Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Eileen Chang

From one of the great Chinese authors of the twentieth century, these newly translated stories illuminate the most intimate matters of the human heart 
 
Since childhood, Ruliang has sketched the same face in the margins of his books, tracing its lines without knowing why. Years later, he meets Cynthia – and recognises it at once. As their lives draw together and drift apart, what once seemed like fate begins to feel more uncertain. In these brief, evocative stories, Eileen Chang traces the pull of memory, love and chance. 
 
Includes the stories: Young at the Time, Blossoms Afloat, Flowers Adrift and Those Old Schoolmates They’re All Quite Classy Now 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Young at the Time

Margaret Atwood

This miniature array of perfect stories by the legendary Margaret Atwood flash before us the joys and despairs of mothers good and bad, evoking laughter, compassion and recognition in us all. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.

Significant Moments

Kurt Vonnegut

Four of Kurt Vonnegut’s best dystopian stories, Monkey Business distils his darkly comic vision of the modern world and the cost of trying to engineer a better life. 
 
In a future where everyone is forced to be equal, a gifted teenager dares to rebel. A suburban family discovers a device that delivers perfect happiness. A world frightened of death turns to drugs to slow the march of time. And in a quiet American town, a couple must decide how many children they are willing to raise – for ever. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Monkey Business

Virginia Woolf

In a single afternoon's walk, Virginia Woolf captures the infinite life of a garden... 
 
A couple pause among the flowerbeds, their thoughts drifting apart. A woman’s mind fixes on a small, troubling mark on the wall. A chance meeting becomes an imagined life, rich with longing and regret. In six luminous, experimental stories, Virginia Woolf remakes the short story as a space of transcendence. Moving fluidly between inner lives and outward scenes, Kew Gardens captures moments of consciousness as they shimmer, fracture and pass, revealing the beauty and strangeness of everyday existence. 
 
Includes the stories: Kew Gardens, The Mark on the Wall, An Unwritten Novel, Monday or Tuesday, The String Quartet and Blue & Green 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Kew Gardens

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas’s vivid, affectionate portrait of youth - and the journey towards finding one’s own artistic voice 
 
A boy grows up in a small Welsh town, moving through school, family life and first encounters with the wider world in moments of mischief and self-discovery. Along the way, a sensibility begins to take shape – playful, observant and alive to the strangeness of the everyday. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

Franz Kafka

Five of Franz Kafka’s most compelling short animal stories, where fable, dark humour and unease collide 
 
A community gathers to listen to the singing of a mouse. An ape addresses an academy to explain how he became human. A creature digs ever deeper into its burrow, gripped by fear of what might be lurking outside. In these strange and unsettling stories, animals speak plainly about their hopes, fears and fixations. 
 
Includes the stories: Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk, A Report to an Academy, The Burrow, The New Advocate and Investigations of a Dog 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Mouse Folk

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's ghost stories whisper of passion, exile, and the things we cannot forget 
 
In an old Dorset house, a couple settle into a life of quiet comfort – until a presence makes itself felt. At a country gathering, a man is forced to confront a long-buried secret he has tried to outrun. In a small New England community, suspicion gathers around a widower believed to be under the spell of a dead woman. Bewitched brings together three of Edith Wharton’s most unsettling ghost stories. Elegant and controlled, they trace the lingering effects of guilt, secrecy and moral judgement – and the moment when the repressed makes its reappearance. 
 
Includes the stories: Afterward, The Eyes and Bewitched 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Bewitched

Gertrude Stein

A magical portrait of the mundane and everyday, made otherworldly in Gertrude Stein's one-of-a-kind prose poetry. 
 
Objects. Food. And, Rooms. Together these three subjects make up Tender Buttons, Gerturde Stein's beautifully strange, everyday poetic observations about the world and home around her. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Tender Buttons

Angela Carter

Five stories of desire and discovery set in 1970s Japan, from weird fiction's most influential pioneer - Angela Carter 
 
An Englishwoman muses on her affair with a younger Japanese man. A spurned lover seeks intimacy in another chance encounter. A boy stumbles upon a mirror world while walking in the woods. In five mesmerising, fantastical tales of 1970s Japan, Angela Carter explores what it means to arrive in a world different from one’s own, and to transform profoundly – sometimes terrifyingly – in the process. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

A Souvenir of Japan

Jacqueline Harpman

A startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, from the author of I Who Have Never Known Men 
 
In the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman wanders the forest, forbidden from ever leaving its strange depths. As part of her rigid schooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe. Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband’s desires, twice-weekly, as directed – until she begins to pursue her own. 
 
Includes the stories: The Ardennes Forest, The Outcast and The Broom Cupboard 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

We Were Forbidden

H. P. Lovecraft

In the decaying hills of Dunwich, something monstrous stirs 
 
Wilbur Whateley is a strange child – of uncertain parentage, growing to abnormal size at abnormal speed. Shunned by the villagers of Dunwich, Wilbur and his grandfather set out on tending to their own plan. But the otherworldly can’t be kept tame forever. The Dunwich Horror is H. P. Lovecraft’s terrifying tale of strange beings, forbidden knowledge and the power of unseen forces – and what follows when the wrong things are allowed to take root. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Dunwich Horror

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