Novella in Flash

Named author novella in flash.

Margot and the Strange Objects : Robin Thomas

Margot has been left a peculiar collection of ‘strange objects’ by her aunt and is on a quest to find out something about them. Helping or hindering her or engaged on some other project entirely are: two men with a burden called Nimrod, a group of children in search of sardines and ice-cream, a taciturn man with a mysterious hat, a schoolboy who’s good at asking questions, a small dinosaur, a brace of giraffes, an August Personage, George the Oak Tree (a Portuguese-speaking arboreal author), a talking building, a camel, an interfering author and Nobody. On the way through their various journeys the characters wade through difficulties sensible, silly, philosophical, practical, linguistical and scientifically really important, until …

“Bath-o-pulsars, dinosaur training grounds, an oak tree (called George) that writes books – in the most glorious way possible, Margot and the Strange Objects is absolutely bonkers, as though Robin Thomas is channeling the spirits of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear into the novella-in-flash form. Thomas has published several well-received volumes of poetry, and his first work of fiction announces a brand new voice, capable of skipping between the profound and the playful in one sentence. This book brims over with energy, ingenuity and absurdity.”
~ Michael Loveday, author of Three Men On The Edge, V.Press

Paperback ISBN 978-1-915247-04-9; 133mm x 203mm; 118pp

£11.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

The Last Days of The Union : David Rhymes

Very few writers would dare to attempt what David Rhymes does here, let alone deliver something so authentic, convincing and real. The Last Days of the Union is a deep-dive into the Soviet Union of the late 1980s, and in particular a fascinating re-imagining of one strange, now-neglected event and all the circumstances that surrounded it. As a work of historical fiction, it depicts with breathtaking nuance and skill a time of instability, risk and political change. The multiple perspectives of the ensemble cast interlock like a sophisticated jigsaw puzzle. And at the centre lies the enigma of the young pilot Mathias Rust, whose rogue actions and motives were probably a mystery even to himself.

~ Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

The Last Days of the Union is a cinematic cold war adventure, wrapped in a political thriller with the investigative flair of new journalism, and the vivid economy of flash. David Rhymes skilfully juxtaposes international politics with the minutiae of everyday life, with protocol, toothbrushes, snowdrops, and pickles to tell the story of a reckless dreamer, who briefly and bizarrely landed on the world’s stage.

~ Jupiter Jones, author of The Death and Life of Mrs Parker

Like the real-life plane flight that sparked off this novella, The Last Days of the Union cleverly circles around the momentous event of a teenage pilot landing in Moscow Red Square in 1980s. In wonderfully vivid and concise prose David Rhymes fictionalises the impact of the journey on the lives of many individuals involved. A brilliant read.
~ Jude Higgins, author of The Chemist’s House

Paperback ISBN 978-1-915247-02-5; 133mm x 203mm; 122pp

£11.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Season of Bright Sorrow : David Swann

After her father is jailed for murder, a young girl is re-housed with her mother in a crumbling resort. There are terrors here: tides and quick-sands, also a strange boy who wanders the marsh. But when the girl meets an elderly beachcomber who has known heartaches of his own, she senses that her fortunes could turn like the tide. The tide that rushes in faster than a horse, bringing life – and sometimes taking it…

Illustrated by Sam Hubbard

‘This collection stands out for the rhythmic storytelling and the variety the reader encounters in these small fictions – told in fragments, in lists, in long breathless sentences, in repetitions, in sharp and believable dialogue. There is great care here, and yet the stories spill from the page seamlessly… A superbly designed set of stories, from beginning to end.’
~ Michelle Elvy, Judge, 2021 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award.

‘Season of Bright Sorrow is a little miracle. David Swann takes a boarding house, a boy, and a bay; a girl and her mum; a scattering of glimpses and gaps; and he gives you nothing less than the universe. There’s warmth and wisdom, here. Heartbreak, profundity, and humour. And beautiful drawings, too, by Sam Hubbard. It’s a short book, and it’s absolutely full to the brim with love.’
~ Edward Hogan, author of The Electric (John Murray, 2020).

‘Season of Bright Sorrow is by turns dark and foreboding, life affirming and hopeful. Each flash fiction is unique and haunting, and together they reveal our human urge for connection and certainty. Swann’s characters possess you instantly and we cannot help but enter fully into each strange and beautiful life.’
~ Karen Stevens, author of Writing a First Novel (Palgrave, 2014).

‘In a series of poetically precise and illuminating flashes, this novella explores how one girl, Lana, begins to learn how to live in a world full of loss. David Swann finds a specific language for a specific landscape, and, in doing so, connects with universal themes of grief and hope. It’s beautiful. And it’s funny, too.’
~ Bethan Roberts, author of My Policeman (Vintage, 2012).

‘Dave Swann’s portrayal of childhood brims over with wisdom, warmth and wonder. The coastal settings are so achingly desolate, the characterisations so astute, idiosyncratic and compassionate throughout. Season of Bright Sorrow feels note-perfect and yet it’s full of wildness and wilderness. There is an unforgettable magic at work.’
~ Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge (V Press, 2018).

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-29-2; 133mm x 203mm; 122pp

£11.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Kipris : Michelle Christophorou

“Michelle Christophorou’s Kipris is a moving, lyrical tapestry of life and death on the island of Cyprus. This author’s debut historical fiction novella delights the reader with unforgettable characters who are brought to life with their stories of myth, magic, tragedy and love. The reader is thrust into the drama of the generations, spanning four decades, taking us from the mountains and sea to Liverpool and back again. Christophorou shows us, in these delicately-wrought stories, how resilience and love are what shine. I marvel at how each flash works as a stand-alone story and how together, they bloom into one masterful whole. Want to fall in love with the flash-novella form? Look no further.”
~ Meg Pokrass, author of Spinning To Mars among many others, and series co-editor, Best Microfiction.

“Despite its brevity, this compelling novella tells an epic story of a family’s struggle, in the face of political upheaval and intolerance, to maintain their indestructible love for place and each other. This is an important, timely story and Christophorou’s evocative, gorgeous prose makes it an immersive, emotional, heartfelt read.”
~ Jan Kaneen, author of The Naming of Bones

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-36-0; 133mm x 203mm; 76pp

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

One For The River : Tom O’Brien

A boy drowns. The tragedy rips a family apart and sends ripples through a small town. Choices made and not made haunt those left behind. They grapple through grief and anger, searching for a way to continue. Tender, funny, spare and warm, One For The River is a story of struggle and hope.

“Spare in style, this small set of pages resonates with the complexities of an entire novel”
~ Michelle Elvy, author of the everrumble

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-33-9; 133mm x 203mm; 86pp

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

The Listening Project : Ali McGrane

A boy lost to his family; a young girl growing up without her brother. This is a beautiful story of grief and the way it changes us. It’s also about tuning in, and learning to hear, as the title suggests, both outside and inside worlds. Moving across generations, and sometimes navigating delicate moments and thin ice, this novella takes us through a family’s sad story, but also rebirth – in more ways than one. Musical and rich in tone.
~ Michelle Elvy, author of the everrumble, Bath Novella-in-Flash Award judge.

A finely woven, beautifully observed work of art. A journey of rediscovery, of (re-) learning to listen to more than soundwaves, listening to images, to memories. Keeping faith with love, learning to walk with grief. I absolutely loved this book. It made me weep, it made me smile through tears, the prose made me insanely jealous – and rather proud to know the writer. Unforgettable.
~ Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Coward’s Tale.

Not just a remarkable story of someone experiencing a scientific miracle, but an exploration of other kinds of deep listening. The dynamics of relationships, of grief and memory, the suffering of others, physical landscape – all are observed with a keen intelligence in this novella. Ali McGrane sculpts her flash fictions like poetry, and makes us listen more closely to the world.
~ Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge.

A tenderly wrought narrative of loss—Imogen’s struggle with hearing loss and her family’s struggle to cope with the long-ago death of her older brother Arnie. Through gorgeous, affecting prose and inventive forms, Ali McGrane creates a quiet space—seemingly absent of sound—where the reader can ponder what it means to truly listen. This novella-in-flash is one to savour.
~ Sara Hills, author of The Evolution of Birds.

From the opening sentence, this is a masterclass in combining the beauty of poetry with the insights of memoir and the narrative drive of fiction. Through a playful variety of flash fiction forms, Ali McGrane throws you into the lived experience of her characters. You’ll emerge enriched, as though you’ve spent time living, and listening, as somebody else.
~ Stephanie Carty, author of Inside Fictional Minds.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-27-8; 133mm x 203mm; 114pp

£10.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Small Things : Hannah Sutherland

Tender, brittle, ultimately shattering, but also full of hope and the possibility of redemption. Hannah Sutherland writes with economy and precision – and love.
~ Nicholas Royle, author of London Gothic & publisher at Nightjar Press

Small Things is a beautiful meditation on what keeps us alive when we lose the things we love. Sutherland weaves between narrative voices with tenderness and empathy for the human condition, guiding her characters through humour, happiness and heartbreak with disarming sincerity. In this, she captures the dizzying gravity of everyday life—the way it breaks us apart and makes us whole in our quietest moments and our deepest expressions of love. With insight, charm, and conviction, Small Things leaves its reader facing a hopeful world, feeling a little less alone and a little less afraid. 
~ Leonie Rowland, author of In Bed with Melon Bread & EIC at The Hungry Ghost Project

A heartbreaking, visceral novella with a unique and powerful voice. The reader becomes so deeply attached to the characters that you want to reach into the pages and shake them into action or warn them of the tragedy that awaits. A thundering, gut-wrenching story full of raw emotion and beautiful prose. This is a shining example of Sutherland’s talent.
~ Rachael Fulton, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2021

In a few deft strokes, Sutherland draws us easily, but deeply, into the world of Small Things. Her use of voice is phenomenal; at once raw and rough, but also touching and tender. I read this in one breathless sitting and challenge anyone to do anything else. Small Things is an exquisite example of how much can be achieved within the form – evoking strong emotions of heartbreak, love, loss and ultimately friendship – and has rightfully earned its place within the growing novella-in-flash genre.
~ Laura Besley, author of The Almost Mothers & 100neHundred

A beautiful story of loss, told in a way that surprises you. The moments are captured with subtle storytelling, and the heart shines with all the small things between them. These stories hold sharp dialogue and sometimes uncomfortable encounters; these feel like real people building real relationships. Friendship and love resonate in these pages, and the ending is both surprising and perfect. And Kit, Kit Kit, is at the centre of it all. Exceptional storytelling!
~ Michelle Elvy, Bath Novella-in-Flash Award Judge 2021

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-41-4; 133mm x 203mm; 84pp

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

The Death and Life of Mrs Parker : Jupiter Jones

A theory expounded by Heidegger is that time is a series of ‘nows’, each one always already the subject of a flash of experience, and all hurtling towards the finitude that defines experience.

When Mrs Parker begins to feel most peculiar, an ambulance is called, and as the paramedics set to work, she wonders if that will be the end of her, there, at The Oriental Dragon surrounded by strangers forking up fried rice. As her life hangs in the balance, she considers her heart, and reviews some of the ‘nows’ of a life richly lived and almost always taken for granted.

‘Set in the structure the title suggests, this novella brings the reader into the moment of Mrs Parker’s demise and then, with swift moves and snappy dialogue, takes us through her life (moments both special and mundane), all while the ambulance lights flare and the compressions are counted. A life lived, a life revived, a life lost: there are many wonderful moments in this clever set of stories.’
~ Michelle Elvy, author of the everrumble and the other side of better

ISBN 978-1-912095-98-8; 133mm x 203mm; 90pp

£10.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Hairy on the Inside : Tracy Fells

Hairy on the Inside is sparklingly clever, very funny, poignant sometimes and sharp as a wolf’s incisors.
~ Vanessa Gebbie

A funny and irreverent monster mash-up, with love in the mix, too, and a serious message about how to be the real you.
~ Michelle Elvy, author of the everrumble

In this original, witty and irreverent novella-in-flash, Tracy Fells sprinkles her skilful writing magic over a group of extraordinary housemates.
~ Amanda Huggins, author of All Our Squandered Beauty

The Young Ones meets An American Werewolf in London. Beautifully written and extremely funny!
~ Tim Craig, Winner of the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction

ISBN 978-1-912095-43-8; 133mm x 203mm; 80pp

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

The Tony Bone Stories : Al Kratz

“A strong and sure narrative, this lively set of stories explores truth and fiction, the line between reality and make-believe, and the way one story will influence the outcome of another. Rich in layers and confident in voice, the writing is witty, humorous and charged – and leaves the reader with a delicious set of questions to ponder, without being overly ponderous. It’s a romp through Tony Bone’s world – the good moments (he has a girlfriend!), the sleepless nights, the trip to Vegas – all the while working alongside his, and the narrator’s, existential crisis. Tony Bone has to exist, yes, but there must be a reason; as we learn here: you can’t just take someone from a news story and create a character to bring to your writing group, right? The narrator must build Tony – and plausibility – before our eyes. What a fun and rewarding exploration of the relationship between character, narrator and reader, and a reflection on possibilities, down to the very last marvellous line.”
~Michelle Elvy, author of the other side of better and the everrumble

ISBN 978-1-912095-39-1; 133mm x 203mm; 70pp

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

A Family of Great Falls : Debra A. Daniel

A FAMILY OF GREAT FALLS is a trip back in time, a story of love and loss and family, a perfect gem of a book. Debra A Daniel makes you smile and yearn, breaks your heart and lifts you up.
~ NY Times Bestselling author Ann Hood, The Knitting Circle and The Book That Matters Most

Debra A Daniel is a natural story teller. I was immediately drawn into A Family of Great Falls and involved with the characters’ lives. Beautifully written with humour and heart, this novella focuses on the daughters of an undertaker in the USA, in the 1920s and 30s. For them, death is a part of everyday life. The story is also about identity, how in different ways, the girls and their mother are determined not to succumb to the wishes of others when personal tragedy affects their lives. I was rooting for them all the way. And that is further testament to Daniel’s skills as a writer.
~ Jude Higgins, The Chemist’s House

In A Family of Great Falls, the eponymous town is home to siblings Willie and Jeanette and parents, Pearl and Henry. It is 1928 and Henry owns the local funeral parlour. The family are on the cusp of change; prosperity and social standing beckon, but there is indeed, a fall ahead. This novella is a triumph, showing the range of the form to encompass an epic tragedy, the minutiae of personal grief and resilience, and moves across decades with the lightest of touches. I was utterly absorbed.
~ Alison Woodhouse, The House on the Corner

Two sisters growing up with a sense of the potential promise that life may hold, as well as the dark realities that are unavoidable with a father who, as an undertaker, is the ‘keeper of the dead’ and a brother buried in the town cemetery. Oh, and a name that must be buried and farewelled, too. Tender but not sentimental, this is a balanced set of stories that reveal the bonds of sisterhood and the way two young girls face the hardest challenges.
~ Michelle Elvy, the other side of better and the everrumble

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-47-6; 133mm x 203mm; 132pp

£11.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Things I Can’t Tell Amma : Sudha Balagopal

A highly addictive read! I picked up Things I Can’t Tell Amma just for a taster first, and then I finished it in two reading bursts. It’s a moving novella-in-flash about the compromises a young woman has to make in order to survive and fit in a new country — but also, how she never forgets what truly matters and where she comes from.
~ Sophie van Llewyn, author of Bottled Goods.

There are many things that 22-year-old Deepa can’t tell her mother back in India now that she’s studying in Arizona. There are things she can’t tell the unfriendly librarian, or her shady professor, or her Indian would-be suitor, or the typist who sells her a typewriter, or prospective employers, but she’d like to tell her neighbor Theo how she feels about him. You’ll fall in love with Deepa as her story unfolds in these fifteen finely wrought flash. Warm, funny, and endearing, Sudha Balagopal’s Things I Can’t Tell Amma is a brilliant novella-in-flash, by a writer at the top of her form.
~ Jacqueline Doyle, author of The Missing Girl.

Told from the perspective of Deepa, a young woman who arrives as a stranger in a new country, Things I Can’t Tell Amma is an inventive novella-in-flash that explores how one navigates strange cultural norms and a yearning to belong. Even as this narrator tries to move on from her mother’s expectations, she finds her new life bewildering, adventurous, and full of heartbreak and love. Balagopal is a virtuoso of expressing the minutiae of things. A trapped quail finds its nest, the missing letter of a typewriter, the notes of a jingle from the 1980s, a limp doll hangs from a rearview mirror. This sensational novella is a gift you will want to unwrap again and again.
~ Dan Crawley, author of Straight Down the Road and The Wind, It Swirls

In this affecting novella in flash, a young woman leaves India to study in America. Balagopal expertly captures the tug between yearning for the familiar and wanting to find one’s place in a new world. In one flash, “The Missing I” Deepa buys a used typewriter for her term papers, only to find a broken key. When she complains, the vendor says: “Just write the damned ‘I’ in.” A clever metaphor for Deepa’s journey. The ambiguous ending left me hoping Deepa finds a way to “build a bridge across oceans.”
~ Damhnait Monaghan, author of The Neverlands, best novella 2020 Saboteur Awards.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-35-3; 133mm x 203mm; 68pp

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

the other side of better : Michelle Elvy

Fresh: yes! Authentic: yes! Poetic: yes! Brilliant: yes!! Here, with Michelle Elvy’s the other side of better, are wise reflections cast through refracted light. Here is the scent of the sea, the rift and grit of childhood. Here is an absorbing cinematic poetry in the telling – breathtakingly honest and elegant stories (personal, yet universal) about how we live, how we struggle and, most enduringly, how we thrive. A wondrous collection!
~ Robert Scotellaro, author of What Are the Chances?; co-editor of New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction

Well-turned stories, rich with wit and detail, that explore the spaces between people and places, from the ‘concrete weight’ of history to the secrets of creeks, islands and oceans
~ Paula Morris, author of False River and co-author of Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde

Michelle Elvy needs no more than this, the smallest white spaces in which to swim the waters between story and poem with humour, colour, imagination and a sharp grace. Elvy watches and listens to her characters, and the places they dance in, bringing us the darkly joyous truth of life’s uncertainties and love’s ambiguities.
~ Tania Hershman, author of and what if we were all allowed to disappear and How High Did She Fly?

The poems and stories in the other side of better hopscotch gingerly between wanderlust and rootedness, desire and exhaustion, memories of reality and dreams of the impossible. This is how Elvy gets you, by luring you in with one wonder and then giving you another. And the trick is never the same twice. This is a collection that surprises not just because it can, but because it understands the surprises of the world.
~ Erik Kennedy, author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime

Modern, humane and pacy… the other side of better is a gorgeous collection about love, the environment, and the things that make people devour and deify each other.
~ Nuala O’Connor, author of NORA, Mother America and The Juno Charm

To read Elvy’s work is to move closer to discovery – is to find a larger view of possibility.
~ Sam Rasnake, author of World within the World and Cinema Verité

These unique stories of love and dreams and oceanic epiphanies could only come alive at the hand of Michelle Elvy. It is a delight to see how she plays with the form and bends it to her will.
~ Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

the other side of better teems with innovative, intimate adventures, each a microcosm of humanity made capacious through Michelle Elvy’s sharp, unique lens.
~ Christopher Allen, Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-02-5; 133mm x 203mm; 172pp

£14.99 GBP

Buy Now

Echoes in a Hollow Space : Ruth Skrine

For all its small scale, Echoes in a Hollow Space has the heft and reach of a saga. It traces the lives of two women of different generations, both damaged but neither fragile, and the bond that develops between them. The story is anchored in place and time, interweaving natural imagery with narrative. Though it offers no easy solutions, it is grounded in hope.
~Jenny Woodhouse, Creative Writing Group Leader, U3A, Bath

I thoroughly enjoyed Echoes in a Hollow Space. In her debut novella-in-flash, Ruth Skrine has created engaging characters and a compelling narrative. After finishing the novella, I frequently found myself thinking about the complex characters of Evie and Annabel, finding myself missing them both.
~Diane Simmons, author of An Inheritance V.Press (2020)

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-22-3; 133mm x 203mm; 102pp

£10.99 GBP

Large print edition available from Amazon worldwide. Please select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPBRCAMXAUIN

Something Lost : Louise Watts

Something Lost is a novella about desire and unfulfilled potential. A young girl attempts to escape the drudgery of her life at home in books and in a relationship with her alcoholic English teacher. Meanwhile, her parents’ marriage is coming apart and domestic responsibilities build up.

Something Lost seeks meaning in likely and unlikely places: poems, definitions, recipes, jokes, facts. It moves between innocence and experience as high aspiration is undercut by emotional realities, and an underlying sadness is revealed. Although a coming-of-age story, it is not clear that anyone ever gets the chance to grow up.

A clever and extremely poignant first-person tale of family strife and growing into adulthood, where the reader enjoys reading between the lines of the teenage girl’s narration. The voice is pitch-perfect, the details sensitively chosen to evoke adolescent experience, understanding both less and more than it admits. Louise Watts has created a beautiful novella – funny, disarming, and deep.
~Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

A beautifully woven story of life in the shadows – richly layered, filled with pathos and poetry and yearning. Its narrator’s quiet voice enchants and disturbs, and shines with patient resilience. It is a voice I would happily follow anywhere.
~Gail Anderson, winner of the Scottish Arts Trust Story Award, Reflex Fiction 2019 and Winchester Writers’ Festival 2018

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-12-4, 133mm x 203mm, 66 pages.

£8.49 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

When It’s Not Called Making Love : Karen Jones

Reader, do not be fooled. The brevity of this novella-in-flash belies the breadth and scope of its subject matter. In assured, clear-eyed prose, Karen Jones quickly immerses us into the world of her loyal, smart, brave protagonist. Bernadette is a child who becomes a woman, a bully who becomes the bullied, forever seeking the birthright we all share, that of simple tenderness and understanding. When It’s Not Called Making Love is a breathless, breathtaking, unflinching coming-of-age debut you will not want to miss.
~Kathy Fish, Author of Wild Life: Collected Works

Karen Jones artfully captures the dangers and hurts of life for suburban adolescent Bernadette, who suffers a painful awakening as she negotiates the quagmire of sex and the shifting rules of friendship. Frank and frustrated, Bernadette’s voice is breathless and vibrant, and the reader can only act as witness and wish her well on her journey. Poignant and full of truth, this is gorgeous writing.
~Nuala O’Connor, author of Joyride to Jupiter

I just loved When it’s Not Called Making Love. With an authentic voice, Karen Jones tells the story of the troubled Bernadette as she grows from displaced child to young adult. The stories are at times heart-breaking, at times hilarious, but they are always utterly engrossing. An exemplary novella-in-flash.
~Diane Simmons, author of Finding a Way and An Inheritance

Full of pent up desire and intense observation, this book grips you close, and pulls you hard into the darkness. This is succinct, sharp writing about loneliness, with raw pain and love at its core.
~Elisabeth Ingram Wallace, winner of The Mogford Prize and Writing the Future.

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-16-2, 133mm x 203mm, 50 pages.

£8.49 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Stormbred : Eleanor Walsh

Eleanor Walsh is an assured storyteller. In Stormbred she reels the reader into the life of Ruby, a young Cornish girl searching for connection – to the world and to others. Walsh explores with perception these themes of connection and disconnection, embedding them skilfully in both the form and the language of the novella. An exceptionally rewarding and immersive read.
~Johanna Robinson, author of Homing

The search for home is a powerful theme in Stormbred, Eleanor Walsh’s extraordinary second novella-in-flash. With a backdrop of the 1990s war in Bosnia, and the displacement of thousands of people, Walsh focuses on Ruby, a troubled and brave young woman from a struggling Cornish farming family who has been mysteriously injured. This a gripping story, written vividly, with great heart and with many layers of meaning pertinent to today’s world. Right from the beginning chapter, it’s impossible not to feel deeply affected by Ruby’s plight and that of the other characters, including the sheep. Read Stormbred to be reminded of how fragile life is, and how resourceful people are.
~Jude Higgins, author of The Chemist’s House

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-48-3, 133mm x 203mm, 82 pages.

£8.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

The House on the Corner : Alison Woodhouse

In The House on the Corner, personal tremors large and small unsettle the foundations of a middle-class, nuclear family at the end of the 1980s. Alison Woodhouse has a novelist’s gift for capturing in words the currents and eddies of intimate, private thought. Her characters exist in a world of subtle, shadowy shifts – try as they might to understand what’s happening around them, they are shaped by forces beyond their comprehension and control. Luckily for the reader, Woodhouse knows exactly what she’s doing. She renders her characters’ disappointments and joys in paragraph after paragraph of exquisite prose.
~Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-14-8, 133mm x 203mm, 62 pages.

£8.49 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

if there is no shelter : Tracey Slaughter

A remarkable story of a woman’s life in an unnamed city in the aftermath of a series of earthquakes. It’s written with claustrophobic, relentless and urgent conviction. What’s most compelling is how the story is gleaned mostly through flashbacks, as though, like the city’s buildings, it’s been broken into fragments and we are picking our way through rubble. Gradually, like rescue workers, we uncover the situation of a hospitalized husband, a lover lost to a building’s collapse, and the tender domestic bonds the woman shares with her father and his colleague. This is a dark, oppressive story but, through it, the writer explores how humanity responds to crisis – and has produced a metaphor for our own times.
~Michael Loveday

Tracey Slaughter relates her story of guilt and grief in breathtakingly luminous fragments. These postcards from the red zone – brutal, beautiful – are a lament for what is lost, but also a reminder of what we can salvage when everything shatters. An extraordinary work; you will feel its aftershocks far beyond the final page.
~Catherine Chidgey

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-18-6, 133mm x 203mm, 94 pages.

£9.99 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE

Sugar Mountain : Erica Plouffe Lazure

Drawing from a range of youthful voices and adventures, Sugar Mountain explores how children learn to deal with hard truths about themselves, and others, and the great wild world. From roller-skating away the grief of a parent, to soapy pranks by a band of camp bullies, to confronting an angry mass of waterfowl in the throes of a pillow fight, each chapter offers a tiny ticket back to a time when the world only seemed less complicated.

“A stunning sequence of stories about childhood shot through with irresistible yearning, beauty and humour. It’s written in a freewheeling prose that unfurls with detail after gorgeous detail piling up in the sentences. Quirky behaviour, teenage mischief, letdowns, unfulfilled dreams, romance – this novella really gets to the heart of what childhood feels like.”
~Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-20-9, 133mm x 203mm, 58 pages.

£8.49 GBP

select your region:

USUKDEFRESITNLJPPLCASEAUIEBE