Inspired by Giles Gordon and David Hughes's Best Short Stories series, which ran to ten volumes between 1986 and 1995, Best British Short Stories this year reaches its thirteenth volume.Best British Short Stories 2023 showcases an excellent and varied selection of stories, by British writers, first published during 2022 in magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks and online.This new anthology contains stories by Alinah Azadeh, Davi...

The essential backstory to the creation and meaning of one of the most important novels of the twentieth century—and now the twenty-first.Since its publication nearly seventy years ago, George Orwell's 1984 has been regarded as one of the most influential novels of the modern age. Politicians have testified to its influence on their intellectual identities, rock musicians have made records about it, TV viewers watch a reality show named for it, and a White ...

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its sixth 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 b...

This is the first full biography of Athlone-born writer John Broderick (1924-89), whose powerful Balzacian novels of life in the Irish midlands depict sexuality and Catholicism in a series of pungent tableaux and portraits drawn from vivid but entrapped lives. Son of a prosperous baker, the solitude of his childhood (compounded by boarding-school), an enveloping mother, homosexuality and alcoholism fuelled his fictions, from The Pilgrimage (1961) to An Apology for Roses (1973) and The Tria...

Fiction Category Winner in the 2022 East Anglian Book AwardsSome of the characters in Stewkey Blues have lived in Norfolk all their lives. Others are short-term residents or passage migrants. Whether young or old, self-confident or ground-down, local or blow-in, all of them are reaching uneasy compromises with the world they inhabit and the landscape in which that life takes place.

Ready to rock and roll through the tumultuous times of the music industry?Our protagonist, Nick Du Pont, is a savvy manager navigating the highs and lows of the music scene in the 70s and 80s. He's a man on a mission, dealing with difficult artists, and battling to get his bands played on popular radio shows.Can Nick sign the unpredictable band 'The Flame Throwers' and manage their wild ways? Will he be able to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and survive in the cut...

"Jampacked and delicious, crammed with a cast of selfish, feckless, darling, talented, almost terminally eccentric, good-looking men and women." —Carolyn See, The Washington PostBefore the media circus of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and our modern obsession with celebrity, there were the Bright Young People, a voraciously pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites who romped through the gossip columns of 1920s London. Evely...

Shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards 2025On Stewkey Blues: 'In his solid, grounded, entertaining collection of stories, DJ Taylor draws out the mythical qualities of East Anglia's terrain, urban or rural or somewhere marginal in between.' —Hilary MantelMost of the people in Poppyland are watching their lives begin to blur at the margins. From small-hours taxi offices, out-of-season holiday estates and flyblown market stalls, they si...

Ever wondered about the whirlwind world of the 60s music scene?Our protagonist, Nicholas Du Pont, a British expatriate, finds himself tangled in the vibrant vortex of the American and British music industry. As he navigates the cultural, political, and social dynamics of the era, he experiences personal and professional highs and lows.Will Nicholas be able to sustain his position in the tumultuous music industry? Can he reconcile with his past while keeping pace with the ra...

When Henry Ireland dies unexpectedly from what appears to be a riding accident in August 1863, the failed landowner leaves behind little save his high-strung young widow, Isabel—who somehow ends up in the home of Ireland's friend James Dixey. A celebrated naturalist, Dixey collects strange trophies in his secluded, decaying manse and has questionable associations with rather unsavory characters—including a pair of thuggish poachers named Dewar and Dunbar. Dixey's precocious, inquisitive yo...

Summer 1931 in seedy Bayswater and James Ross is on his uppers. An aspiring writer whose stories nobody will buy ('It's the slump'), with a landlady harassing him for unpaid rent and occasional sleepless nights spent in the waiting room at King's Cross Station, he is reduced to selling carpet-cleaning lotion door-to-door. His prospects brighten when he meets the glamorous Suzi ('the red hair and the tight jumper weren't a false card: she really was a looker and no mistake'), but their rela...

Autumn 1933, and for once struggling writer James Ross seems to have fallen on his feet. Not only has the Labour Exchange fixed him up with a day-job collecting rents in Soho, but friendly Mr Samuelson is employing him front-of-house in the Toreador night-club. Even his melancholy love-life is looking up, thanks to a chance encounter with the alluring Gladys, enigmatic inhabitant of the Meard Street second-floor back.On the other hand, Soho looks an increasingly dangerous place in ...