The City of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

A collection of stories written by the late Carlos Ruiz Zafan as a thank you to the countless fans of his bestselling The Shadow of the Wind and The Labyrinth of the Spirits books Return to the mythical Barcelona library, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, in this posthumous collection of stories from Ca rlos Ruiz Zafan, the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind. Comprising eleven stories, most never before published in English, The City of Mist is Ruiz Zafan's tribute to the countless thousands of readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey through the mysterious gothic world of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth-maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudi reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece. Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist bring to life the mesmerising magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to enter the dream along with him. ...Show more

A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself by Brigid Lowry

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

If you're struggling to maintain grace and good humour amidst daily potholes and pitfalls, Brigid Lowry may be just the warm, wise and witty companion you need. Informed by contemporary psychology and Zen Buddhism, Brigid's essays offer reflections on everything from friendship to grief, and from gratit ude to self-care. Give this book to a friend or gift it to yourself, A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself is all the encouragement you'll need to nurture you and those around you. ...Show more

She Is Haunted by Paige Clark

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

I know lots of things now that I'm dead. Peter from Apartment Two has a spastic bladder. My former boss Morgan keeps her toenails in a gold jewellery box. My brother and his wife are trying for a baby. I always excuse myself before things get too heated.I don't know much about my mother yet. I am waitin g for grief to catch her, but she mostly seems ashamed-of her body, of what it made.A mother cuts her daughter's hair because her own starts falling out. A woman leaves her boyfriend because he reminds her of a corpse; another undergoes brain surgery to try to live more comfortably in higher temperatures. A widow physically transforms into her husband so that she does not have to grieve. In She Is Haunted, these renditions of the author search for recognition and connection, and, more than anything else, small moments of empathy. But in what world will she move beyond her haunted past and find compassion for herself? With piercing insights into transnational Asian identity, intergenerational trauma and grief, the dynamics of mother-daughter relationships, the inexplicable oddities of female friendship, and the love of a good dog, Paige Clark has crafted an exquisite, moving and sophisticated debut work of fiction. Full of wit and humour, She Is Haunted announces an entrancing new literary voice as contemporary as it is unique. 'The real meets the ethereal here and becomes something all its own. Clark is the best new writer in Australia and this book is like nothing else.' Robert Lukins, author of The Everlasting Sunday 'The stories in She is Haunted grapple with a mix of timeless human problems and uniquely contemporary dilemmas: grief, illness, identity, and heartbreak, but also who gets custody of the dog after a break-up, bureaucratic responses to deeply personal relationship issues, and the politics of food. Paige Clark writes with wit, warmth and nuance, using precise, playful language, giving us a collection of (sometimes embarrassingly) relatable characters, sneaky insights and surprising bursts of joy.' Emily Maguire, author of Love Objects and An Isolated Incident ...Show more

Dark As Last Night by Tony Birch

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

A masterful new story collection from award-winning Indigenous writer Tony Birch. Dark as Last Night confirms, once again, that Tony Birch is a master of the short story. These exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood. In this collection we witness a young girl struggling to protect her mother from her father's violence, two teenagers clumsily getting to know one another by way of a shared love of music, and a man mourning the death of his younger brother, while beset by memories and regrets from their shared past. Throughout this powerful collection, Birch's concern for the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked shines bright. 'Tony Birch writes short stories better than pretty much anyone at work in Australia today.' Stephen Romei, The Australian ...Show more

The Collected Stories of Shirley Hazzard by Shirley Hazzard

$24.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

Collected Stories includes both volumes of National Book Award-winning author Shirley Hazzard's short story collections - Cliffs of Fall and People in Glass Houses - alongside uncollected works and two previously unpublished stories. Twenty-eight works of short fiction in all, Shirley Hazzard's Collect ed Stories is a work of staggering breadth and talent. Taken together, Hazzard's short stories are masterworks in telescoping focus, 'at once surgical and symphonic' (New Yorker), ranging from quotidian struggles between beauty and pragmatism to satirical sendups of international bureaucracy, from the Italian countryside to suburban Connecticut. In an interview, Hazzard once said, 'The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature'. Her stories themselves are a supreme evocation of writing at its very best: probing, uncompromising and deeply felt. ...Show more

Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

Land of Big Numbers depicts the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled--messily, violently, but still beautifully--into the present. Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen's stories coalesce into a portrai t of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China's volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.   With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice. ...Show more

New Australian Fiction 2021: A new collection of short fiction from Kill Your Darlings by Rebecca Starford (Editor)

$24.95 AUD

Category: Short Stories

A son becomes enthralled in his father’s quest for treasure. A young woman is blamed for an unfathomable act. Teenagers break into an airfield. Strangers meet in the night. The world is thrown into chaos when people spontaneously combust.New Australian Fiction features brilliant writers with distinct ex periences, voices and styles from all corners of Australia. Together they showcase the strength and diversity ofAustralian short fiction at its best. These stories will move, entertain and enlighten you.Praise for previous editions:‘At a clutch moment in Australian publishing, the volume certainly has its finger on the pulse.’ – The Age, Pick of the Week'Nuanced, captivating and accomplished. Australian short fiction is indeed alive and well.’ – Maxine Beneba Clark ...Show more

Travelling Companions by Antoni Jach

$32.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories

'Antoni Jach takes one of the oldest of storytelling forms, the traveller who shares with us the tales of other travellers, and makes new magic from it. Travelling Companions is a joy from start to finish.’ — John Connolly, author of he: A Novel and the Charlie Parker series Solitary travellers and a c ouple encounter Nina, an eloquent storyteller, on their travels through Spain, France and Italy. She entrances them all with her tales, which prompts her fellow travelling companions to share their own stories. A handsome young man from Staten Island, who believes that life forms exist in other galaxies, vows to never work in an office again and travels by container ship to a commune in Italy. A lonely postal worker from Lodz takes home and reads the most interesting love letters, often becoming convinced a relationship needs his intervention, before delivering them the next day. A woman named Pauline calls herself Kim because her surname is Nowak. Depressed about turning forty, she mysteriously disappears from her own birthday party. Told by people on a journey, these are stories – rich with unexpected wisdoms – of lives in transit.Travelling Companions is charming, amusing and philosophical – a wholly original exploration of what it means to honour our strangest dreams and disappointments. It is both a confrontation with, and a sweet diversion from, these, the darkest of times. ‘In the tradition of Boccaccio and Chaucer, Jach is an extraordinarily inventive fabulist for late capitalism, seducing his reader into an ever-expansive web of captivating and often hilarious stories from likely – and unlikely — travelling companions.’ — Marion May Campbell, author of Shadow Thief and Konkretion ‘Travelling Companions is a hybrid travelogue of Europe and the strangeness of the human spirit. It reminds us that storytelling is different from ‘fiction’ — it catches us in a different pulse and breath as we open ourselves to even the most far-fetched and ironic pleasures of the tale. It leads our tourists further than mere travelling: these stories transport them, with folly, irony, humour and endless pleasure.’ — Philip Salom, author of The Returns and The Fifth Season ...Show more

The Weight of a Human Heart by Ryan O'Neill

$27.95 AUD

Category: Short Stories

The Weight of a Human Heart turns the rules of storytelling on their head. A series of graphs illustrates the disintegration of a marriage, step by excruciating step. The heartbreaking story of a Rwandan boy is hidden in the pages of his English exam paper. A young girl learns her mother’s disturbing se crets through the broken key on a typewriter. With settings ranging from China to Rwanda to Australia, these powerful and original stories announce the arrival of a brilliant literary talent. 'Clever ... uproarious ... dazzling' THE MONTHLY 'In O'Neill's hands, the minor art form of the short story becomes major art' BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHER ‘Full of wit, irony, wild invention, love and pain – and sometimes shocking power’ PADDY O'REILLY ‘By turns acerbic, playful and serious, O’Neill is equally at home with satire and pathos’ CATE KENNEDY author of The World Beneath ‘With each new story O’Neill redefines the boundaries of what is possible’ PATRICK CULLEN, author of What Came Between ...Show more

Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales by Stephen King and Bev Vincent (editors)

$27.99 AUD

$32.99 (15% off)

Category: Short Stories

Fasten your seatbelts for an anthology of turbulent tales curated by Stephen King and Bev Vincent. This exciting new collection, perfect for airport or aeroplane reading, includes an original introduction and story notes for each story by Stephen King, and brand new stories from Stephen King and Joe Hil l. Stephen King hates to fly. Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you. Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you're suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like - gulp! - a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we'll bet you've never thought of before... but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger. Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, "ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents... Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight." Book a flight for this terrifying new anthology that will have you thinking twice about how you want to reach your final destination. Table of Contents: Introduction by Stephen King Cargo by E. Michael Lewis The Horror of the Heights by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson The Flying Machine by Ambrose Bierce Lucifer! by E.C. Tubb The Fifth Category by Tom Bissell Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds by Dan Simmons Diablitos by Cody Goodfellow Air Raid by John Varley You Are Released by Joe Hill Warbirds by David J. Schow The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury Zombies on a Plane by Bev Vincent They Shall Not Grow Old by Roald Dahl Murder in the Air by Peter Tremayne The Turbulence Expert by Stephen King Falling by James L. Dickey Afterword by Bev Vincent ...Show more

Metamorphosis - Selected Stories by Penelope Lively

$45.00 AUD

Category: Short Stories

The definitive selection of short stories from one of our greatest living writers, curated by Penelope Lively herself Wry, compassionate, and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing ol d, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. From new and never-before-published stories to forgotten treasures, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master. 'Lively has the gift, rare and wonderful, of being able to peel back the layers one by one and set them before us, translucent and gleaming' Sunday Telegraph 'A sublime storyteller . . . she has us riveted with curiosity as to what will happen next, yet also keeps us consistently aware of the nature of the illusion' Guardian 'You are in the hands of a master' Daily Mail ...Show more

Once - A Selection of Short Short Stories by Linda Martin (Editor); Elfie Shiosaki; Ellie Fisher; Gillian Greensmith; Grant Revell; Guy Salvidge; Izzy Mead; Leonard Goulds; Mabel Gibson; Mark Hackleton; Martin Lindsay; Laura Keenan (Editor); Matt Beamish; Nadia Rhook; Olivier Breton; Priya Kahlon; Rachel Isaacson; Robyn Lunn; Sabian Wilde; Scott-Patrick Mitchell; Shannon Jade; Susan Midalia; Amy Budrikis; Yann Toussaint; Arianne Chavez; Ashleigh Hardcastle; Bronwyn Jones; Caroline Nutter; Carolyn Abbs; Dianna Grove

$20.00 AUD

Category: Short Stories

Once: A selection of short short stories brings together the best of new flash, micro and short-hybrid fiction in Western Australia. The collection showcases thirty new, rising and established writers who share big ideas in tiny spaces. Funny, insightful, wondrous and smart, these potent short shorts wi ll keep you entertained. ...Show more