This is a remarkable collection of twelve new stories, mostly set in Ireland, which was greeted with universal acclamation when published in hardcover in 1996. The title story is a small, sad masterpiece, about a woman holidaying alone in an Italian hotel. For more options...

This collection of stories includes six previously unpublished tales. For more options...

'When people play the game: Name three or four persons whom you would choose to have with you on a desert island - they never choose the Delaneys. They don't even choose us one by one as individuals. For more options...

Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these twelve stories are profound, intimate observations of men and women whose lives ache with possibility - each story a dramatisation of the instant in a life that exposes it all: love and the lack of love, hope and the lack of hope. These men and women are perfectly ordinary people - whose marriages founder; who sit on their own in a cinema watching a film with no soundtrack; and, who risk sex in a hotel with an anonymous stranger. For more options...

Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. For more options...

A riotous collection of memoirs which explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics. For more options...

In The Joke, a middle-aged man sits listening to his wife's conversation on the phone, at once bitter and sweetly yearning; in The Cocktail Hour, a couple wander the night haunted, seemingly lost in a reverie of the jazz-age and the movies; in Matters of Life and Death, two young brothers spend the night at the house of the local doctor and his wife, and together the four of them end up in a late night dance...From Ireland itself to the United States, rural Peru to the mountains of the Himalayas, these stories collectively and individually demonstrate the complexity of emotion and memory that is associated with the very finest short stories, and bear testimony to the fact that this art form is still alive and flourishing.. For more options...

A beautiful collection - charming, witty and touching - these stories give voice to a variety of different characters: from the little girl who wants to look 'subtle' for her father's funeral, a child who has an email pen pal on Jupiter and an old lady who becomes a star through 'zimmerobics'. Often writing in a vibrant Glaswegian vernacular, Donovan deftly gives her characters authenticity with a searing power, aided and abetted by tender subtlety.. For more options...

A collection of short stories that are populated by erudite paranoiacs, witches, changelings, and the ghost of a dead child. The author of Possession explores the fragile ties between generations and the elaborate memories we construct against loss, resulting in a book rich in knowledge, compassion, and wonder. For more options...

Deft and lyrical, this paperback edition of Michel Faber's new collection of stories is his first since his auspicious debut, "Some Rain Must Fall". It has sealed his reputation as one of Britain's most daring and original authors. For more options...

Now in paperback, Yates' short fiction is collected in a single volume, featuring the stories of his classic works "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" and "Liars in Love, " plus nine new stories.. For more options...

A chance encounter prompts an ageing professor to regret a lifetime of wasted opportunities; a beautiful wife tests her husband by making herself hideous; for the love of a girl, a boy turns himself into a violoncello... In these seven short stories Dan Rhodes lays bare the pain and enchantment of love. . For more options...