Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing - its mission is to become the greatest business park in the region. Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at 'bring your daughter to work day'. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her. Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still cannot reconcile that she is really at home. Refusing to accept that she is saf...

Sail Away Land is the space where we might go when we're no longer alive (sometimes only temporarily). In this uncommon and disarming collection, the characters go 'there' with or without knowing it. Maybe they have been living there all along without noticing - just like they hadn't really noticed that everyone is carrying a shiny black suitcase.These stories are about normal things - losing the people we're closest to, forgiving them, finding love and managing t...

This charming account of the voyage of two men in a small boat half wayround the world from Plymouth to New Zealand in 1953 is a rare insight into a time, not long ago, whensailors had no GPS, electronics, radio or any of the mod cons that wetake for granted today. Without lifejacket or a liferaft, they 'just took what came along', hand steering all the way, navigating by sextant, hand-cranking their engine and using oil lamps for light at night and for navigation. Sai...

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its twelfth year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or, more accurately, by its title. This critically acclaimed 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 site...

**‘No one writes like Samanta Schweblin’ – Lorrie MooreThe strange and explosive new collection from the incomparable imagination of Samanta Schweblin, a master of the short story.**A gripping blend of the raw, the astonishing and the tragic, every story is as perfectly unexpected as a snare: tightly, exquisitely wound, ready to snap at a touch.Here, a young father is haunted by the consequences of a moment of distraction; tragedy is complicated by the inexplicable ...

It feels as though we have each been walking along our own path in the same forest. And now, we have found our way to a clearing and suddenly we see that we share not only the clearing but the forest too. You think it begins when you meet, but in fact, our stories were already entwined.'Our century's answer to Proust' New York Times'Astonishing' London Review of Books'Unforgettable' Hernan ...

On a wind-stilled bay in Roslagen, Sweden, the Ömheten care home rests where sea meets pine-scented air. After a resident's death, Tore Lindahl, a former policeman, suspects foul play, but his concerns are dismissed as the ramblings of an old man.Lindhahl turns to Veronika Wiklund, a young journalist stuck tracing small-town stories for the local paper. Together, the unlikely duo begins asking questions that unsettle their entire community.As Veronika searches for answers, ...

The ear is the organ of fear. It is a door to that which is not of this world.Leaving behind the dread and decay of the city, Noa and her best friend, Nicole, travel up into the Andes, heading for Solar Noise: an eight-day festival that takes place on the side of a volcano, in the infinite expanse of the p�ramo. A world of mysticism and underground music, in tune with the thunder of the earth and the bellows of the mountains.Noa has been drawn there in search of he...

*Shortlisted for the 2026 URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION*Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny and deeply political, The Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations.'Truly nightmarish.' Andrew Michael Hurley'I inhaled Bora Chung's book of ghost stories and then slept with the light on!' Avni Doshi'Uniquely brilliant and ...

A thrilling and ominously prophetic debut set in a world when Earth and its resources have been pushed to breaking point, giving rise to a revolutionary—and highly controversial—procedure in which two people’s consciousness can be combined to exist in one body.How far would you go to never say goodbye?Laurie is sixty-five and living with Alzheimer’s. Her daughter Amelia, a once fiery and strong-willed activist, can’t bear to see he...

*The new novel from the author of WILLIAM*'A propulsive gasp of a novel' Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes'I couldn't put it down until the last twisting page' Simone St. James, author of Murder Road2030. The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent ahead to set it up in disarra...

What does it mean to lose yourself – and is that something you should be aiming for? A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession – not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, bu...