Established in 2005, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was originally established to highlight a literary genre regarded as undervalued and under threat. It aimed to recognise and celebrate the very best writers of short fiction who had no prize equivalent to major literary awards like the Man Booker Prize. 19 years on, the short story is in robust health and the BBC National Short Story Award is recognised as the most prestigious for a single short story with th...

Don't miss the hilarious novel from the #1 bestselling author, Maddie Please, author of the brilliantly funny, Old Girls on Deck!A fresh start with a French twist!Joy Chandler had one simple wish: a nice, drama-free family reunion. But instead? Daughter Sara announces she's getting divorced and seems determined to drown her sorrows in wine, while son John and his perfect wife Vanessa casually drop the bombshell that they’re moving to New York—without so m...

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHERRECIPIENT OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARD'Evaristo possesses enough ball-busting originality to create whole novels for each of the historical characters she resurrects . . . [she creates] funky yarns so tantalising you want to devour them' GuardianMeet Stanley Williams: Single, in his thirties, grieving ...

Maxim Jakubowski has once again compiled a blockbuster collection of the year's most outstanding short crime fiction published in the UK. His aim is always to present the whole breadth of crime, mystery and thriller writing, from gentle stories of detection to puzzling historical labyrinths full of devious characters and sharp social comment about our imperfect society in some savage, and often scary stories.Last year saw a fifth Crime Writers Association Short Story Dagger award f...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Ambitious and beautifully crafted' THE TIMES'Faulks writes with great emotional authority' SUNDAY TIMESAmidst the letters of the alphabet, a life reveals itself. Flashing backwards and forwards through time, we meet Pietro Russell. As a photographer in Sri Lanka, a schoolboy in Fulham and even before he was born to his wounded English father and young Italian mother. The ...

For over twenty years, people turned to A. A. Gill's columns every Sunday - for his fearlessness, his perception, and the laughter-and-tear-provoking one-liners - but mostly because he was the best. 'By miles the most brilliant journalist of our age', as Lynn Barber put it. This is the definitive collection of a voice that was silenced too early but that can still make us look at the world in new and surprising ways.In the words of Andrew Marr, A.. A. Gill was 'a golden writer'. Th...

Maureen Lipman has the knack of making the everyday supremely entertaining, the ordinary absurd and unexpected. This new collection of pieces sparkles with her inimitable prose and pithy opinions. Encounters in the street, at the hairdresser, in the dressing room, on her travels at home and abroad, indeed wherever she goes, are sharply observed, joyfully and - at times - ruefully recorded. Included too are a selection of brilliant monologues which capture the many voices of Maureen in wond...

A bold and brilliant short work by the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny.Madrid.Unfinished.Man Dying.A great painter lies on his deathbed.Max Porter translates into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind.

'The Mersey Sound is an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader by publishing representative work by each of three modern poets in a single volume, in each case the selection has been made to illustrate the poet's characteristics in style and form'. With this modest brief, The Mersey Sound was conceived and first published in 1967. An anthology which features Roger McGough's work, alongside that of Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (The Liverpool Poets)...

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

JACK IRISH BOOK THREE: FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE BROKEN SHORE.**'Another world-class crime novel from Peter Temple' Canberra Times'Peter Temple is an addiction. Read one book and you will want to read them all. Now' Val McDermidJack Irish has a lot on his mind. His woman has an old flame, his champion horse has been put down and his gambling has left him broke. No wonder then, that h...

Rachel Johnson's hilarious take on life as a yummy mummy in West London and on Exmoor has been making her newspaper readers chortle for the last couple of years: now they are seamlessly turned into a diary of her year, from the dog's birthday party in January (games of Paws-the-Parcel) to the June sports days (where the mummies turn up at the school sports day in sports bras and running shorts with little back packs containing high energy drinks - and that's just for them) to summer on Exm...