Women’s difficult lives are laid bare with a surgeon’s precision in this collection. This is a collection of 21 short stories about women in relation to the men in their worlds. I had to think long and hard about the title. The more I...
Violence, and fear, fester beneath the surface when a middle-class family is stalked by a creepy downstairs neighbour. The Tiefenthalers are your typical bourgeois Berlin family. Their story is related by Randolph Tiefenthaler, a 45-year-old...
Have you ever lost something you valued? Just found it gone, vanished like that single sock lost in the wash? In a longish life I can think of a few instances, some of which still tease me. One of my much-admired uncles – to my shame I can’t...
Stead’s short stories contest truth and identity – and feature a winged man, scary women, and a hint of Edna Everidge. One of the most important elements of a short story is its structure. In these 12 pieces gathered from across the lengthy...
The Possessions is an unsettling debut conjuring a world where the dead may speak through the living. What makes you you? Is it the lipstick you wear? The way you talk? An unselfconscious moment captured in a photograph? Or is it the impression you...
I am not a particularly hairy man. The hair on my chest is minimal, I have none on my back and my facial hair is not especially abundant. But, at nearly 75, I have a thick, low growing, all-over covering of hair on my head. My hairline hasn’t...
