the tumult, ambition, hardship and serenity that mark modern India. Theroux's characters risk venturing far beyond its well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A holidaying middle-aged couple veer heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds relief in Mumbai's reeking slums. A young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore.

Is what you see all there is? Look again. Playful, frightening, even shocking - the stories in this collection blur the lines between illusion and reality. This is a writer at the height of his power, making the listener think, making them laugh, and sometimes making them want to look away while holding their gaze. Stories here are set in London, in Byzantium, in the ghetto, in the Andes, in a printer's shop in Spain. The characters include a murderer, a writer, a detective, a man in a cave, a man in a mirror, two little boys, a prison door, and the author himself.

In 'The Poppet' a faceless wooden doll holds the secret to a chilling curse.... In 'Hell in the Cathedral', a bunch of tourists are marooned at the mercy of a voracious sea beast.... Check out these and other nerve-shredding tales...if you dare!

Gianni Peroni is at a loose end. He's got nothing urgent to do but he notices that the pathologist has a busy day ahead: during the night two corpses were picked out of the Tiber. At first glance, it seems that the similarities between the two men end there. But then Gianni notices something very strange...

A small boy and his grandmother set sail for China in the mud of her backyard; a supermarket car park becomes a graveyard of strewn blueberries; migratory birds fly over a marshland ringing with the sound of wooden spoons on kitchen pots; and the breaking of a silence between two roommates leads to disquieting revelations. Eliza Robertson's delicate and startling stories tell of the adventure of the ordinary and the magic within the everyday.

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

Carrie Fraser cannot believe her luck when she is invited to work at Oakenbury Hall, a beautiful manor house in the English countryside. Nor can she quite get over the owner of Oakenbury – the gorgeous Morgan Harrington. The more time Carrie spends with him, the further she begins to fall. But the likes of Carrie Fraser could never be enough for a high-flying businessman like Morgan… could she?

Hannah French has always wanted more from life than her sleepy village in Devon can offer. And there are two men who are willing to give her that escape: William and Ralph Lawlor. They are brothers but their bloodline is all that they have in common. When events in Hannah’s life take a devastating turn, will somebody come to her rescue or will she have to accept that hope is all she has left?

Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets, and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. These stories are about the spectrum of feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.

The world of Cardiff's sex trade hits the headlines when a woman is butchered and left for dead. Pauline distributes condoms to the women of the red light district and is known locally as "the rubber woman". She and Megan, a forensic psychologist, make it their mission to stop more women from becoming victims. They don't know it yet, but one of them is already marked out for death.

Nur and Abid relearn to love after they escape from war. Marie, who keeps the women of the village from giving birth to children borne of war, finds herself in a situation she hasn't faced before. In a London park, an ageing MI-6 official discovers that the woman he meets every day may not be what she seems. Lyndsey's bouquets of twenty-seven tulips hold the secret of her dark past and a soldier adorns herself in jewels as she prepares for a final mission.