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The Grandchildren
Megan Taylor
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‘“Remember Hitchcock?” Mary mutters, and we all know which film she’s referring to.’

(14pp) available

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Water People
Carolyn Stockdale
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‘Robin had just started school, and I had a new job with difficult people and difficult hours.’

(15pp) available

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Topsoil
JG Lynas
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‘They lay the pitch as close to match day as they can, to give the turf a fighting chance of holding.’

(12pp) available

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Dream of the Cactus Garden
Kirsten Norrie
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‘Late that afternoon, drowsing in the old Cactus Garden with its virulent flesh-eating flowers, I had again my strange dream…’

(12pp) available

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Only Animals Can Make Me Smile
Alex Older
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‘After a couple of years of respite, my insomnia has returned.’

(16pp) available

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Snake Tale
Philip Terry
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‘Once upon a time the craic was good.’

(12pp) available

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Fabrication
Imogen Reid
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‘more often than not you see the room in Long-Shot with the darkness pressing in all around you…’

(11pp) available

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Old Tutor, New Tutor
Arthur Mandal
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‘They had been waiting for him since six o’clock.’

(19pp) available

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The Junction
Alison Moore
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‘He expected to be home by six, in time for the evening meal.’

(20pp) available

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Removals
Ian Critchley
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‘“Easy money, Charlie,” Aiden said. “Quick in and out. Cash in hand.”’
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(12pp) available

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Snowdrops
Cliff McNish
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‘My twisted old bones aren’t up to much these days, but you can’t sit on your backside staring out of the front window of your house every morning, can you?’ 
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(19pp) available

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The Little Ghost
Giselle Leeb
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‘The first time I saw the little ghost, the lights were out, except for a torch I was reading by.’ 
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(14pp) SOLD OUT

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The Judgment
Tim Cooke
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‘I drained the dregs of my pint and watched as she flung her arms in the air, skipped and then pirouetted over the grass.’ 
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(12pp) available

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Signals
Amanda Huggins
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‘Susan’s mother had rustled up one of her cakes: a single layer, flavoured with cocoa powder, glazed with a slap-happy coating of baking chocolate and finished off with a handful of Smarties.’ 
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(16pp) available

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Hole
Robert Stone
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‘Rice opened the french windows and walked out onto the patio.’ 
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(13pp) available

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Let’s Hang Out
Charlotte Turnbull
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‘They didn't even have bats in common – not really – Eda and the woman who had gone missing.’
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(16pp) available

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Stock
Cynan Jones
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‘Cynan Jones’s crystal-clear and embedded vision of an ancient rural world clinging on to modernity is redolent of the great John McGahern’ Russell Celyn Jones
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(28pp) SOLD OUT

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Death Cookies
Jean Sprackland
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‘Wincingly good – precise, luminous and chilling’ Livi Michael
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(12pp) SOLD OUT

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A Symbol of a Memory
Jim Gibson
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‘A story that won’t let go but burns itself into your mind’ Roberta Dewa
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(10pp) available

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Styx
Will Eaves
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‘A wild, exhilarating ride down a river of impressions. How do these constitute an individual – and what remains?’ Bridget Penney
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(10pp) available

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Throttle Body
Andrew Hook
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‘Hook’s “Throttle Body” is a knowing but far-from-textbook horror story, in which there’s no let-up to the dread’ Megan Taylor
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(18pp) available

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Imber
DH Thomas
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‘Acutely observed and rich in place, DH Thomas’s “Imber” is an evocative story of the everyday, shot through with an undertow of darkness’ Tom Bromley

(11pp) available

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The Birthday Presence
DF Lewis
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‘Claustrophobic in its repetitions and combinatorially disorientating,“The Birthday Presence” is an infinite closed loop that reflects and distorts its own content’ Simon Okotie

(9pp) available

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The Photographer
Maxim Jakubowski
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‘In “The Photographer” Maxim Jakubowski deftly reflects the camera’s art as he traverses the liminal phase between reality and self-imagery to uncannily erase the boundaries of both’ Kev McVeigh​
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(15pp) available

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The Country Pub
David Gaffney​​
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‘In this brilliantly crafted story, David Gaffney manages to capture the strangeness of the countryside as well as those moments of failure in our relationships with others. It’s a story that drips with unease and leaves us troubled long after we reach the unsettling climax’ AJ Ashworth


(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Guest
Françoise Harvey
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‘Françoise Harvey explores themes of dissonance and jamais vu through her singular “Guest”, where familiarity jars against those odd days non-aligned with reality, and where to question might uncover more than we’re willing to know’ Andrew Hook


(24pp) SOLD OUT
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The Dissolving Man
Douglas Thompson
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‘Combines penetrating social commentary with poetry, police procedural with personal breakdown, realism with unreality. Electrifying’ Alan Beard


(18pp) available
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Medlar
Joanne Done


‘A thrilling, haunting evocation of a terrible, unfinished time, growing up in the shadow of the Ripper and the ghosts of his victims’ David Peace


(11pp) SOLD OUT
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The Bull
David Bevan


‘Eerie and compelling, “The Bull” has stayed with me. The details of the South Pennine setting are beautifully described, but it was the way Bevan captures that odd, inexplicable fear you sometimes feel when entirely alone in nature that drew me in’ Rosanna Hildyard

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Golden Frog
David Bevan


‘A marvellous story, filled with crooked beauty’ Neil Campbell

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Lake
John Foxx


‘A quietly haunting study of unintended consequences. This story stayed with me long after reading’ Claire Dean

(11pp) SOLD OUT
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The Lake
Livi Michael


‘A real slide-under-the-skin, what-if of a tale, walking us right to the limit of our comfort zone and daring us to keep going’ Stephen Gallagher

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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English Heritage
M John Harrison


‘In the masterful and aptly named “English Heritage” a vividly textured and apprehensible world transmutes into a Chinese box of visions, allusion and metaphor. Like a hungry animal, M John Harrison’s story worries at the reader’s imagination and will not stop’ Christopher Burns

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Middleton Sands
Claire Dean

 
‘In this strange, atmospheric story, Claire Dean has found the perfect metaphor for the fragile and ephemeral nature of memory’ Andrew Michael Hurley 


(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Spoon
Robert Stone

 
‘A miniature masterclass in kitchen sink uncanny and narrative unreliability, Stone’s compelling portrait of a turbulent and mysteriously troubled mind glows with life and prickles with menace’ Richard V Hirst


(16pp) available
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The Periphery
Cliff McNish

 
‘How to make a story about a world closing its eyes and preparing for the forever sleep? McNish shows us how in this quiet tale of a family strangely compelled to move towards the edges’ Melissa Wan


(15pp) available
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Static
Justine Bothwick

 
‘Justine Bothwick lays a breadcrumb trail of striking and unsettling images, which the reader follows into uncanny territory, the aptness of which becomes painfully clear. A clever and quietly powerful story’ Alison Moore


(12pp) available SOLD OUT
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Bat Walk
Shirley Stephenson

 
‘Shirley Stephenson’s writing imbues the natural world with equal parts grace and weirdness; her prose is exquisitely tactile and deeply unnerving’ Naomi Booth



(20pp) SOLD OUT
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Return
David Frankel

 
‘David Frankel’s short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines. He has been shortlisted in a number of competitions, including the the Bridport Prize and the Fish Memoir Prize. He also writes non-fiction exploring memory and landscape.

(13pp) available
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On Mirrors
Ben Tufnell

 
‘Ben Tufnell’s chilling tale forces us to question whether the reality we see in a looking glass is but the surface of something far deeper and more menacing’ Richard Zimler
 
(14pp) SOLD OUT
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A Few Alterations
Jordan Harrison-Twist

 
‘Deliciously, delightfully eerie and surreal, with more than a soupçon of menace. I loved it’ Nina Allan
 
(11pp) available
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A Visit to the Bonesetter
Christopher Burns

 
‘A finely crafted and icy meditation on social control in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”’ Will Wiles
 
(16pp) available
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Two Degrees of Freedom
Simon Okotie

 
‘For something so precise – and precisely – about orientation, Okotie’s vision is profoundly disorienting’ Marc Laidlaw
 
(10pp) SOLD OUT
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The Elevator
Imogen Reid
 
‘A glinting shiv of a fiction. Its flickering scenes, charged objects and uneasy associations are a pocket grammar of cinematic menace’ Jennifer Hodgson
 
(11pp) SOLD OUT
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Tower Block Ghost Story
TSJ Harling

 
‘Harling’s bewitching tale of a modern haunting fuses the familiar sounds of cheek-by-jowl living with an increasingly restless spirit. Prepare to listen. Listen deeply’ Hilaire
 
(16pp) SOLD OUT

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​The Keeper
David Rudkin
 
‘A strange, elegiac story, vividly atmospheric, tragic with loss though not without its glimpse of salvation. A tale of time passing, and of what time leaves behind. Truly wonderful’ Patrick McGrath

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Cocky Watchman
Ailsa Cox


‘Layers of time, of class, of ways of living, and narrative voices moving uneasily among them, from different perspectives… Cox shows a wealth of life at risk of disintegration’ David Constantine
 
(14pp) SOLD OUT
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This Must Be Earth
Melissa Wan


‘Wan’s intriguing mystery of loss, told in crisp, sparse prose, is a narrative for our age of environmental destruction. The story, while entertaining, raises important questions about personal responsibility and the consequences of inaction’ Vesna Main

 
(19pp) SOLD OUT
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The Invisible Collection
Edited by Nicholas Royle

 
‘These are stories for and of our time, a time when our lives are at the beck and call of an invisible force that plays havoc with our sense of agency and free will’ from the introduction by Angelica Michelis
 
(100pp) SOLD OUT
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House Calls
Vlatka Horvat

 
‘Like Daniil Kharms on Adderall: an accumulative horror story about unexpected visitors’ Kieran Devaney
 
(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Like a Fever
Tim Etchells
 
‘This oneiric tale is as precise – and brutal – as a horror film’ Laura Ellen Joyce
 
(12pp) SOLD OUT 
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On Blackfell
Tom Heaton

 
‘A wonderfully tense and evocative short story, rich in atmosphere and imagery. A hike to an airplane crash site becomes an exploration of family history, scarred landscapes, and intimacy. A writer to watch’ Julianne Pachico
 
(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Shannon
Angela Goodman


‘In a story perfect for this strange year, Goodman asks how we find meaning in a cacophonous world of disembodied voices, how we know what is real, and how much faith we should have that technology can heal our broken planet’ Andrew Michael Hurley
 
(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Red Suitcase
Hilaire

 
‘Creepily unsettling – a tale you will read with bated breath’ Regi Claire
 
(19pp) SOLD OUT
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Signal
Michael Walters
 
‘A moonlit walk, a sense of foreboding, masterfully deployed. The reader is kept guessing as to what is illusory and what real. Unsettling developments rise like smoke. A broodingly atmospheric and memorable read’ Jackie Law
 
(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Hide
Roberta Dewa
 
‘Hold your breath and don’t make a sound. The watchers be watched; be warned. Bewitching’ Tony White
 
(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Wash
Daniel Gothard
 
‘An insidious story that imagines a terrible reaction to mishandled emotions, displaying the results through a blurred lens. That blur engenders empathy, which is where the real horror lies. This is going to stick with me for a long time’ Françoise Harvey
 
(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Trick of the Light
Andrew Humphrey

‘Andrew Humphrey’s homage to the master, MR James, is just as brilliantly disquieting as anything James might have done – with the bonus that Humphrey charts the fracture lines of human relationships with unflinching honesty. “Trick of the Light” disturbs on many levels’ Eric Brown

(18pp) SOLD OUT
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Regret
Robert Stone
 
‘Clever writing, this. It has insinuated itself into a world you might know, or think you know, or wish you didn’t. Read it and you might feel a familiar eerie sadness, yes, but one that is both exciting and unsettling in equal measure’ Kerry Hadley-Pryce
 
(18pp) SOLD OUT
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Halloween
Nicola Freeman

 
‘The brevity and simplicity of this story are deceptive; as you read and reread, its surfaces shift and pull apart, revealing vertiginous depths beneath’ Jean Sprackland

(9pp) SOLD OUT
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‘Doe Lea’
M John Harrison


 ‘Quickly establishes a sense of foreboding that is difficult to ensnare: a dream-like journey through landscapes that shimmer and are populated by uncanny subjects. It begs the question of what memories are and how they serve us’ Lucie McKnight Hardy

 (15pp) SOLD OUT
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Le détective
HP Tinker

 ‘Heaped full of trashy clues and lurid pop-culture signposts, all directing you further inward, and like a fever dream it makes sense until you try to explain it. It’s also really funny’ Chris Killen

 (24pp) SOLD OUT
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so this is it
Paul Griffiths

 ‘Did someone say music in literature? Did someone say mind at the end of its tether? Did someone say, oh feel your way to the end of words and beyond? Paul Griffiths knows where that is’ Gareth Evans

(9pp) SOLD OUT
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​ Jutland
Lucie McKnight Hardy

‘A beautifully judged exploration of torment told with a deft lyricism in exquisitely understated prose’ Livi Michael

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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​Broad Moor
Alison Moore

‘A strange, haunting story with a deceptively unruffled and austere surface. Alison Moore’s is one of the most singularly original imaginations at work now’ Neel Mukherjee

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Message
Philippa Holloway

‘A deftly constructed tale of domestic anxiety: there’s a lurking, lurching sense that something, or someone, is very wrong indeed. Holloway artfully tempts the reader, through pin-sharp observation of character and setting, to locate the source of dread. A superbly crafted short story’ Jenn Ashworth

(15pp) SOLD OUT
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The Violet Eye
Mike Fox

‘Don’t be fooled, this is no simple story of fathers, sons and pigeons, but a quietly powerful unfolding of what we send out into the world and what is returned’ Tania Hershman

(13pp) SOLD OUT
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The Hook
Florence Sunnen

‘I thought I detected hints of Jackson and Bradbury, but ultimately Sunnen’s vision is all her own: the banalities of family life picked apart, coolly examined and expertly reassembled as something altogether creepier and more alien. A small masterpiece of surreal body horror’ Anne Billson

(18pp) SOLD OUT
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​Living Together
Matt Thomas

‘These instagrams of everyday life in south London, featuring precarity, start-up culture and a grotesque medical problem, are funny and increasingly unnerving. Absurd in the best sense of the word’ M John Harrison

(20pp) SOLD OUT
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Bremen
Claire Dean

‘The uncanny at its most beguiling: resonant, exquisitely written, and infinitely moving’ David Rose

(14pp) SOLD OUT
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The Unwish
Claire Dean

‘Dean’s deft exploration of longing and shame made me hum out loud several times in recognition. A masterclass in understatement’ Leone Ross

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Paymon’s Trio
Colette de Curzon

‘A story of music and the dark arts to compare with The Lost Stradivarius. Resonant with the allure of the forbidden, this is a tale told with distinction and grace. Enthusiasts of the great tradition in supernatural fiction will be delighted’ Mark Valentine

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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The Automaton
David Wheldon

‘Automata have fascinated over the centuries: the chess-playing Mechanical Turk; the organ-playing La Musicienne… None would have been as intriguing, or as affecting, as David Wheldon’s emotive Automaton’ David Rose

(19pp) SOLD OUT
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Rounds
Wyl Menmuir

‘An absorbing and gorgeously eerie story with a lonely heart. The final, chilling scene is embedded in me like glass’ Alison Moore

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Fury
DB Waters

‘DB Waters’ “Fury” combines the claustrophobia of Edgar Allan Poe with the vividness of Hammer Horror. I loved every tight, lurid sentence’ Louise Welsh

(15pp) SOLD OUT
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​The Numbers
Christopher Burns

‘Laconic, understated and shocking. The atmosphere is powerful and the turning point utterly unexpected. A very chilling story from a true and original talent’ Margaret Drabble

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Jackdaws
Neil Campbell

‘Pristinely wrought, ruthlessly patient, “Jackdaws” is a haunting and unsettling story’ Colin Barrett

(11pp) SOLD OUT
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The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant
Leone Ross

‘Leone Ross invites you to a sensory feast, charged with erotic tension. The magic that embodies the central metaphor reverberates in the pitch-perfect cadences, the emotional gravitas. This story leaves you deeply satisfied, wanting more’ Patience Agbabi

(15pp) SOLD OUT
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Last Christmas
John D Rutter

‘Like the best fabulists, John D Rutter finds something strange and miraculous in everyday life. This tale crams the wistfulness and the cheery mayhem of the holidays into one sublimely absurd package’ Helen Marshall

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Harvestman
Alison Moore

‘Alison Moore takes the reader with deceptive simplicity into the dark and out the other side. I love the way she celebrates the ordinary, the ludicrous and also the lost’  Rachel Joyce

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Home
Tom Fletcher

‘Wildly original and provocative. Like Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, I can’t get it out of my mind’
Dennis Etchison

(8pp) SOLD OUT
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Getting Out of There
M John Harrison

‘Strange and troubling, pained and tender; deeply weird in its blocking, and brilliant in its evocation of mental disarray and the distance between people’  Robert Macfarlane

(19pp) SOLD OUT
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M
Hilary Scudder

‘Compellingly written, with menacing, erotic undertones. A dark jewel of a story’ 
Alice Thompson

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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The Jungle
Conrad Williams

‘In a Conrad Williams story you always see the very texture of the world's simplest and sudden horrors, but through eyes you thought had closed in your past’  Adam Nevill

(13pp) SOLD OUT
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Touch Me With Your Cold, Hard Fingers
Elizabeth Stott

‘A chilly tale of urban alienation. Insidious, creepy and distinctly weird’  Nina Allan

(15pp) SOLD OUT
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Small Animals
Alison Moore

‘Eerie, claustrophobic and disconcerting – a pitcher plant of a story’ Michael Marshall Smith

(14pp) SOLD OUT
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Puck
David Rose

‘David Rose successfully marries a tone of conversational, and almost chatty, informality to a vocabulary that is dense with allusion and symbolism. The result is a short and mysterious anecdote which somehow manages to imply an entire life’  Mark Cocker

(12pp) SOLD OUT

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Marionettes
Claire Massey

‘Claire Massey has the gift of making the ordinary something very sinister, and the extraordinary uncomfortably real. Don’t get too close — this burns like ice’  Robert Shearman

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Into the Penny Arcade 
Claire Massey 

‘Massey masters the art of quiet disturbance. I like her cool, controlled violence’  Liz Jensen
(12pp) SOLD OUT

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Remains
GA Pickin

‘An abandoned church, a haunting tune, a walker alone on the moor after dark... GA Pickin creates a wonderfully evocative and shivery new tale from a few classic ingredients’  Lisa Tuttle

(13pp) SOLD OUT 
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Sullom Hill  
Christopher Kenworthy 

‘Sharp, dark and poignant... belying its realist approach, Christopher Kenworthy’s tale of north country childhood resonates with an epic sense of latent magic’  Stephen Gallagher

(15pp) SOLD OUT
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Field 
Tom Fletcher 

‘He builds up tension and dread meticulously, and to wonderfully grim effect. This is where I go for horror these days’ Paul Magrs

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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Lexicon  
Christopher Burns 

‘Christopher Burns has wittily reimagined a primitive creature of myth, and turned him into a scholar and a gentleman. His appetites, however, remain as voracious as ever’ Patrick McGrath

(17pp) SOLD OUT
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The Beautiful Room  
RB Russell 

‘RB Russell’s poignant and fantastic story narrates how ordinary househunting can take us into the beautful room of our dreams and nightmares: the room where love is lost and found and lost’ 
Jennifer Clement

(12pp) SOLD OUT
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A Revelation of Cormorants 
Mark Valentine 

‘Lured into a dangerous no-man’s land, the protagonist goes to the edge of his known world and peers over the brink. Tense and beguiling, as odd and mysterious as the cormorant itself’ Stephen Gregory
 

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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Black Country
Joel Lane 

‘Joel Lane writes about how the past is constructed by the future, how our self-debilitated environment echoes the things we have forgotten about; how this is both an individual and a social process. Uneasy, passionate, never bitter’ M John Harrison

(16pp) SOLD OUT
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When the Door Closed, It Was Dark
Alison Moore 

‘Alison Moore tells a gripping story of sexual power and powerlessness, making audacious use of the economies peculiar to the short story form for her chilling climax’   James Lasdun

(16pp) SOLD OUT  
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The Safe Children
Tom Fletcher 

‘Tom Fletcher’s story is a quiet nightmare with a disturbingly brutal heart’ Christopher Burns

(16pp) SOLD OUT  
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What Happens When You Wake Up 
in the Night

Michael Marshall Smith 
‘Michael Marshall Smith is one of the best short fiction writers of his generation’ Ellen Datlow 

(12pp) SOLD OUT 
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