Once she was a princess who smelled of roses and pure delight. Her parents named their new treasure Maysam, in order to reflect all of life's beautiful virtues. With her rich brown eyes, she came to know the world as shapes and sounds. In her mother's sweet voice, she heard only love-and the secret of bliss: "Smile, sweetheart. Smile always and bring happiness to nice people's hearts." Her young life is one without trouble or fear-until things turn upside down as her country is rattled by financial crisis, forcing young Maysam and her family to move in with her grandmother. In that angry household, the young girl learns some of life's more unpleasant lessons. Years pass, and poor Maysam grows into a young, unsociable, and forgotten lady. She struggles to reconnect with the joyful and optimistic child she once was, as the burden of finding her own way in a culture that cannot see the beauty within her wears her down. Lonely, sad, and depressed, she is lost in her own troubles. To protect herself, she builds internal walls around her pain, resigning herself to a fate in which she merely exists, instead of lives. But the joyful child inside refuses to accept this new self-imposed destiny. She vows to find a way to harness the happiness she sees around her. Can Maysam recapture the dreams of her innocent childhood in time to save her life and self-esteem?

Are you prepared to enter acclaimed author Hal Duncan's world of scruffians and scamps and sodomites? Beware, for it is filled with the gay pirate gods of Love and Death, immortal scoundrels, and young men who find themselves forced to become villains. But who amongst us does not adore a gamin antihero? These fantastical tales from the fringes of an imaginative realm of supernatural fairies and human fey will captivate the reader. Light a smoke, raise a cup of whiskey, and seek a careful spot to cruise the Scruffians This deluxe edition of Scruffians contains one never-before-published short story and over forty full-color photographs that compliment the fantastical and homoerotic elements of Duncan's imaginative tales.

SELECTED FOR STYLIST'S BOOKS YOU CAN'T MISS IN 2022 - 'A MUST READ' 'An exhilarating debut' GUARDIAN 'A fresh new voice in fiction, wry and sharp and raw' EMMA CLINE 'I still remember where I was when I first encountered a Saba Sams story' NICOLE FLATTERY 'I fell for this stunning collection with a rare, consuming passion' MEGAN NOLAN ____________________________________________________________ In ten dazzling stories, Saba Sams dives into the world of girlhood and immerses us in its contradictions and complexities: growing up too quickly, yet not quickly enough; taking possession of what one can, while being taken possession of; succumbing to societal pressure but also orchestrating that pressure. These young women are feral yet attentive, fierce yet vulnerable, exploited yet exploitative. Threading between clubs at closing time, pub toilets, drenched music festivals and beach holidays, these unforgettable short stories deftly chart the treacherous terrain of growing up - of intense friendships, of ambivalent mothers, of uneasily blended families, and of learning to truly live in your own body. With striking wit, originality and tenderness, Send Nudes celebrates the small victories in a world that tries to claim each young woman as its own. _____________________________________________________________________ 'A roiling, raw, gut-punch of a debut collection, best read in one sitting ... I sat motionless for about half an hour after reading them; I can't wait to see what she writes next' PANDORA SYKES 'A seriously impressive debut. Saba Sams digs into the chaos, euphoria and menace of sexual attraction, friendship and family with bravery and wit' CHRIS POWER CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, STYLIST, VOGUE, GLAMOUR, COSMOPOLITAN, EVENING STANDARD, IRISH INDEPENDENT, AnOTHER, FOYLES, BOOKSHOP.ORG

The stories in this book began as individuals. Some, 'Diocletian's Cabbages', had been in my mind as an intriguing idea for years while others, 'A Head Start', came complete, quite suddenly, often waking me in the early hours of the morning. Only after several had been written down did I realize that they all spoke of change. I arranged them, not in the order in which they had been written, but geographically. They started in Europe and moved through England to the west coast of Canada and the United States. Only when this was settled did I see that they began and ended in the same place.

Twenty-six new short stories representing the state of the art in international science fiction, selected by Lavie Tidhar. The Best of World SF draws together stories from across the spectrum of science fiction - expect robots, spaceships and time travel, as well as some really weird stuff - representing twenty-one countries and five continents. Lavie Tidhar has selected stories that range from never-before-seen originals to award winners; from authors at every stage of their career; and a number of translations, including a story translated from Hebrew by Tidhar himself. Stories: 'Immersion' by Aliette de Bodard; 'Debtless' by Chen Qiufan (trans. from Chinese by Blake Stone-Banks); 'Fandom for Robots' by Vina Jie-Min Prasad; 'Virtual Snapshots' by Tlotlo Tsamaase; 'What The Dead Man Said' by Chinelo Onwualu; 'Delhi' by Vandana Singh; 'The Wheel of Samsara' by Han Song (trans. from Chinese by the author); 'Xingzhou' by Yi-Sheng Ng; 'Prayer' by Taiyo Fujii (trans. from Japanese by Kamil Spychalski); 'The Green Ship' by Francesco Verso (trans. from Italian by Michael Colbert); 'Eyes of the Crocodile' by Malena Salazar Macia (trans. from Spanish by Toshiya Kamei); 'Bootblack' by Tade Thompson; 'The Emptiness in the Heart of all Things' by Fabio Fernandes; 'The Sun From Both Sides' by R.S.A. Garcia; 'Dump' by Cristina Jurado (trans. from Spanish by Steve Redwood); 'Rue Chair' by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo (trans. from Spanish by the author); 'His Master's Voice' by Hannu Rajaniemi; 'Benjamin Schneider's Little Greys' by Nir Yaniv (trans. from Hebrew by Lavie Tidhar); 'The Cryptid' by Emil H. Petersen (trans. from Icelandic by the author); 'The Bank of Burkina Faso' by Ekaterina Sedia; 'An Incomplete Guide...' by Kuzhali Manickavel; 'The Old Man with The Third Hand' by Kofi Nyameye; 'The Green' by Lauren Beukes; 'The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir' by Karin Tidbeck; 'Prime Meridian' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; 'If At First You Don't Succeed' by Zen Cho.