In the latest of our celebrated series, you find yourself surfacing, dazed in the waiting room. You read snatches of lines over the shoulders of raincoats. In the carriage you have glimpses and visions. At your destination you can hear space, see thunder, taste realization. You are running towards something, someone in the trees who holds out to you an understanding hand. Welcome to the wonderful and sometimes frightening world of Unthology 5.

Meet in difficult circumstances under flickering lights. Find yourself privy to the secrets of strangers. The silent barman is your confidante. Shilly-shally about succumbing to desire. Your private fears may enter a public space. Visit an unorthodox specialist. Make use of a pupa. Become someone else. Arrive at an airfield at the periphery. Choose a random flight. Head out for the lands you will come to know as UNTHOLOGY 6. 'A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick - a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.' Neil Gaiman Stories by: Robert Anthony, Roelof Bakker, Neil Campbell, Gordon Collins, Ailsa Cox, Graeme Finnie, Chrissie Gittins, Simon Griffiths, Victoria Hattersley, Daisy LaFarge, Luke Melia, Georgina Parfitt, Jonathan Pinnock, Alex Plasatis Tim Sykes, Matthew Temple and James Wall.

Wonderful and Frightening Short Fiction from New and Established Writers Flinch at the things that twitch in the windows a mile up from the city streets. Let text messages lead you towards a man that you already know is going to mess with your head. Find the meaning of life in your own lobotomy. Now, the ghost of Gaudi whispers in your ear, urging you to get yourself another lover, insisting it's all going to be smooth and comfortable this time. Ruin yourself and drift towards the haunted shores of your youth. Then find yourself back there, returned to the low-down slums of a city in a country that no longer exists, that UNTHOLOGY 7 documented and mapped out for you, and you alone, a long, long time ago.

What would it take to push you to the edge? And beyond? The moth that flutters round a bulb. The echo of long-drinking that hums inside your head. Your softness against all that hardness. The reflections of the glass megalith. The darkening street beneath a line of magnolia trees. The leaves of the apple tree freckled with rot. A black and ragged looking bird. One of those planes that pulls paper letters behind it. Thick, sibilant words that make your mouth water just hearing them. The scuzzy streets of Archway, where no one cares who you are. Welcome to the hinterland. Welcome to Unthology 11. UNTHOLOGISTS Regi Claire, Jude Cook Paul Davenport Randell Sarah Dobbs Nick Holdstock Georgina Parfitt Angela Readman George Sandison Rachael Smart Richard Smyth `A marvellous medley of narratives that will have you laughing and weeping from cover to cover.' The Short Story Review

Succumb when love fizzles out and degrades you in public, when your knees give and your breath fails. Shun your mother. Flee the music of the camps and the glare of white nights. Sell your baby. Sell your stash, your kidney and your collection of strange dolls to buy a time machine. Brave the seas in a bathtub. Ride the dust currents. Your timing must be impeccable, and your skill with the scalpel expert. Mourn, salvage and refuse to fade. Struggle up the beach, heart raring, fists tightened. Welcome to the archipelago. Welcome to Unthology 9. Juno Baker, Roelof Bakker, Judy Birkbeck, SJ Butler, Gordon Collins, Dan Coxon, Sarah Dobbs, Sarah Evans, Rosie Gailor, Tania Hershman, Tim Love, Mark Mayes, Jane Roberts, John D Rutter, Nick Sweeney, Tim Sykes, Jonathan Taylor

Fifteen paintings depicting The End by Nicolas Ruston provoke fifteen short fictions by fifteen writers. Find yourself at the cliff's edge. Tell the truth to a man with a gun. Regret the dog. Remember a friend. Never forget her. Will the crash. Let disorder rule. Take a boat. Follow the slogans. Study the signs. Let the music die. Join a cult. Wait for the Apocalypse. Quit your job and head for the limits. Find what happens before, during and after THE END.

Unveiled: The First Unthank School Anthology contains stories that brim with the storytelling verve, imagination and talent of writers we have supported during the first seven years of the Unthank School. All are the product of hard work and commitment and all will tell you something about what we are about and what we cultivate.

THE SYLLABUS OF ERRORS is a story sequence, a mixture of contemporary and historical episodes. A cast of loners and romantics explore how our anxious present is mirrored in the uncertainties of the inter-war period with its crashes and crises. Ultimately it conveys a coded warning from history about what can come to fill the void when universally accepted notions of democracy and liberal capitalism are being questioned as now. The restless and rootless characters dream of idealized cities or moments in the personal or historical past which they feel could offer their escape. Historically - Sally Bowles and Fritz Lang's "M" join hands in Weimar Berlin, a faceless soldier wanders through a war-torn city looking for his lost love, an artist high on modernism gets caught up in a political assassination in Fascist Italy. Personally they dream of capturing that unfulfilled promise, that missed perfect kiss, that unresolved moment, that thing that should have lived. 'Lovers of mitteleuropa period fiction, or of contemporary fiction, or - ideally - both, will love this book. It's Joseph Roth meets Roberto Bolano, and it is simply wonderful.' DAVID ROSE: author Vault: An Anti-Novel

UNTHOLOGY No. 2 is the second of Unthank Books' annual collection of unpredictable, unconventional short fiction. Like its predecessor, UNTHOLOGY No. 2 showcases established writers on great form and introduces exciting new voices. Its thirteen stories depend upon choices voluntary or otherwise, incarcerations and manic episodes and moments of doubt and transcendence. A man on his stag night encounters a woman who threatens all his certainties. The most ridiculous Health and Safety rules ever infect a company HQ. The complete lexicon of the poets of Radial City is finally made available. These are resonant tales for anxious times. Contains writing by: Joshua Allen, Sarah Evans, Shanta Everington, Paul A. Green, Lander Hawes, Ian Madden, Melissa Mann, M. Pinchuk, Stephanie Reid, Ashley Stokes, Nick Sweeney, Tessa West and Charles Wilkinson.

TOUCHING THE STARFISH: Ashley Stokes's comic masterpiece stars Nathan Flack, a writer exiled in a backwater teaching creative writing to a group of high-maintenance cranks and fantasists. When a very literary ghost by the name of James O'Mailer starts to haunt Flack, he has to ask himself: is he sinking into a nether world of delusion, or is he actually O'Mailer's instrument? TOUCHING THE STARFISH is a metafictional tour-de-force and hilarious throughout. Comparable to LUCKY JIM and TRISTRAM SHANDY.

Extraordinary short fiction from new and established writers. UNTHOLOGY No.4 continues Unthank Books' celebrated series, drawing its energy from the wanderlust and shape-shifting tendencies of the contemporary short story. Its thirteen stories involve cats, crows and angels; moments of realization and moments of doubt; bad moves, wrong turns and trips across the border. A fire-scarred war veteran enters the domain of a coked-up yuppie. A blind girl wakes up to find that the birdsong has ended. A lad on the slide dates a cosseted schoolgirl and ends up teetering on a church roof. Safe-cracking stories by bold and stealthy writers. Joshua Allen Sarah Bower Carys Bray Ruby Cowling Michael Crossan Sarah Evans Rodge Glass Marc Owen Jones Rowena Macdonald Aiden O'Reilly Adrian Slatcher Barnaby Walsh Melanie Whipman Edited by Robin Jones and Ashley Stokes.

UNTHOLOGY NO.3 is the third in Unthank Books' series showcasing the finest short fiction from new and established writers. Like its predecessors, UNTHOLOGY No.3 lets the classic short story jostle for elbowroom with the formally unusual and the novelette. Its eighteen stories describe sticky predicaments, testing choices and reluctant confessions: a publisher surveys the changing literary scene as an age-old mob war he's losing; a man finds himself trapped by his own perfectionism in a forbidding meat-processing factory; a strange black monolith appears in a back garden somewhere in the north of England. Lit-up tales for dark times: David Rose, Sandra Jensen, Sarah Dobbs, Mischa Hiller, Gordon Collins, Ian Chung, Sharon Zink, Ashley Stokes, Angela Readman, CD Rose, AJ Ashworth, John Nicholson, Philip Langeskov, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, Charlie Wilkinson, Sarah Evans, Tim Mitchell.

Containing 17 pieces by new and established authors, this hard-hitting, hilarious, and entertaining collection showcases unconventional, unpredictable, and experimental stories.