'There is no more carefully chosen yet eclectic anthology series in existence in Britain today' – Susan Haigh, The Short ReviewBest 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, ne...

The third edition of Writing Short Stories has been revised and updated to provide a complete guide to the craft of writing short stories. It emphasizes the importance of voice as a foundation for work on characterization, imagery, dialogue and pace, as readers move from their first sketches to working on more complex narrative structures.Ailsa Cox guides readers through key aspects of the craft, providing a variety of case studies of classic and contemporary core texts. T...

"Hilary Mantel and Helen Simpson feature in the nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its fifth 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, magazine...

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...

Shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Novel AwardLonglisted for the 2015 Man Booker PrizeWinner of the Irish Novel of the Year 2015Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosal...

THE RUNAWAY GLOBAL BESTSELLER'Gripping, enthralling - a top-notch thriller and a compulsive read.' SJ Watson, bestselling author of BEFORE I GO TO SLEEPRachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as...

Revised and updated for the twenty-first century, Steering the Craft is Ursula K. Le Guin's carrier bag of the essentials of a writer's craft, a generous gift from one of the great thinkers about how – and why – to write.This handbook is an accessible and profound guide to the craft of writing and editing. Le Guin lays out ten chapters that address the most fundamental components of narrative, from the sound of language to sentence construction to point of view. Drawing on...

Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullest—a lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing and literary devices that enrich these works, including symbols, themes, and contexts—teaches you how to make your everyday reading experience richer and more rewarding.While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surfac...

This updated edition of the classic, comprehensive guide to creative writing features new topics and writing prompts, contemporary examples, and more.A creative writer's shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction. This best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for decades it has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn the craft. Now in it...

'The best book on the subject I've read. Quite brilliant' Tony Jordan, creator/writer, Life on Mars, HustleWe all love stories. But why do we tell them? And why do all stories function in an eerily similar way? John Yorke, creator of the BBC Writers' Academy, has brought a vast array of drama to British screens. Here he takes us on a journey to the heart of storytelling, revealing that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative forms - one that echoes th...

Now expanded: The definitive visual guide to writing science fiction and fantasy—with exercises, diagrams, essays by superstar authors, and more.From the New York Times-bestselling, Nebula Award-winning author, Wonderbook has become the definitive guide to writing science fiction and fantasy by offering an accessible, example-rich approach that emphasizes the importance of playfulness as well as pragmatism. It also embraces the visual nature of ge...

‘One of the literary greats of the twentieth century’ MARGARET ATWOOD‘A crafter of fierce, focused, fertile dreams’ DAVID MITCHELL‘A literary icon’ STEPHEN KINGHard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll ne...