Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel, is a collection of stories by three of the UK's brightest new writing talents: The Mesmerist's Daughter by Heidi James, Smokin' the Queen by Kay Sexton, and In the Clear by Lucy Fry. Together the stories transport the reader into the minds of three very different characters. The Mesmerist's Daughter, a fairytale minus the fairies, tells the story of an imaginative young girl, Nicola, who thinks her mother is a wolf. Stifled by her home environment and her mother's lies, Nicola's quest is literally to rediscover her own voice. In Smokin' the Queen, Darius, a damaged, black DJ, travels from his home in Brixton to the West of England. There he finds work and shelter, and manages to forget his troubles in the bewitching company of a local woman. As summer turns to autumn, however, his anxieties resurface, impelling him to take desperate action. Told with humour and verve, In the Clear explores an obsessional relationship whose breakdown sends its narrator into a spiral of depression. Her only chance of salvation is to reach out to the world, but to do so she must first escape the confines of her own self-consciousness. "Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel is inventive in language and exuberant in narrative. You'll be hard pressed to find such fantastic fictions in more mainstream, well-behaved publications." Russell Celyn Jones

Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel

Literature & Fiction

Lucy Fry Heidi James, Kay Sexton

Kay Sexton

Short Stories & Anthologies

Apis Books

A diverse, daring volume, Desperate Remedies brings together dazzling short fictions by Adam Elston, Shaun Levin, Mark Saba, M L Stedman, Paul Blaney and Guy Ware, edited by Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone. Adam Elston's trio of stories explores the different faces of loss and estrangement. The three stories by M L Stedman draw on the sights, smells and sounds of her native Western Australia. Mark Saba's novella of identity moves artfully between Connecticut, Minnesota, and points more distant in space and time. Paul Blaney's four stories, diverse in voice and form, combine the everyday and the fabulous, deftly negotiating dream and memory, community and the individual's quest for happiness. The first of Guy Ware's two stories is a picaresque tale of love, death and second-hand cars, the second a bitterly humorous portrait of a deeply-troubled man. Shaun Levin's virtuoso study of the poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg brings the collection to a deeply satisfying close. 'This is what short stories are meant to do: show us flamboyantly what the novel can't do and without falling into stylistic games or losing emotional resonance. Diamonds are created by compressing carbon at high temperatures; these stories seem to be created by treating language and form in much the same way. They are diamonds and should be valued as such.' Sara Maitland

Desperate Remedies

Levin, Shaun

Blaney, Paul

Guy Ware

Mark Saba

Adam Elston

ML Stedman

Tales of the Decongested, Volume Two

Paul Blaney Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone Toby Litt

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