This unusual collection of stories ranges from the mysterious to the thought-provoking and the downright comic. As a retired social worker the author, whose schooling finished at the end of the Second World War, has brought to bear a lifetime of experience of the quirky side of human nature.

Cats. Our oldest companions. They have befriended us, consoled us and given us many memories. No cat lover can doubt there is nothing quite as satisfying as the loyalty of a feline friend. But sometimes, it can go a little too far. Something that Dr Richard Cooper, recently widowed, is about to find out. The hard way. On a reminiscent fly fishing trip, Mr Gregory Rose is hunting the rainbow trout. But out on the loneliness of the lake, he discovers, to his dismay, that there is more than just fish that lurk in the depths. Sometimes ita s our own past that we cana t help but bring up to the surface.

Twenty tales of adventure, fraud, horror, intrigue, justice, magic, murder, mystery and the supernatural, all with a twist in the tale.

The best entries in an Oxford-based short story competition are published in this collection. Each story reveals the joys, anxieties and complex private lives of people travelling on the No 13 bus between Oxford Station and the John Radcliffe Hospital. This is a book to dip into; it is a sequel to the successful Lucky 13 and will bring just as much pleasure to anyone who enjoys a good read. Funds raised through the sale of Double-Decker are being donated to the hospital's charity, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Charitable Funds (registered charity 1057295), helping to provide the best medical equipment, research and facilities for patients and staff across our hospitals.

Poetry is by its nature very personal and often reveals more about the poet than any other medium can. Unlike prose, it is not so closely bound to the rules of language and grammar and can take wings and fly where the muse takes it. My poetry is largely of an autobiographical nature which includes events, people, places in fact anything that has impinged upon my life. My short stories on the other hand can be read as straightforward fiction although mostly they have a basis in fact. As for any wise sayings - some are mine - others come from my father and other wise people. Jokes, however, are few and depend largely on your sense of humour.

Come take a walk through Roy's mind. A collection of short stories and poems - some funny, some sad, some true, and some not so true. But you decide. Read some ghost stories and funny ghost stories or quickly change your mood, flick through a page or two and read about Leprechauns or even the shadow people or try to free the lost souls from Blackthorn Cottage if you dare. There's a bit of something for every one when you venture in to Roy's thoughts

This little collection of poems, stories, outbursts and musings is put forward as an homage to Jerome K. Jerome. His book, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886, is like mine, a series of humorous articles on various subjects.

In a thrilling interconnected narrative, You're in the Wrong Place presents characters reaching for transcendence from a place they cannot escape. Charles Baxter stated that "Joseph Harris has a particular feeling for the Detroit suburbs and the slightly stunted lives of the young people there....You're in the Wrong Place isn't uniformly downbeat-there are all sorts of rays of hope that gleam toward the end". The book, composed of twelve stories, begins in the fall of 2008 with the shuttering of Dynamic Fabricating-a fictional industrial shop located in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale. Over the next seven years, the shop's former employees - as well as their friends and families-struggle to find money, purpose, and levity in a landscape suddenly devoid of work, faith, and love. In "Would You Rather", a young couple brought together by Dynamic Fabricating shares a blissful weekend in Northern Michigan, unaware of the catastrophe that awaits them upon their return home. In "Acolytes", a devout Catholic clings to her faith as her brothers descend into cultish soccer violence. In "Memorial", an ex-Dynamic worker scrapes money together for a tribute to his best friend, lost to the war in Afghanistan. In "Was It Good for You?" a cam girl deconstructs materialism with her ageng great aunt, a luxury sales associate, and an anxious, faceless client. And in the title story, simmering tensions come to a boil on a hot summer day for a hardscrabble landscaping crew, hired by the local bank to maintain the lawns of foreclosures In turns elegiac and harrowing, You're in the Wrong Place blends lyric intensity with philosophical eroticism to create a singular, powerful vision of contemporary American life. Readers of contemporary fiction grounded in place need to take up this collection.

The private lives of strangers can be fascinating, as these tales reveal. In them, the strangers are all passengers on the No 13 bus leaving Oxford Station at 1.15pm on a summer's day, arriving some 40 minutes later at the John Radcliffe Hospital. During their journey more passengers get on and others get off and they rarely interact. But behind each inscrutable facade are the joys and fears of complex private worlds and private thoughts. This is a book to dip into. It will, of course, help pass the time on a bus journey or even in hospital but it is intended to give pleasure to anyone who enjoys reading about other people and lives which may be exciting, sad or just plain different. All proceeds from the book's sale are being donated to the Hidden Heroes Fund of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Charitable Funds which supports staff recognition, development and training across all the Trust's hospitals.

These twenty four short stories are ideal for advent reading or whenever you can fit them into the busy month of December. These festive snapshots into other people's lives aim to enliven and entertain. A handful of the stories are set in the recent past, because Christmas is a great time for nostalgia. There are stories about anticipation, hope and that tingling feeling you get when waiting for something pleasant to happen. There is a cast of characters of all ages and not all of them are human. There are themes of time and counting, dark and light, change and renewal. The book is two dozen slices of Christmas, waiting to bring cheer at the dark time of the year.

This book is an anthology of the recent work of the Poynton Creative Writers' Guild. It contains poetry, short stories, memoirs, and factual articles with titles such as 'Moon Musings', 'Anger' and 'The Smallest Room'.

NOW A #1 BLOCKBUSTING FILM. The Sun is dying. Earth will perish too, consumed by the star in its final death throes. But rather than abandon their planet, humanity builds 12,000 mountainous fusion engines to propel the Earth out of orbit and onto a centuries-long voyage to Proxima Centaurai... Cixin Liu is one of the most important voices in world Science Fiction. A bestseller in China, his novel, The Three-Body Problem, was the first translated work of SF ever to win the Hugo Award. Here is the first collection of his short fiction: ten stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award-winners. This collection's title story, The Wandering Earth, is the biggest SF movie ever to come out of China - taking the world's #1 box office ranking in February 2019. Liu's writing takes the reader to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we could have ever imagined. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu's stories show humanity's attempts to reason, navigate and, above all, survive in a desolate cosmos. 'Cixin's trilogy is SF in the grand style, a galaxy-spanning, ideas-rich narrative of invasion and war' GUARDIAN. 'Wildly imaginative, really interesting ... The scope of it was immense' BARACK OBAMA, 44th President of the United States.

'One of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today' SALLY ROONEY, author of Normal People 'Terrific' RODDY DOYLE, author of Love 'Truly brilliant' MEGAN NOLAN, author of Acts of Desperation On an island off Ireland's west coast strange things are afoot: two teenage boys set fires while their worlds fall apart, a couple drive out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, a widow seeks a stranger's help to bury her grief and a horse crashes a house party. Adrift in the treacherous waters of small-town boredom, the residents reach out with love and cruelty, desperation and hope, in their pursuit of connection. Pure Gold is a bitterly funny, surprising and profoundly moving short story collection that crackles with the thrilling energy of a bold new literary voice, John Patrick McHugh. 'Full of stylish brio' Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins 'Hilarious, shocking, and disturbingly well-observed' Vanity Fair 'Searing ... John Patrick McHugh joins an illustrious generation of talented writers' Irish Times 'Savagely funny' Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time 'Refreshing and ambitious' Lisa McInerney, author of The Blood Miracles

This vivid and haunting short-story collection flows smoothly together to create a masterful portrait of contemporary Sri Lanka; a country of teeming natural beauty, with a society in turmoil. A married couple, living in London, find their marriage strained by fighting in their far-off homeland. A man mourns his brother's death. A woman regrets the lover she left behind. Between exile and loss, Gunesekera's characters struggle for the elusive and divided place that they call home. Re-printed by Granta in a beautiful new edition.

A collection of macabre mysteries, including the superlative story Witness for the Prosecution... Twelve unexplained phenomena with no apparent earthly explanation... A dog-shaped gunpowder mark; an omen from 'the other side'; a haunted house; a chilling seance; a case of split personalities; a recurring nightmare; an eerie wireless message; an elderly lady's hold over a young man; a disembodied cry of 'murder'; a young man's sudden amnesia; a levitation experience; a mysterious SOS. To discover the answers, delve into the supernatural storytelling of Agatha Christie.

A woman granted a superpower discovers it's more trouble than it's worth. A neighbourhood forum becomes the setting for a bizarre ghost story. A children's entertainer wrestles with problems that are nothing to joke about. A harassed dad attempts to meet the challenge of the primary school cake competition. By turns tender and satirical, witty and bizarre, the stories in this debut collection cast a fresh eye on first-world problems. Funny and humane, they zoom in on the absurdities and poignancies in work, family, love and loss in our frenetic modern lives.