Showing results for "The Doll Factory" in Literature & Fiction

London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park, and among the crowd watching the spectacle, two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment - forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning. When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love. But Silas has thought of only one thing since their meeting....

My name is Nat Davy. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? There was a time when people up and down the land knew my name, though they only ever knew half the story. The year of 1625, it was, when a single shilling changed my life. That shilling got me taken off to London, where they hid me in a pie, of all things, so I could be given as a gift to the new queen of England. They called me the queen’s dwarf, but I was more than that. I was her friend, when she had no one else, and later on, when the people of England turned against their king, it was me who saved her life.

After being unemployed for a year, William finally receives a call to come into Elite Surrogates and Adoption (ESA) for an interview. The sterile white interior does nothing for his confidence, as he’s led to HR Manager Sadie Jones' office, where she proceeds to question him about his job experience and reproductive knowledge. It all goes well in this paranormal medical romance until William realizes that he’s going to have to “perform” for the job. Using his own semen to propagate the reproductive cycle is more than a little weird.