Showing results by author "R. B. Russell" in All Categories

Luciana Gutierrez a police officer, works 96-hour shifts with a eugeroic hangover around the corner. Her investigation into those who stole her life is sidelined as a crime syndicate turns her precinct into a war-zone. Sent for backup, she’s offered experimental technology that could turn the tide, if she’s willing to risk mind, body, and soul.

The view from John Dowson s living room window is a miniature masterpiece. It reveals Venice in decay; crumbling, soft pink brick, and the ever-changing jade waters of a minor canal. But one morning the composition is marred by an old jacket draped carelessly over the iron railings of the balcony. This almost insignificant alteration to the perfect, arranged order of Dowson s life is just the first of many changes which become more profound as the days pass.

Samuel Miller discovered the photograph tucked away in the back of his father's wallet. The hospital had given it to him along with the other items the old man had been carrying when he had been admitted.

Most people seem to consider Nina Monkman to be a self-assured, confident young woman, but I have known her long enough to realise that this is not quite the truth.

'I think that love is best left to the young,' Donna said. 'I expect that one day it will be viewed by psychiatrists as a mental health problem rather than anything wonderful or spiritual.

'I am sure that a professional gentleman such as yourself could afford to rent rooms like this as a single tenant?' The landlord smiled at Komensk ingratiatingly. 'We could come to an arrangement so that I wouldn't have to find another occupant to share with you?

The Restaurant San Martín in Mendoza did not appear to have changed at all in its ninety-five-year history. It was still richly decorated and plushly upholstered in a hopelessly antique style, and Ernesto Galman revered it.

Edward Clarke was staring out of the window of his bookshop, a cigarette held delicately between his long, thin fingers, his unshaven chin slightly upraised.

Tonya matched her pace to that of the sedately departing steam train. She opened the last door of the last carriage with the nonchalance of a seasoned commuter and stepped aboard.

The past doesn't always stay where it should. It is as though somebody, or something, is forever trying to bring it painfully into the present. Flavian Bennett is trying to leave his past behind when he goes to work in his father's bookshop in Paris. But a curious customer, Reginald Hopper, is desperate to resurrect his own murky origins. Hopper believes that a rare and mysterious book, The Dark Return of Time, may be the key to what happened before he arrived in Paris. In this quiet thriller by R.B. Russell, the futures - and pasts - of these two men will soon cross.

I awoke this morning in what appeared to be a strange house and I lay between unfamiliar sheets trying to remember exactly where I might be. I was not especially worried at first.

"Mrs. Taylor?" The greeting came from a woman sitting in a ponderous wingback chair by the front door. Because of the paperwork on her lap she could not immediately stand.

Maria said to him, 'I'd be tempted to rent the house for just this one room.' 'It is lovely, yes.' 'The way the light comes in from that window, through the curtains on to the plain walls . . .

The five stories that made up R.B. Russell's debut collection, Putting the Pieces in Place, were described on first publication as demonstrating 'a subtle mastery of the macabre. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a pleasing respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction with a chilling contemporary European resonance.'

Bernard heard the news one busy evening in my bar on the rue des Abbesses. He heard it from Jules, who had been told by Lulu.

Shaffer returned home at five, just as it was getting dark. He had to put down his bags to unlock the front door, and picked them up again feeling annoyed that he had set so much homework for his pupils; after all, he was going to have to mark it all.

The tape came off the first reel, threaded its way through the guides and heads, and flapped uselessly, rhythmically, as the full spool continued to turn.

If only we would take the time to look a little closer, delve a little deeper, when ordinary life goes awry, we might find the world more strange and unexpected than we ever could have imagined.

Following on from Literary Remains, R.B. Russell's previous collection for PS_Publishing, the twelve stories of Leave Your Sleep concern sex and death, love and loss. Russell allows his characters to disappear, slip into alternate realities, or re-write their own histories. They find they are able to do the most extraordinary things, even though they may not immediately realise it. And who is in control of their actions, or those around them?

When I look back on my life in Eastbourne in the late 1980s I find it amazing that I could have ever had enough time and energy to accomplish what I did.