Other books that might interest you

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  Reality by Other Means

  James Morrow

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  This short story anthology by the author of The Godhead Trilogy “reveals him to be one of the wittiest writers of contemporary speculative fiction” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). 
   
  Join the Abominable Snowman as, determined to transcend his cannibalistic past, he studies Tibetan Buddhism under the Dalai Lama. Pace the walls of Ilium with fair Helen as she tries to convince both sides to abandon their absurd Trojan War. Visit the nursery of Zenobia Garber, born to a Pennsylvania farm couple who accept her for the uncanny little biosphere she is. Scramble aboard the raft built by the passengers and crew of the sinking Titanic—and don’t be surprised when the vessel transmutes into a world even more astonishing than the original Ship of Dreams.  
   
  Reality by Other Means offers readers the most celebrated results from James Morrow’s decades-long career designing fictive thought experiments. Anchored by seven previously uncollected stories, this omnibus ranges from social satire to theological hijinks, steampunk escapades to philosophical antics.

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  The Pegnitz Junction - A Novella...

  Mavis Gallant

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  A devastating collection exploring the wake of mankind’s greatest conflict World War II exerted a psychic toll on Europe that is still evident today. The Pegnitz Junction is Mavis Gallant’s look at how Europe handles that collective pain. In the title novella of this sharply written collection, a girl rides the train with her boyfriend and his son in postwar Europe. Onboard, she encounters all manner of personalities, each person burdened by the weight of what he or she has just experienced, openly bleeding from the emotional wounds of a terrifying global conflict. A wife must come to terms with her husband’s mistakes and find reconciliation in herself as she meets the refugee he had an affair with. A soldier must reintegrate himself into civilian life, no matter how difficult it is. An unlikely friendship between an actress and a police commissioner begins to form. No matter where or when Gallant’s stories are set, each one is a small enchantment, anchored by the insights of a master of her craft.

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  The Missing Witness Sensation

  Ernest Bramah

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  Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells, and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood.In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.In The Missing Witness Sensation, Max Carrados finds himself an unusual witness in what on the surface appears to be an ordinary Post Office robbery. But before the case comes to court, Max Carrados has mysteriously disappeared. Even when the accused is found guilty, the missing witness does not return. The story behind the disappearance is far stranger than any normal detective case.

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  Over the Border

  Morgan Robertson

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  Morgan Andrew Robertson (1861-1915) was a popular American author of short stories and novels and claimed to be the inventor of the periscope.'Over the Border' is a fascinating tale about hypnosis and mesmerism. The narrator lost much of his memory for many years after leaving his former life as a sailor. One night he visits a theatre where a hypnotist is performing. On his way home on the tram, he hears two doctors discussing a case at the hospital - a man with amnesia. One doctor recommends hypnosis as therapy to try to access the lost memories.The narrator is inspired to track down the hypnotist from the theatre and see whether he can help him recover his lost past...but the results of the mesmerism are quite beyond anybody's expectations.

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  The Moving Finger - An detective...

  Rose Champion de Crespigny

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  Annie Rose Charlotte Key was born on 9th November 1859 in Kensington, London. 
   
  With a privileged background—her father was an admiral, her mother a Lady, Rose began her creative life as a painter before a stab at writing local history settled her into popular fiction. 
   
  Her works were solidly written and often described as having a ‘certain graceful facility’. 
   
  Her marriage to Philip Augustus Champion de Crespigny in 1878 resulted in a family of 4 children and a name of status. 
   
  Rose was a leading member of the Ridley Art Club, the Lyceum Club in Piccadilly, and of the British College of Psychic Science.  Victorian society had a particular fascination with spiritualism and in ‘The Moving Finger’ Rose uses the theme as a background to introduce her popular occult detective Norton Vyse into her series of short stories.  
   
  Rose Champion de Crespigny died on 10th February 1935.  She was 75.

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  Mary Shelley: The Short Stories

  Mary Shelley

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  Mary Shelley – The Short Stories. Born in 1797, her Mother died when she was only 11 days old. Mary was then raised by her Father, who remarried when she was four, with a liberal but informal upbringing. At 17 she began the relationship with the poet Percy Byshe Shelley which was the bedrock of her life; although society viewed the unmarrieds somewhat differently. It was in this relationship that she nurtured and edited Shelley’s verse and wrote, at 21, her signature work “Frankenstein” for which she is so well known. Her husband drowned when she was 25 which added further to the earlier loss of 3 of her 4 children. Beset with such great tragedy, at only 53 a brain tumour was to take her own life. In this volume we turn our attention to her short stories which creep with menace and view the world with a very suspicious eye. Our stories are read for you by Ghizela Rowe and Richard Mitchley.

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