Walking Ghosts - Short Stories

Mary O'Donnell

Summary

'Each story shines in its own distinctive light.' —Neil Hegarty
'O'Donnell is unflinching in her ability to display humanity in all its flaws and vulnerabilities.' —Mary Costello
'The magic of her writing is in the subtle, mysterious evocation of the unconscious, of the potent mixture of mood and thought and half thought which colours human lives.' —Eilis Ni Dhuibhne
'Searingly intimate and subtle stories, the beauty, the pain and the hope of desperate lives lived in everyday places. A fascinating, varied and utterly compelling collection.' —William Wall
In this masterful collection, Mary O'Donnell explores the subtle fractures and quiet transformations that shape modern Irish life. Her characters navigate a society in flux, where traditional certainties give way to new complexities. A gay man and his trans partner face casual hostility on city streets. A tarot reader takes a fateful gamble during a session. In Edna a woman discovers the sharp edge of urban life while offering aid to strangers. On a sun-drenched Canary Islands beach, vacationing couples witness the arrival of migrants, forcing a confrontation with privilege and fate.
From pandemic lockdowns where a chocolate maker watches his business and sanity unravel to nightclubs where identity is both celebrated and challenged, O'Donnell's stories serve as litmus tests for contemporary society. With unflinching precision, she reveals how quickly our certainties dissolve, leaving us to navigate a world of shifting possibilities.
These stories capture the secret sorrows and resilient hopes of characters caught between who they were and who they might become.

Available since: 05/06/2025.

Print length: 256 pages.

Other books that might interest you

A Comedy In Rubber

O. Henry

"A Comedy in Rubber" is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1881. It tells the tale of two people, William Pry and Violet Seymour, who fall in love but miss their own wedding as they are too busy watching accidents and unusual events.
 
William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 - June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer born in Greensboro, NC, known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry and non-fiction. O. Henry's stories are known for their naturalist observations, witty narration, and surprise endings.

Show book

Partners in Crime

Agatha Christie

[…] the merriest collection of detective stories it has been our good fortune to encounter. —The New York Times Book Review, September 1929  
This short story collection from Queen of Crime Agatha Christie features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford solving mysteries one after the other, from The Affair of the Pink Pearl to The House of Lurking Death, and is sure to please fans of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.

Show book

Outcasts - An Anthology

Members Of The Ohio Writers...

Award Winner at the 2023 Hear Now Palooza, sponsored by National Audio Theater Festivals. Wizards. Prisoners. Preachers. And robots! They stick out. They change the conversation. They challenge the traditional narrative. They are Outcasts—isolated, different, misunderstood. Being normal is nice. But being outcast is a real part of the human experience. Have you ever had the feeling of being alone in some way, of being on the outside looking in? If so, then the characters in these 18 short stories will move you--sometimes by their depravity, sometimes by their sorrow...and sometimes by their joy. Written by members of The Ohio Writers' Association, with audio book production by members of the Ohio Audiobook Narrators The Bear by Devon Ortega, narrated by Gretchen LaBuhn Tough Luck by Emily E. Jones, narrated by Angus Freathy Little Jimmy by Carnegie Euclid, narrated by Gretchen LaBuhn Man in the Box by Diane Callahan, narrated by Doug McDonald Treetown by David M. Simon, narrated by GaryLeo Smith The Suitor by Stella Ling, narrated by Beth Kesler The New Chastisement by Brian Luke, narrated by Gary Leo Smith Those Who Slip Through by Curtis A. Deeter, narrated by Gary LeoSmith Sensible Attire by D. Wayne Moore, narrated by Beth Kesler Good Friday by Krista Hilton, narrated by Angus Freathy The Fog of Fate by Brian R. Johnson & Elora Lyons, narrated by Angus Freathy Best If Used By by Mary McFarland, narrated by Becky White Wake Up, O Sleeper by Brad Pauquette, narrated by Gary Leo Smith Number 385712 by George Pallas, narrated by Doug McDonald Axman by Steven Kenneth Smith, narrated by Gary Leo Smith Parquet to the Past by Mike Sieminski, narrated by Angus Freathy A Tummy Rub for Gaffney by Stephen Kyo Kaczmarek, narrated by Doug McDonald

Show book

Strike-pay

D H Lawrence

In 'Strike Pay', Lawrence returns to the scenes of his boyhood in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. A group of miners, liberated from work by a strike, enjoy a day out but the hard realities of home life and mothers-in-law await their return. Tinged with good humour and the sense of comradeship among the miners and finally between the miner and his wife, this story epitomises working life before the Great War.

Show book

Top 10 Short Stories The -...

Robert Louis Stevenson, H P...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In this volume the wonders of Sci-Fi and its inventions are twisted with the darkness of horror to reveal narratives that grip us in inventive ways. Perhaps only pens of the calibre of Lovecraft, Stevenson, Wells and their literary colleagues can so easily lure our senses into dark and terrifying times.

1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - Classic Sci Fi Horror - An Introduction
2 - Re-Animator - Part 1 by H P Lovecraft
3 - Re-Animator - Part 2 by H P Lovecraft
4 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson
5 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 2 by Robert Louis Stevenson
6 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London
7 - The Operation by Violet Hunt
8 - Moxon's Master by Ambrose Bierce
9 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson
10 - Carnivorine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper
11 - The Blue Laboratory by L T Meade
12 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne
13 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 2 by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Show book

Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Story...

Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother.

His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings. Life there was difficult for mother and son. His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three. He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.

After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati. It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert. He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law. The marriage soon failed.

In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel.

In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan. Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan. Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture. Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.

In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name.

The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.

Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State. He was 54.

1 - Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction
2 - A Dead Secret by Lafcadio Hearn
3 - Before the Supreme Court by Lafcadio Hearn
4 - Diplomacy by Lafcadio Hearn
5 - L'Amour Apres La Mort by Lafcadio Hearn
6 - Of A Promise Broken by Lafcadio Hearn
7 - Stranger Than Fiction by Lafcadio Hearn
8 - The Corpse Rider by Lafcadio Hearn
9 - The Ghostly Kiss by Lafcadio Hearn
10 - The Undying One by Lafcadio Hearn
11 - The Vision of the Dead Creole by Lafcadio Hearn

Show book