Other books that might interest you

• 

  Justine Joe and the Zen Garbageman

  Matthew Licht

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  'From the East Village to West Hollywood, from avant-garde poetry to pre-internet pornography, these stories – touching, scabrous, brutal – tell it like it is. Matthew Licht's effortlessly inventive language, dark and tender, sexually charged, free-wheeling, whimsical, regretful, rummages through the cultural detritus of our crazy mythos, and comes up sweet and headily evocative as roses.' —Charles Lambert, author of Any Human Face and The View from the Tower
  Justine's a famous poet. Joe's a self-styled Private Investigator without a clue. The Garbageman has cleaned his mind through immersion in filth. What he has to offer his clients, and even his enemies, is serenity. Three characters in search of a reader: you.
  'Nobody can push an envelope harder or further than Matthew Licht, though he's not all shock value. There's also intelligence, wit and surprising craft here.' —Dian Hanson, author of Naked as a Jaybird
  'Matthew Licht is an original and a rarity. His writing is smart, warm, engaging but also contains a healthy dose of New York "Fuck you!".' —Geoff Nicholson, author of Bedlam Burning
  'His goal is to disturb rather than enlighten, to impale human folly and absurdity, to unpeel the intellectual bankruptcy of our times.' —John Thackray

  Show book

• 

  The Drover's Wife

  Henry Lawson

  • 0
  • 2
  • 0

  Henry Lawson's poignant tale of a woman bringing up her four children alone in the Australian outback. When her family is threatened by a venomous snake that has invaded their home, she (with the help of Alligator, the family's dog-of-all-breeds) must find a way to defend her children.

  Show book

• 

  British Short Story The - Volume...

  Rudyard Kipling, H G Wells,...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves.  Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. 
   
  Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind.  These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. 
   
  Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet.  And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth.  These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. 
   
  Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write.  A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame.  That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’.  Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands.  Here we include George Eliot and other examples. 
   
  We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day.  Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. 
   
  Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes.  Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? 
   
  Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page.  An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form.  Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. 
   
  Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles.  From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache.  If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.  
   
  At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

  Show book

• 

  Curiosity Saved the Cat

  Martin Lundqvist

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  I am a black and white Tomcat, and I rely on my flatmate to give me food and shelter. What happened when she dies?

  Show book

• 

  The Perfect Arrangement - A Year...

  Katie Ganshert

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  They’ve helped orchestrate the perfect day for countless couples. Now twelve new couples will find themselves in the wedding spotlight in the second Year of Weddings novella collection. 
  Meeting Nate was truly an accident—but Amelia finds that he’s one of the few people she can count on. 
  Amelia Woods is a small-town wallflower and the proud owner of Forget-Me-Nots, a quaint flower shop that once belonged to her mother. Despite her success in business, her love life has always been a bit lackluster. Until she spies on her ex-boyfriend’s wedding and ends up in a horrifyingly embarrassing fender-bender with handsome wedding guest, Nate Gallagher. 
  Meanwhile, Amelia’s younger brother, William, has proposed to his girlfriend. Amelia would be excited except she has evidence that the fiancée is not who she says she is. How can she be supportive and yet be the protective big sister too? It seems Nate is the only one available for any advice-giving, and he’s good at it—and pretty fun to talk to, too. Amelia and Nate strike up an online relationship, but always lingering in Amelia’s mind is the fear that he’ll realize she’s not nearly as appealing in real life. 
  As Amelia works to craft the perfect flower arrangements for other people—including a ninety-year-old “fairy godmother” named George—she begins to wonder if real love is better than the dream. And if it is, will Nate still be interested when he learns who she is?

  Show book

• 

  The Dating Mishaps of the...

  Martin Lundqvist

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In his quest to find love, Geoffrey stumbles upon a ladyboy, a pscyho, a Japanese robot, and an interdimensional alien. Will he succeed in finding happiness? 
  The successful lawyer Geoffrey has a problem. No matter what he does, his dating activities don't find him love, and instead he is put through a series of absurd scenarios. Will Geoffrey manage to confront the author and end up with the beautiful Jasmine Xi, or will he subjected to an endless cycle of absurd scenarios? The is only one way to find out; listen to this book.

  Show book