Daniel Lambert was, quite literally, the greatest celebrity of his age. Universally proclaimed as the heaviest man in the world, between 1806 and his death in 1809, he regularly exhibited himself to “the high-born as well as the vulgar” at a residence in London’s Piccadilly at the cost of a shilling per person.Yet despite his fame, very little has been published in the past century or so, save for the occasional entry in assorted collections of medical marvels and human curiosities...

Mark Blasdale’s much anticipated 2019 return to the literary stage kicks off with ABOUT BLOODY TIME - a collection of seven wonderfully-crafted tales, each disguising a vague association to the fragility and fleeting nature of time.In ODONATA, a woman faces execution in a Texas prison. But would youhave condemned her so quickly? Elsewhere, we accompany famed Romance Novelist Ms Pudenda Partridge as she travels to Reno for her final book convention. In THE BELLS OF STAGNANT MEADE, w...

NOVELLA. Maggie Harrison always dreamed of owning her own place, and now those twelve acres of rich Texas soil located just outside the picture-perfect town of Bradbury were hers. Along with her husband Travis, and daughter Maisy, Maggie begins to realise her dream of self-sufficiency, putting the land immediately to work, growing enough to eat, and selling the excess at farmers’ markets.Under the watchful eye of Silas Crutch, a farmer whose land shares a boundary with Harrison’s P...

As Chairman of Dilber’s Supermarkets, Thaddeus Pike knows all too well the importance of Christmas. To him it’s customer manipulation, gratuitous profits, increased shareholder confidence and seven-figure executive bonuses. But for the staff who populate his six hundred supermarkets and convenience stores, the story is quite a different one. What is Christmastime to them? Ending their shifts late on Christmas Eve and returning back to work early Boxing Day morning, it’s as though there’s n...

Reissued...Repackaged...Regifted. Like a pedlar who STILL won't take no for an answer, Blasdale simply refuses to stop hawking his meagre offerings before an indifferent public in his shameless pursuit of profit and fame!!! As a companion volume to 2019's REWRAPPED, this outing gathers all but one of the remaining stories from his popular (and now sadly out-of-print) 2015 collection, TWELVE TALES OF CHRISTMAS. Titles include A GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT, WENDELL THRUPPENCE, and 'DOWNWIND' ...

In this ghostly collection of chilling classics, internationally-acclaimed author, Mark Blasdale, has selected ten of his favourite ghost stories from three of literature's finest writers. From the imaginations of Charles Dickens, Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe comes THE SIGNAL-MAN, THE HAUNTED HOUSE, and THE BAGMAN'S STORY (by Dickens), THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER, THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM, and THE ADVENTURE OF THE GERMAN STUDENT (by Irving), and THE BLACK C...

Six new short stories, two freshly penned fireside tales, and a couple of classics from the author’s popular reading repertoire, Tales of a Strange and Curious Sort brilliantly showcases Blasdale’s masterful command of both language and style.A modern storyteller with a gift for the picturesque, our left-handed hero once more delights the reader with his dark tales, each sprinkled liberally with humour and pathos.As these will be the last short stories the author will be pu...

Reissued...Repackaged...Rewrapped. Like a pedlar who won’t take no for an answer, Blasdale’s at it again, hawking his wares before an indifferent public in the shameless pursuit of profit and fame. New(ish) for Christmas 2019, REWRAPPED brings together seven of the author’s most popular Christmas short stories from the last six years. Titles include: THE BENEDICTION OF STAGNANT MEADE, HUNTED DOWN and CHRISTMAS PASSED.

Aston Barnack has a secret. As the disillusioned former Guardian of Christmas, he has long abandoned the festive season and now sells assorted cakes and continental coffees in a small English seaside town. But when an old man discovers his identity and seeks the help of our disenchanted Spirit to right a great wrong, Aston is forced to return to a role he swore never to revive.Set against the backdrop of a busy, modern coffee shop in a north Norfolk coastal town, Keeping Christmas ...

Set against the backdrop of a busy, modern coffee shop in a north Norfolk coastal town, it is the story of two men - both very different but each with a secret - who undertake a supernatural Christmas adventure that leads them on a journey through the streets of Victorian London to the trenches of the Western Front in 1914.Thanks to a well-read book, a mysterious wooden box, a much-loved Christmas card and a straggly piece of tinsel, KEEPING CHRISTMAS is an amusing and touching nov...