Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Anthologies & Short Stories

Carrie Fraser cannot believe her luck when she is invited to work at Oakenbury Hall, a beautiful manor house in the English countryside. Nor can she quite get over the owner of Oakenbury – the gorgeous Morgan Harrington. The more time Carrie spends with him, the further she begins to fall. But the likes of Carrie Fraser could never be enough for a high-flying businessman like Morgan… could she?

WHAT YOU WERE FIGHTING FOR is a wonderful collection of short stories that provokes the mind with its weird and intriguing tales. We catch glimpses of worlds that are similar to our own, but always different enough to make you wonder and sit at the edge of your seat.

The sun is about to implode, destroying Earth and the rest of the solar system when it happens. A species of aliens not previously aware of the existence of humans suddenly learns two facts: that the sun will implode in less than 10 hours and that Earth is inhabited by intelligent beings.

Genevieve Bowles, an award-winning songwriter, is invited to visit the newly refurbished Hotel Paradise. Genevieve knows the hotel well - in fact, her past life there has haunted her for over a decade.... Twelve years earlier, two travelers meet in Paris. Full of optimism, Genevieve and Paul head south to the Riviera, where they start work at the Hotel Paradise. But when a stranger arrives who threatens her future with Paul, Genevieve senses that events are about to spin out of control.

After a devastating car accident, Carole escapes from an oppressive marriage in England to begin again in rural France. Yet she is haunted by the knowledge that Paul, her husband, has tracked her down before...and will do his best to do it again. Afraid to share her fears with her new neighbours, Carole nonetheless finds herself drawn to a local farmer, who helps her to create a new and independent life. But then she learns that Paul is on her trail and closing in fast....

When Candy hears of the murder of her son's classmate on her estate she's horrified, but then the police arrive. What does this crime have to do with her? Or is her son not telling her something?

In Minor Key, John Harvey returns to his old favourites - DI Resnick, jazz and Nottingham - explaining why they interest him before launching into a set of stories, hitherto uncollected. Unsurprisingly, jazz, Resnick and Nottingham feature. This limited edition collection ends with a set of John Harvey's poems about jazz.

Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling and unforgettable works to date.

Travelling from the UK to Nashville, Tennessee, for a week of honky-tonks, karaoke and cowboys, is definitely not Claire Buchan's idea of a good time. But she can't avoid her sister's hen party. Then she meets Rafe Castello, a handsome, roguish cowboy, who seems to have far more to him than meets the eye. Can Claire keep the holiday mantra of 'what happens in Nashville, stays in Nashville' or are some things are too difficult to leave behind?

Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbour or lover, and the relationships between self and others.

As a passionate affair between a shop owner's wife and a local young builder reaches its peak, an unfortunate chain of events leads to a dark and deadly outcome.

Orbiting the devastating financial crisis of 1997, these interwoven stories introduce us to three families—a Thai Elvis impersonator and his only daughter, a family abandoned by their white American patriarch, and an adoptive brotherhood of orphaned boys—who employ various schemes and strategies to conceal, betray, lie, and seduce their way to achieving the "good" life.

"You have to bide your time when you live a life of crime. That's what we discovered when we founded The Cherry Sundae Company. It seemed to us there was only so much money in the world, and some people had too much. Others hadn't enough. You could say we were vigilantes."

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

Gordon Grimwood, a suspected murderer, leads a bunch of cops into a network of derelict air-raid shelters to find a missing child – where a hideous evil awaits them!

Set in modern-day America and France, Renaissance Italy and Boxer Rebellion China, these stories embrace whole lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Joan Silber skilfully and subtly ties one story to the next, as a minor element in one becomes a major element in the next, until the last is tied convincingly to the first. Intense in subject yet restrained in tone, they are about longings—often held for years—and the ways in which sex and religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.

Jason Warwycke, Marquess of Wyckeham, has vowed never to wed again after his disastrous first marriage, which left him with nothing but a tarnished reputation. That is, until he sets eyes on Ianthe Templeton... But can Wyckeham and Ianthe overcome the malicious schemes of spiteful siblings and evil stepmothers to find wedded bliss? Or will Wyckeham discover that the past has come back to bite him for a second time?

Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets, and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. These stories are about the spectrum of feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.

Resnick goes to London to the funeral of Ed Silver, a friend and jazz saxophonist. While there he encounters Brenda, a young runaway from Kirkby-in-Ashfield near Nottingham, now working as a prostitute around Kings Cross, and goes to hear Spike Robinson at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho.

Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean's reports from the eternal battlefront that is the United States. Ranging across the continent, from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse beneath the question of how to live a decent life.