Sophie Westacott had it all, a celebrity boyfriend, an inner-city Sydney terrace, a great job at a top-tier law firm, and invitations to A-list events within the tight clique of Sydney’s Beautiful People.But it all slips away when her boyfriend, Connor Bayles, Channel 8’s newsreader, breaks up with her, leaving Sophie to wonder how she ever thought they were the perfect couple.After eight years of being out of Sydney’s dating scene and faced with a barrage ...

Excerpt:I looked past Gramps and saw my grandmother with her arms firmly crossed. She wasn't your typical grandma. You know, the kind with fresh baked pies sitting on the windowsill. My grandmother was... Well, she was more like a warden.I slowly approached her."Hello, Eliana." She awkwardly gave me a half-pat-on-the-back kind of hug."Hi, Grandma; thanks for taking us in." I tried to chisel through the ice."You're welcome," she replied stiffly.

Excerpt:We broke through the surface and inhaled deep breaths. "Nice try, hon. Next time make sure I don't have a grip on you." He kissed the tip of my nose and removed his arm from my waist."Okay. I'll be sure and remember that." I swam backwards toward shore and Lucas followed. I came out of the river first and squeezed the water out of my hair while I waited for Lucas.Sasha and some of the other girls from the cheer squad were lying along the shore on towels like...

There is something monstrous about capital, something alive and creeping about it. It’s been compared to a parasite, a vampire, a zombie-maker; one that transforms human lives into dead labour, and marshals all creative, free-thinking individuality into the long trudge that is work, money-making, aspiration. The philosopher Mark Fisher famously compared capital to the alien in John Carpenter’s The Thing: an ‘infinitely plastic entity capable of metabolising and absorbing anything with whic...

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

Sophie Westacott had it all, a celebrity boyfriend, an inner-city Sydney terrace, a great job at a top-tier law firm, and invitations to A-list events within the tight clique of Sydney's Beautiful People. But it all slips away when her boyfriend, Connor Bayles, Channel 8's newsreader, breaks up with her, leaving Sophie to wonder how she ever thought they were the perfect couple. After eight years of being out of Sydney's dating scene and faced with a barrage of websites, events, and apps, ...

A merchant sailor works for a decade, captaining a yacht up and down the coasts of Malaysia, in the hope that his crooked employer will stay true to a promise...Years after a pandemic sweeps across Europe, wiping out its all-white population, a pilgrim returns to his Polish birthplace in search of the only other non-white kid he knew at school...An inscrutable hotelier loses his composure when a secret passage is discovered in his hotel, leading to a mysterious room and a p...

A woman grows increasingly annoyed by her husband’s emails, offering advice and reminders even months after his death…A taxidermist dreams of preserving one of his clients after she takes him out for a coffee…A grieving nurse is troubled by her daughter’s fascination with The Iron Lady…In Safely Gathered In, Sarah Schofield probes at the heart of what forms us and what we, in turn, form. The stories collected here expose the spaces that words often fail to ...

SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY.We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject.Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Geo...

Driving, driving, driving. It's dark in the desert. Just how I like it. No one around for miles and miles. Me and the stars. The stars and me. And the road moving, snaking and flowing to the future. My new future. Listen, enjoy and learn through story. "English shorts – Stories to improve your English" come in three levels. This story is level 1. *=My English is ok ** = My English is good *** = My English is excellent

What can you say about love? It's everything when you have it and even more when you don't. I had it, then lost it – I know what both feels like. Listen, enjoy and learn through story. "English shorts – Stories to improve your English" come in three levels. This story is level 1. *=My English is ok ** = My English is good *** = My English is excellent

At first, Jim is excited by the new job his friend Magda offers him. But when the job is done, they meet a stranger on the road. Someone who turns everything upside down. Listen, enjoy and learn through story. "English shorts – Stories to improve your English" come in three levels. This story is level 1. *=My English is ok ** = My English is good *** = My English is excellent