This is the classic collection of Chinua Achebe's short fiction, written over twenty years and drawn from literary journals and magazines. The earliest, 'Marriage is a Private Affair' (1952), dates back to his student days at Ibadan, Nigeria, while the latest, 'Sugar Baby' (1972), uses a man's simple obsession with sugar as an allegory of the far greater evil of human behaviour during the time of war. 'Girls at War', the title story, is about the tragic effects of war on the civilian population, in particular on one girl, who sets out with high ideals, which vanish as the war drags on and the need for food replaces the need for ideals. This collection provides an interesting cross-section of Achebe's work and the development of his key themes and distinctive style against the significant historical and political backdrop of Africa in the decades between 1952 and 1972.

'Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage … and seduces with precise spare  prose, creating unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer but an absolutely essential one’
New York Times Book Review
Told in a series of vibrant vignettes, The House on Mango Street is the story of Esperanza Cordera, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago.  For Esperanza, Mango Street is a desolate landscape of concrete and run-down tenements where she discovers the hard realities of life - the fetters of class and gender, the spectre of racial enmity and the mysteries of sexuality.  Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, Esperanza is able to rise above hopelessness and create for herself 'a house all of my own quiet as snow, a space for myself to go' in the midst of her oppressive surroundings.

Ek is gebore by kerslig, op ’n plaas, Vaalhoek, naby Keimoes en Kakamas! Op ’n jong ouerdom begin ek onder andere Rooi Jan en Swart Luiperd lees. Ek begin ook stories vertel. Ek lees graag en skryf graag. Ek het ’n onderwyser, dominee en kliniese sielkundige geword met ’n D.Litt in kliniese sielkunde en werk nog as kliniese sielkundige. Ek verwerf jaarliks ’n diploma in sielkunde. Ek is ’n wewenaar en het van Upington na Pringlebaai verhuis.

Vir my is dit belangrik dat verhale dadelik vrae moet laat ontstaan soos, “Wat gebeur volgende?”en eindig met onverwagse bevredigende gebeure. In my eie stories pas ek hierdie metode toe.

Van die stories het heelwat humor in en is vir oud en jonk. Genotvolle verhale wat jy nie kan mis nie. Sommige verhale is kort en lekker leesstof vir mense wat haastig is en sommige langer vir bedtyd. Elke verhaal is uitstekende vermaak en laat mens na die ligter kant van die lewe kyk.

Daar’s ’n muis wat kan praat, ’n Ou wat dink hy kan ’n rivier in vloed klop, ’n man wat alles kan regmaak, behalwe ’n kar se ratte wat agtertoe inspring in plaas van vorentoe, ’n lekker polisiestorie, ’n vroutjie wat mediese verteenwoordiger speel, liefde en hartseer, ’n geheimsinnige vrou met asemrowende lippe en nog sulke stories.

Lees en geniet hulle!

The master-storyteller turns his pen to rural village life with Ways of Sunlight in Trinidad: gossip and rivalry between village washerwomen; toiling cane-cutters reaping their harvest; superstitious old Ma Procop protecting the fruit of her Mango tree with magic. With equal wit and sensitivity, he reflects the depression of hard times in London, where people live in cold, damp basements, hustling for survival.

Sunday Business Post Book of the Year Blindboy Boatclub is one half of the Rubberbandits, Ireland's foremost satirist and now the talented author of a collection of brilliant short stories and visual art. Published to critical acclaim, his first collection is powered by big themes and even bigger ideas. There are stories about a van fuelled by Cork people's accents, Tipperary's first ISIS recruit, a sexually aggressive banshee and a fridge dragged heroically through the streets of Limerick. The Gospel According to Blindboy questions and challenges the complacencies and contradictions at the heart of modern Ireland. Whip-smart, provocative and animated by his unmistakable dark wit, it is one of the most original collections of short stories to emerge in recent years. 'Mad, wild, hysterical, and all completely under the writer's control - this is a brilliant debut.' Kevin Barry 'There is genius in this book, warped genius. Like you'd expect from a man who for his day job wears a plastic bag on his head but something beyond that too. Oddly in keeping with the tradition of great Irish writers.' Russell Brand 'If you've ever witnessed (there's no other word for it) a Rubberbandits video you'll be anxious (there's no other word for it) to read this collection of short stories from one of the originators. I hesitate to use the word author as the experience is as close to reading a traditional short story as being burnt by a blow torch. Essential, funny and disturbing.' Danny Boyle 'One of Ireland's finest and most intelligent comic minds delivers stories so blisteringly funny and sharp your fingers might bleed. In language so delicious you can taste it, we're shown holy and unholy Ireland: a land of lock-ins, nettle stings, stone-mad Cork birds, gas cunts and Guiney's jeans. No one is safe - we all have the unmerciful piss ripped out of us and there's no escape from the emotional gut punches, expertly dealt.' Tara Flynn 'Demented, dishevelled and deeply surreal - Blindboy Boatclub's book will shock and delight.' Irish Independent 'It's not for the faint-hearted.' Joe.ie 'You won't be disappointed. It will take you to places unexpected.' Ryan Tubridy

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will' Hailed as one of the most distinctive and compelling literary voices of her era, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is praised today for her ground-breaking, feminist writing. Collected here, both The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland are extraordinary for scrutinising the patriarchal norms of turn-of-the-century America. In The Yellow Wallpaper a woman frantically paces the empty nursery at the top of a secluded mansion. Her husband John, a physician, is of no comfort and she can't bear to sit with the new baby as his crying makes her much too nervous. And then there's the putrid, yellow wallpaper which seems to shift and creep around the room before her very eyes... Herland, first published in 1915, follows a group of three men as they arrive in a female-only society. Peace and tranquillity thrive in this utopian land, forcing the explorers to question how their own corrupted, male-dominated world can survive.

The perfect Christmas gift: three festive tales from the brilliant pen of Kate Atkinson. 'Lucy would have challenged anyone not to cry at the sight of their child in a Nativity play. Even a sheepish Maude, even a scowling Beatrice - currently attempting a Chinese burn on an adjacent angel. A shepherd shouted something incomprehensible to Joseph. One of the Wise Men wet himself. Beatrice waved enthusiastically - a little too enthusiastically - at Lucy from the angelic choir. It was better than any religion, Lucy thought.' From the Costa Award-winning author of LIFE AFTER LIFE

A new Demon Cycle novella from internationally bestselling author Peter V. Brett Each night, the world is overrun by bloodthirsty demons. For centuries, humanity survived only by hiding behind defensive wards - magical symbols of power. Now, though, the rediscovery of other, long-forgotten wards has given them the magic they need to fight back... In Tibbet's Brook, the fighting wards have brought change, heightening tensions and grudges of a troubled past. Selia Square, the woman they call Barren, has long been the force holding the Brook together. As a terrifying new threat emerges, she must rally the people of the Brook once more. But Selia has a past of her own. And in a small community the personal and the political can never be divided. If Tibbet's Brook is to survive, Selia must uncover memories she has buried deep - of the woman she once was and the woman she once loved - to retell their story.

Selected by #1 bestselling author Lee Child: the twenty finest short stories of 2021. There is no finer form for a crime than the short story. WIthin a few pages, a clue can be discovered, divulged and its significance determined; all else is mere embellishment. The classic mystery tale will be familiar to aficionados and casual readers alike: it was invented by Edgar Allen Poe, popularised by Arthur Conan Doyle, and perfected by Agatha Christie. But mystery fiction has changed a great deal over the years - as have all things - and the writers within these pages present far more than a simple case of crime and resolution. Far from predictable, these stories provide fertile grounds of aberrant circumstances and the poor choices they lead to. You will find diverse methods and motivations, original perspectives and perils. Above all, you will find tales of the extremes of human psychology caused by despair, hate, greed, fear, envy, insanity or love. Featuring stories by: Doug Allyn, Jim Allyn, Ambrose Bierce, Michael Bracken, James Lee Burke, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Jacqueline Freimor, Alison Gaylin, Sue Grafton, Paul Kemprecos, Stephen King, Janice Law, Dennis McFadden, David Marcum, Tom Mead, David Morrell, Joyce Carol Oates, Sara Paretsky, Joseph Walker, Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

**The BRAND NEW series from Holly Hepburn, perfect for fans of Cathy Bramley and Katie Fforde** 'Joyous - a treat of a tale that whisks your heart away to the beautiful shores of Orkney. Prepare to fall in love with this fantastic series!' MIRANDA DICKINSON On paper, Merina Wilde has it all: a successful career writing the kind of romantic novels that make even the hardest hearts swoon, a perfect carousel of book launches and parties to keep her social life buzzing, and a childhood sweetheart who thinks she's a goddess. But Merry has a secret: the magic has stopped flowing from her fingers. Try as she might, she can't summon up the sparkle that makes her stories shine. And as her deadline whooshes by, her personal life falls apart too. Alex tells her he wants something other than the future she'd always imagined for them and Merry finds herself single for the first time since - well, ever. Desperate to get her life back on track, Merry leaves London and escapes to the windswept Orkney Islands, locking herself away in a secluded clifftop cottage to try to heal her heart and rediscover her passion for writing. But can the beauty of the islands and the kindness of strangers help Merry to fool herself into believing in love again, if only long enough to finish her book? Or is it time for her to give up the career she's always adored and find something new to set her soul alight? The brand new series from Holly Hepburn, first published as four ebook parts: BROKEN HEARTS AT BRIGHTWATER BAY, SEA BREEZES AT BRIGHTWATER BAY, DANGEROUS TIDES AT BRIGHTWATER BAY and SUNSET OVER BRIGHTWATER BAY ~*~Praise for Holly Hepburn~*~ 'A fresh new voice, brings wit and warmth to this charming tale of two sisters' Rowan Coleman 'Warm, witty and laced with intriguing secrets! I want to pull up a bar stool, order a large G&T and soak up all the gossip at the Star and Sixpence!' Cathy Bramley 'The Star and Sixpence sparkles with fun, romance, mystery, and a hunky blacksmith. It's a real delight' Julie Cohen 'Like the dream pub landlady who always knows exactly what you want, Holly Hepburn has created the most delightful welcome to what promises to be a brilliant series, in the first Star and Sixpence. The sisters are warm and intriguing, the neighbours are (mostly!) friendly and the gossip is utterly addictive. I was very sad when it was time for last orders, and am already looking forward to the next round. Especially if a certain blacksmith happens to be at the bar...' Kate Harrison 'Warm, witty and utterly charming, Snowdrops at the Star and Sixpence is the perfect book to curl up with on a cold winter's day. It left me with the most wonderful happy glow' Cally Taylor 'A super sparkling star of a story and I can't wait for part two' Alexandra Brown 'Like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, this sparkling story will sweep you away and leave your heart full of love.' Cathy Bramley

From the towering imagination of Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture, seven feverishly unsettling works of suspense.. A precocious eleven-year-old, in thrall to the mysterious black sheep of the family, climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, unforgettable, fate. A university student becomes obsessed with the murder of a female classmate as her own sense of self deteriorates. A recent widow grieves inside her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into a great flying predator - unerring and pitiless in the hunt. These meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting stories confront the dangers that surround us, and the dangers that lurk within. Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates: 'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express 'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review 'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times 'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' Booklist

From the towering imagination of Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture, seven nightmarish and unbearably taut tales. Marissa is an innocent girl, with hair the colour of corn-silk. She does not hold others in strange thrall, as some young women do, she obeys her parents, she does not stay late after school, lingering on her walk through the swaying heads of maize. She is the perfect sacrifice. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, Oates presents an unbearably taut and terrifying tale combining the fury of folklore and blood sacrfice with the depths of adolescent insecurity in The Corn Maiden, a novella, followed by six other nightmares. Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates: 'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express 'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review 'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times 'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' Booklist

Pioneering Indian American writer Bharati Mukherjee is best known for her novel, Jasmine, and her breakthrough collection, The Middleman and Other Stories, which won the 1988 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her writing is distinguished as much by its narrative style and shifting points of view as it is by Mukherjee's piercing emotional observations on the immigrant experience and her depiction of racism, nostalgia, and displacement. The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee is the first volume to feature the author's complete short fiction-all 35 stories. Leading Mukherjee scholar Ruth Maxey edits the collection, unearthing seven unknown stories: five in Mukherjee's unpublished 1963 Iowa Writer's Workshop M.F.A. thesis, The Shattered Mirror, and two tales from 2008. Arranged chronologically, this essential collection brings many of Mukherjee's stories back into print, from the semi-autobiographical story, "Hindus," in her 1985 debut collection, Darkness, to her late stories, published from 1997-2012, as well as her classic, "The Management of Grief." Maxey contextualizes Mukherjee's short fiction and the provocative, often prescient political questions it raises about migration, nationhood, class, and history. The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee features a Forward by prominent literary studies scholar Nalini Iyer and Afterword by critically acclaimed writer Lysley Tenorio, one of Mukherjee's former students. It is an essential volume for readers both familiar with Mukherjee's work and new to her groundbreaking fiction.

'A debut collection of such precocity and aplomb that it stands comparison to the likes of Junot Diaz and Bryan Washington' Observer 'Moving, truthful, straight from the heart' Neel Mukherjee 'These are excellent stories, told with skill and verve' Jon McGregor WINNER OF THE TATA LITERARURE LIVE! FIRST BOOK AWARD Here, beneath the planes circling Heathrow, various lives connect. Priti speaks English and her nani Punjabi. Without Priti's mum around they struggle to make a shared language. Not far away, Chetan and Aanshi's relationship shifts when a woman leaves her car in their drive but never returns to collect it. Gujan's baba steps out of his flat above the chicken shop for the first time in years to take his grandson on a bicycle tour of the old and changed neighbourhood. And returning home after dropping out of university, Lata grapples with a secret about her estranged family friend, now a chart-topping rapper in a crisis of confidence. Mapping an area of West London, these stories chart a wider narrative about the movement of multiple generations of immigrants. In acts of startling imagination, Gurnaik Johal's debut brings together the past and the present, the local and the global, to show the surprising ways we come together.

This collection of short fiction aims to define the sometimes indefinable and to give voice to those struggling to make sense of what life throws at them. There are those who travel in a continuous loop on London's underground and those who dance at night with the departed. A woman confronts herself in a bedroom mirror after decades of denial and a widow finds comfort in an osteopath's consulting room. And then there is a strange creature who falls to earth; dreams and portents; crows and folklore, and much more. The stories are tragic and comi-tragic, but all reveal the strength and complexity of the human spirit. They bring poignant insights on grief, loss and longing and the depths and strangeness of the human psyche and how we manage to survive and just about cope.

"Here is how monstrous humans are." A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men--of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration. Combining psychological and ecological horror, each tale thrums with Evenson's award-winning literary craftsmanship, dark humor, and thrilling suspense.

The Salmon of Doubt is Douglas Adams's indispensable guide to life, the universe and everything. It includes short stories and eleven chapters of a Dirk Gently novel that Douglas Adams was working on at the time of his death, and features an introduction by Stephen Fry.

This sublime collection dips into the wit and wisdom of the man behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, uncovering his unique comic musings on everything from his school-trousers to malt whisky and from the letter Y through to his own nose, via atheism, hangovers and fried eggs.

These hilarious collected writings reveal the warmth, enthusiasm and ferocious intelligence behind this most English of comic writers; a man who was virtually an unofficial member of the Monty Python team.

Douglas Adams on his passion for P. G. Wodehouse, The Beatles and the perfect cup of tea alone make this a must-have collection and a remarkable sign-off from one of the best loved writers of all time.

Start from the beginning of the surreal Dirk Gently series with Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.