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An engaged couple falls out over the husband's dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: 'A Clean Marriage', which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child. Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, 'Life Ceremony' is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction. -
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In these eleven stories, E´ili´s Ni´ Dhuibhne draws us into the lives of characters struggling to find equilibrium. Visited by change and crisis, they are forced to confront the stories that define their sense of themselves. Beautifully written and sharply observed, this daring collection is a deft exploration of the complexities of human desire.
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From award-winning author Adrian Duncan comes his first collection of short stories. Precise and penetrating prose. -
Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable. Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death. -
From Belfast to London and back again the eleven stories that comprise Caldwell's first collection explore the many facets of growing up - the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative - or 'the drunkenness of things being various'. Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story. -
Ireland is well known as a land of storytellers and this tradition dates back centuries when tales of giants and epic battles were told around the fireplace. These stories feature well known names like Fionn MacCumhaill, Oisin and Queen Medb to name but a few. This book seeks to shine a light on some of them. -
'Old Romantics' is a collection of witty and acutely observed stories from an astonishing new talent. Slippery, observant and flawed, Maggie Armstrong's narrators navigate a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility. -
An unnamed protagonist is on holiday with her new, much-married lover, in the company of the monstrously rich. 'How long would she last? It would be uppermost in all their minds.' Each day, while the others are out at sea, she is taught to swim. Eventually, she will be expected to perform. The pressure mounts; it is only a matter of time before she snaps. Edna O'Brien crafts a quietly horrifying scene of eroticism and insecurity, and makes one woman's near-fatal discomfort stand for society's larger trap. -
Two boys set fires while their worlds fall apart. A couple drive out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. A horse crashes a house party. Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh's Pure Gold heralds the arrival of a vibrant new literary voice.
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The narrator of this story travels to a small mining town in Western Australia to host a literary dinner. Whilst there, he comes across a statue to Red Dog. He is intrigued, and resolves to find out as much as he can about this splendid dog. -
'Cecelia Ahern at her quirky, magical best' Daily Mail
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This collection delivers powerful evocations of place and a glorious and an often heart-breaking grasp of people and their desires and contradictions. -
This title is part of a landmark series of gem-like individual volumes presenting masters of the form at work in a range of genres and styles. Bringing together past, present, and future in their ninetieth year, 'Faber Stories' is a celebratory compendium of collectable work. -
Three thrilling stories of the law from the master of the legal thriller. 'Homecoming' takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham's unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he's not in the courtroom. In 'Strawberry Moon', we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can't save him, the courts slam the door, and the Governor says no to a last minute request for clemency. As the clock ticks down, Cody has only one final request. The 'Sparring Partners' are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe one another, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. -
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
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We'd all listened to the Ray Brower story - he was a kid our age The small town of Castle Rock is tuning in to the news of a young boy who has gone missing from a nearby town. Gordie Lachance and his three friends set off along the railway tracks on a quest, determined to become famous by officially finding the boy's body. But their journey becomes a rite of passage, and as they cross the railway trestle and the tracks begin to hum, the boys encounter an intimation of their own mortality. -
'The Country Funeral' witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog - the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern's stories take place - to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life. -
The secrets people kept, the lies they told. In these visceral stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve. Here, women are domestically trapped by predatorial men, Ireland's folklore and politics loom large, and poverty - material, emotional, sexual - seeps through every crack. A wife is abandoned by her new husband in a ghost estate, with blood on her hands; a young woman is tormented by visions of the man murdered by her brother during the Troubles; a pregnant mother fears the worst as her husband grows illegal cannabis with the help of a vulnerable teenage girl; a woman struggles to forgive herself after an abortion threatens to destroy her marriage. -
The evening is fine. In the sky a few early stars are shining of their own accord. She watches the dog licking the bowl clean. This dog will break her daughter's heart, she's sure of it. Claire Keegan's mesmeric story takes us into the heart of the Wicklow countryside, and of the farming family of Victor Deegan, with his 'three teenagers, the milking and the mortgage'. When Deegan finds a gun dog and gives it as a present to his only daughter, his wife is filled with foreboding at this seeming act of kindness. As the seasons pass, long-buried family secrets threaten to emerge. -
The Man Booker prize-winning author's critically acclaimed selection of the best Irish short stories of the last sixty years, following Richard Ford's best-selling Granta Book of the American Short Story. -
'The Heart and the Arrow' includes the novella 'All Those Men', a tale of women surviving together in a dystopian future where food is collected at central points organised by soldiers. The title story, 'The Heart and the Arrow', is a weaving of a group of friends in their twenties, heading out for a day's drinking. In 'Notes from the Joy' are the inner thoughts of a man whose bipolar state has landed him in Mountjoy prison. The book will make a considerable addition to the known prose works of Leland Bardwell, expanding substantially her output as a story writer and novelist. -
The season's just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time. Frankie is haunted by his daughter's death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist, makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie-obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they've lost. With trademark wit and playfulness, in this stunning linked short-story collection Jan Carson explores complex family dynamics, ageing, immigration, gender politics, the decline of the Church and the legacy of the Troubles. 'The Last Resort' firmly places Carson as one of the most inventive and daring writers of her generation.
