When Robert (or Kidder, as his best friend calls him) decides to impress at a job interview by making up a son, he discovers that maintaining the lie is far harder than he thought – so he invents a story that ‘Brodie’ has been kidnapped. After all, it’s not like they’re going to find the fake boy.

But a few weeks later, Kidder receives a call to collect...

It’s thirteenth-century Europe and a young monk, Michael Scot, has been asked by the Holy Roman Emperor to translate the works of Aristotle and recover his ‘lost’ knowledge.

The Scot sets to his task, travelling from the Emperor’s Italian court to the translation schools of Toledo and from there to the Moorish library of Córdoba. But when the Pope deems...

It’s 1970s Canada. The small island community of Bear Lake is awash with rumours of lay-offs and wildcat strikes at the mill. But for young Tom, nothing is more important than hanging out with his best friend, Cormic, except perhaps catching a glimpse of Sasha Dovonovitch, the foreman’s daughter.

When a tragic accident occurs at the mill, the whole...

Hakim, a Pakistani taxi driver whizzing through the streets. Patrick, a Ugandan security guard with aspirations of becoming a writer. Farida, a Moroccan beautician hoping for a fresh start. Saeed, a respected Emirati journalist just back from London.

Taking place across the last few days of Ramadan, Minutes from the Miracle City is a unique retelling of...

A strange epidemic is sweeping the globe. Little by little, each victim becomes transparent, their heart beating behind a visible rib cage, an intricate network of nerves left hanging in mid-air. Finally, the victims disappear entirely, never to be seen again. In this bittersweet and hauntingly surreal tale, a couple struggle to connect while the epidemic...

Milton Pitt leads an uneventful life in the city of Oxford, with a dull job and a secret longing for adventure. One morning, on his way to work, he is hit by a speeding car. For a moment he hovers above his body in the shape of a butterfly, until he re-awakens in his bedroom, as if the morning so far never happened. Is he dead? Was it just a dream?...

Lindon, an Australian project manager with a failed marriage behind him, is lured to China with the promise of a lucrative salary. His task: to solve the problem of a ‘Nail House’, the home of a stubborn old man who refuses to relocate, even as the bulldozers move in and the skyscrapers grow around him.

But as Lindon negotiates with the old man’s family...

She bought a house where you can hear the sea, murmuring on the edge of consciousness… Bonnie, a traumatised concert pianist, finds refuge at the edge of England, in a cliff-top house haunted by memories and broken dreams. When Dominic, a road sweeper who is visited by neurological hauntings of his own, gives Bonnie a ring he finds on the street...

She bought a house where you can hear the sea, murmuring on the edge of consciousness…

Bonnie, a traumatised concert pianist, finds refuge at the edge of England, in a cliff-top house haunted by memories and broken dreams.

When Dominic, a road sweeper who is visited by neurological hauntings of his own, gives Bonnie a ring he finds on the street...

On an East Coast island, full of tall pine moaning with sea gusts, Delilah moves into a cottage by the shore. The neighbours gossip as they watch her clean, her black hair tied back in a white rubber band. They don't like it when she plants a garden out front - orange red Carpinus caroliniana and silvery blue hosta. Very unusual, they whisper. Across the...

Travelling back to her home town with her young son, Sarah is ready to face up to what she ran away from ten years ago. As delays and diversions force her to return to well-known places from her youth, Sarah reflects on the relationships with her family and the events of the past that have shaped her present. Set in the wild, beautiful and unreliable...

Eight year old Pepper sees the world a little differently from most people. One day, during a school field trip, Pepper is kidnapped by a stranger and driven to rural Arkansas. The man, who calls himself 'Uncle Dan', claims that Pepper's mother has died and they are to live together from now on - but the boy isn't convinced. Pepper always found it hard...

Top neurosurgeon Nicholas Anderton is morbidly obese. He doesn't mind the sweats, the sleep apnoea, or the fact that he can no longer see certain parts of his anatomy. Even the sniggers that come from his registrars, behind what they think are closed doors, won't make him change. But when mistakes are made and the clinical director starts asking questions...

When Alina's brother-in-law defects to the West, she and her husband become persons of interest to the secret services, causing both of their careers to come grinding to a halt. As the strain takes its toll on their marriage, Alina turns to her aunt for help - the wife of a communist leader and a secret practitioner of the old folk ways. Set in...

Two young men with expectations. One predicted to succeed, the other to fail.

Prince Albert Victor is heir presumptive to the British throne at its late Victorian zenith. Handsome and good-hearted, he is regarded as disastrously inadequate to be the king. By contrast, Jem Stephen is a golden boy worshipped by all - a renowned intellectual and the Keeper and...

A moving collection of literary short stories which explore the triumphs, compromises and challenges of everyday life. Drawing on a wide array of characters, Helen Stancey shows how small events, insignificant to some, can resonate deeply in the lives of others. Richly poetic, deeply moving and entirely engaging, these short stories demonstrate an exquisite...