Title: Jerusalem Beach (original title: חוף הים של ירושלים) Writer: Iddo Gefen (translated by Daniella Zamir) Publishing House: Astra House Date of Publication: August 17th 2021 (first published August 2017) Rating: 5 stars ‘’A month and a half later, he packed a bag, stuffing it with four undershirts, five pairs of underwear, a flashlight, two…
Tag: short stories
The End of the World is a Cul de Sac
Title: The End of the World is a Cul de Sac Writer: Louise Kennedy Publishing House: Bloomsbury Publishing Date of Publication: April 8th 2021 Rating: 4 stars ‘’The statue stood in the clearing. It was a wood nymph, lifelike yet diminutive, the height of an adolescent girl. A dappling of sunlight was flickering over her,…
The Master of Chaos
Title: The Master of Chaos Writer: Pauline Melville Publishing House: Sandstone Press Date of Publication: July 1st 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’All I wanted to do was hurt him. Death was my way of reviving his love for me, punishing him and finally gaining victory in the contest.’’ In Pauline Melville’s stories, chaos comes in…
There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In
Title: There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In Writer: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (tr. by Anna Summers) Publishing House: Penguin Modern Classics Date of Publication: 2014 (first published 2002) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Oh, great mother nature! Why do you have to trick us? Why do you need all this mucus,…
Wild Swims
Title: Wild Swims (original title: Kort Over Canada) Writer: Dorthe Nors (translated by Misha Hoekstra) Publishing House: Graywolf Press Date of Publication: February 2nd 2021 (first published April 23rd 2018) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Both fairground and field have been baking all day in the late-summer sun. It’s September now, and when she walks around the…
The Custard Heart and Other Stories
Title: The Custard Heart and Other Stories Writer: Dorothy Parker Publishing House: Penguin Modern Classics Date of Publication: February 22nd 2018 Rating: 5 stars ‘’She felt a crazy solidarity with the big company of the voluntary dead.’’ New York. The exciting, glamorous Jazz Age. The time when everything had to be one big party, when…
The Collected Stories by Grace Paley
Title: The Collected Stories by Grace Paley Writer: Grace Paley Publishing House: Virago Date of Publication: May 3rd 2018 (first published 1994) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don’t stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.’’ Grace Paley’s stories are unique in their…
The Haunted Boy and Other Stories
Title: The Haunted Boy and Other Stories Writer: Carson McCullers Publishing House: Penguin Modern Classics Date of Publication: February 22nd 2018 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Sometimes she would be out fooling with the border of spring flowers – the candytuft, the sweet William, the lobelias (she had taught him the names) – but today the green…
Dreaming in Quantum and Other Stories
Title: Dreaming in Quantum and Other Stories Writer: Lynda Clark Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: November 1st 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’In winter, there’s nothing. Maybe a lone dog walker skirting the edges, but usually just the crows in the yew trees above, cawing threats at the wood pigeons. Silence, punctuated by those…
The Enchanted Night: Selected Tales
Title: The Enchanted Night: Selected Tales Writer: Miklós Bánffy (translated by Len Rix) Publishing House: Pushkin Press Date of Publication: May 25th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’There was a horror in the wintry silence, a silence more profound than in any previous winter. It was as if life itself had been somehow diminished; as if…
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Title: The Dangers of Smoking In Bed (original title: Los peligros de fumar en la cama) Writer: Mariana Enriquez (translated by Megan McDowell) Publishing House: Hogarth Press Date of Publication: January 12th 2021 (first published November 2009) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Or she’d hear a rooster crow in the middle of the night and remember –…
Kink: Stories
Title: Kink: Stories Writer: Various edited by R.O.Kwon and Garth Greenwell. Publishing House: Simon & Schuster UK Date of Publication: February 9th 2021 Rating: 4 stars ‘’Bristol, Vermont. Summer – the flies biting. Vermont is named for its green mountains, the man tells her. To her, they look like sleeping animals with soft pelts. With…
Errantry: Strange Stories
Title: Errantry: Strange Stories Writer: Elizabeth Hand Publishing House: Small Beer Press Date of Publication: November 13th 2012 Rating: 3 stars ‘’For as far as he could, there was only night. Ghostly light seeped from a room downstairs onto the silver of lawn. Starlight touched on the endless sweep of moor, like another sea unrolling…
Fairground Magician
Τitle: Fairground Magician (original title: Vašarski mađioničar) Writer: Jelena Lengold (tr. by Celia Hawkesworth) Publishing House: Istros Books Date of Publication: December 17th 2013 (first published 2008) Rating: 5 stars ‘’It’s not that I need you to love me, but I need to suffer because you don’t.’’ I am a rather weird person. Strange things…
The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales
Title: The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales Writer: Kirsty Logan Publishing House: Salt Publishing Date of Publication: March 15th 2014 Rating: 5 stars ‘’The more I loved him, the heavier my heart felt, until I was walking around with my back bent and my knees cracking from the weight of it.’’ Twenty stories, twenty masterpieces…
What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky
Title: What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky Writer: Lesley Nneka Arimah Publishing House: Riverhead Books Date of Publication: April 4th 2017 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Girls with fire in their bellies will be forced to drink from a well of correction till the flames die out.’’ In this outstanding collection by the…
Tales From the Hinterland
Title: Tales From the Hinterland Writer: Melissa Albert Publishing House: Flatiron Books Date of Publication: January 12th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Tales are told of a village so plagued by ghosts that bells are hung over the doors, to keep them from slipping in at night. In certain houses the cooks bake three loaves of…
Murder at Christmas
Title: Murder at Christmas Writer: Various edited by Cecily Gayford Publishing House: Profile Books Date of Publication: November 7th 2019 Rating: 4 stars ‘’Murder under the mistletoe – and the man who must have done it couldn’t have done it. That’s my Christmas and I don’t feel merry, thank you very much all the same.’’…
The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories
Title: The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories Vol.1 Writer: Edited by Tara Moore Publishing House: Valancourt Books Rating: 4 stars ‘’Imagine a midwinter night, an early sunset, a long drafty evening spent by candlelight. The season of Christmas coincides with the shortest days of the year and, for middle-class Victorians, a chance for…
Silent Nights
Title: Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries Writer: Various edited by Martin Edwards Publishing House: British Library Crime Classics Date of Publication: October 1st 2015 Rating: 5 stars ‘’When television becomes tiresome, and party games pall, the prospect of curling up in the warm with a good mystery is enticing – and much better for the digestion…
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