This collected edition commemorates the 10th anniversary of Julia Darling's death, and includes a substantial selection of unpublished work. Jackie Kay writes: "The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family. They are warm, full of compassion; [...] a shining bright light."

The original Northern Powerhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne has witnessed countless transformations over the last century or so, from its industrial heyday, when Tyneside engineering and innovation led the world, through decades of post-industrial decline, and underinvestment, to its more recent reinvention as a cultural destination for the North.The ten short stories gathered here all feature characters in search of something, a new reality, a space, perhaps, in which to rediscover them...

A collection of the hilarious show-within-a-show about two daytime TV presentersSit back, dip your biscuit in your tea, and relax... because Mike and Sue are here! In each episode of this mid-morning spoof, the sofa-bound host couple Mike and Sue and their live studio audience tackle various topics of the day - no matter how clumsily.Ranging from shopping addictions and teenagers to cults and holidays, the programme intersperses studio segments with sketche...

**The wonderful second memoir from Susan Duncan, which picks up where Salvation Creek ended.**Continuing the story of Susan Duncan's bestselling and much-loved memoir, Salvation Creek, The House picks up after Bob and Susan marry and, two years later, move from her Tin Shed into his 'pale yellow house on the high, rough hill', Tarrangaua, built for the iconic Australian poet, Dorothea Mackellar. Set against the backdrop of the small, close-knit Pittwater communit...

A delightful short story from Jane Gardam, revisting that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Edward Feathers (known to many as Old Filth) in the days after he loses his beloved wife, Betty.

The charming, funny successor to the hugely popular ‘Notes to my Mother-in-Law’, from the inimitable Phyllida Law.When her Uncle Arthur dies, actress Phyllida Law returns to the tiny Scottish village of Ardentinny to look after her ma, Mego. Mego’s always been deliciously dotty. She once put a new packet of tights in the fridge (and the bacon in her sock drawer). But Mego’s older now and becoming ever more muddled.So Phyllida devotes herself to looking after Mego, but not w...

'Children between the ages of twelve and 25 find parents embarrassing 95 per cent of the time. Any younger and they're so uncritical they think you look good in swimmers. Any older and they drop in just long enough to leave their laundry and borrow 50. If you want to embarrass your kids you have to strike when they're teenagers.'For 30 years, Pat McDermott's much-loved 'Family Matters' saga has unfolded on the last page of The Australian Women's Weekly. Her hilarious obser...

Featuring:Sarah Hall, Lucy Wood, Lisa Blower, Lavinia Greenlaw and Lionel Shriver.Edgar Allan Poe once claimed the greatest literary works were those that could be read ’in one sitting’. ‘Brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect,’ he argued, once the effect has been established, of course.The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2013 all use brevity with striking results, whether presenting a comp...

Jo Shapcott's award-winning first three collections, gathered in Her Book: Poems 1988-1998, revealed her to be a writer of ingenuous, politically acute and provocative poetry, and rightly earned her a reputation as one of the most original and daring voices of her generation. In Of Mutability, Shapcott is found writing at her most memorable and bold. In a series of poems that explore the nature of change - in the body and the natural world, and in the shifting relationshi...

A fascinating prize-winning novel about a house with a fanciful little turret, built by a river. Unfolding within its rooms are lives of event and emotional upheaval. A lot happens. And the tumultuous events of the twentieth century also leave their mark, from war to economic collapse, the deaths of presidents and princesses to new waves of music, art, architecture and political ideas. Meanwhile, a few metres away in the river, another creature follows a d...

Edited by award winning novelist and short story writer Kevin Barry, this volume will once again mix established names with previously unpublished authors, and will seek to offer fresh renditions to the Irish story - new angles, new approaches, new modes of attack.Published in 2011, New Irish Short Stories, edited by Joseph O'Connor, has sold over 10,000 copies to date and featured Kevin Barry's 'Beer Trip to Llandudno' - winner of the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Short ...

The third in a series of annual anthologies, The Best British Short Stories 2013 reprints the cream of short fiction, by British writers, first published in 2012. These stories appeared in magazines from the Edinburgh Review to Granta, in anthologies from various publishers, and in authors' own short story collections. They appeared online at 3:AM Magazine, Fleeting and elsewhere.This new anthology includes stories by: Charles Boyle, Reg...