The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its eighth year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the ...

Lucy Swann is trying on a new life. She's bought new clothes and cut and dyed her hair. But in a small town in northern France her flight is violently cut short. When Inspector Vivier and his handsome assistant Sabine Pelat begin their investigation into her murder, the chance encounters of her last days take on a new significance. Lucy's death, like a stone thrown in a pool, sends out far-reaching ripples, altering the lives of people who never knew her, and the lives of her loved ones ba...

It's the 1970s, and a mysterious woman has a cache of letters which claim to tell the story of the death of Fanny Imlay, half-sister of Mary Shelley and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Did Fanny really commit suicide in an inn in Swansea in 1816, as historians thought? The letters instead suggest a faked death and an escape from Fanny's fraught family life. It could have been an independence of which Fanny's mother would have been proud. But the letters also suggest the re-born Fanny rema...

European female-led literature with emphasis on writing of place, particularly Wales. Creative nonfiction, literary essays, fiction, poetry and photography.

A disquieting everyday world of make-believe as roles and performances are explored in Jo Mazelis' darkly gothic new collection, Ritual, 1969. What might a little girl be made of? Sugar and spice? And when she grows up? A dressmaker, teacher, flower-maker, actress? Or should she run away to the circus? From the playground to adulthood the path is beset with misunderstandings and missed dates, traps for the unwary and disingenuous dissembling. Not all is what it seems in a world where first...

Bohenna is a small Cornish village, dominated by a thriving vineyard and the Pennyman family who run it. It’s an insular community, all gossip and rumour and intertwined lives. Claire knows everyone; she grew up there. She even married into the Pennyman family.Every summer tourists swarm over the vineyard and village. So when Claire’s young daughter disappears without trace, it’s obvious to everyone that a visitor took her. Who else would do such a thing?Six years later, he...

The stunning prequel to Victim Without a Face.TWO COUNTRIES IN THE GRIP OF WINTER.On the coldest day of the year, Sweden's Minister for Justice steps into a blizzard – and disappears. Who has taken him? That same night, across the Baltic Sea, a Danish celebrity is at her home, locked in and cut off from the snow. Then she hears footsteps in her living room. Who is in her house?TWO KILLERS STALK THE ST...

**“Gothic fans rejoice!” (The Globe and Mail)The #1 internationally bestselling author of The Demonologist radically reimagines some of literature’s classic masterpieces—Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula—in a contemporary novel driven by relentless suspense and breathtaking emotion.This is the story of a man who may be the world’s one real-life monster, and the only woman who has a chance...

Don’t miss the brand new twisty thriller from Sarah Pinborough – INSOMNIA – available to buy now!Don’t Trust This Book Don’t Trust These People Don’t Trust Yourself And whatever you do, DON’T give away that ending… ***Now a major new Netflix series***LouiseSince her husband walked out, Louise has made her son her world, supporting them both with her part-time job. But all that changes when she meets…David

What lengths would you go to protect the ones you love?When the complex web of dark family secrets begins to gradually unravel, Tim and his sister Rose are consumed by trying to protect their 46-year-old secret, a secret that was never meant to be told.Faced with an impossible dilemma, they must decide whether to tell the truth or face the consequences.One thing's for sure, nothing remains buried forever... A gripping, highly emotive story of love, ...

New-World China meets Old-World Italy, as Ava investigates the dark side of the glamourous world of fashion in the latest installment of the Ava Lee Novels.Ava attends London Fashion Week for the launch of the PÖ fashion line, one of the major investments she and her partners in the Three Sisters — May Ling Wong and Amanda Yee — have made over the past year. The show is a success, but perhaps too much of one. It attracts the attention of Dominic Ventola, the princi...

An NPR Best Book of the YearThe author of the wildly popular The Kind Worth Killing returns with an electrifying and downright Hitchcockian psychological thriller—as tantalizing as the cinema classics Rear Window and Wait Until Dark—involving a young woman caught in a vise of voyeurism, betrayal, manipulation, and murder.The danger isn’t all in your head . . .Growing up, Kate Priddy was always a b...