About Steve Roud: Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Toni Morrison

A stunning, timeless story about race, friendship, what keeps us apart and what drives us apart, from the one and only Toni Morrison, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. 
 
Twyla and Roberta met in a girls’ shelter as children. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then on opposing sides of a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every issue, but the persistence of their bond is undeniable. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.

Recitatif

Charles Dickens

Wilkie Collins

Two literary giants take to the road on a comic journey - both chaotic, and completely unforgettable 
 
Tired of the grind of work, two apprentices set out on a walking tour with no fixed plan, determined to do as little as possible. As they drift from town to town, they encounter curious characters, regale strange stories and witness moments of quiet absurdity that disrupt their idleness. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s enduring story of resilience and solitude: One of the most powerful tales of courage and endurance ever written 
 
An ageing fisherman sets out alone into the Gulf Stream, determined to prove that his strength and skill have not left him. When he hooks a great marlin, he begins a struggle that will test his pride and his place in the world. Simple, powerful and deeply moving, The Old Man and the Sea captures what it means to persist – even in the face of inevitable loss. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Old Man and the Sea

Haruki Murakami

A nostalgic, jazz-soaked love-letter to a youth spent in pursuit of simple pleasures, from the Japan's most celebrated contemporary storyteller, Haruki Murakami 
 
Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, Pinball, 1973's narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J's Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier - the infamous three-flipper Spaceship. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Pinball, 1973

Aldous Huxley

Huxley's dystopian classic is a nightmare vision of the fate of humanity in a post-nuclear world. 
 
After a devastating global catastrophe, a group of scientists arrives in a ruined future shaped by fear, ritual and violence. Humanity has survived – but at a terrible cost, and not in any form they recognise. Ape and Essence is Aldous Huxley’s bleak, satirical vision of civilisation after collapse. Fierce, strange and provocative, it confronts the destructive impulses that persist even after the world has ended. 
 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Ape and Essence

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula k. Le Guin's beautifully realised space epic of two young friends finding their lives steer a new, and unexpected course 
 
As the spaceship Discovery makes its slow way towards its destination – New Earth – Hsing and Luis come of age together. Born in the middle of this multigenerational journey, they have never known life beyond the ship and never expect to. But just as their lives seem to be unfolding as decreed, a revelation about Discovery’s true course throws everything they know into question. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Paradises Lost

Natsume Soseki

From Japan's most famous, classic novelist comes a remarkable gem of wit, irony, and feline observation 
 
A stray kitten, catapulted to literary fame loudly observes the world of Meiji Japan in all its absurdity. But he’s not the only cat in the neighbourhood, and as he rallies against the stupidity of human habit, he grows closer to the sophisticated Miss Calico – but he can’t hide his own inadequacies for long. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

An Undesirable Friend

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

Herman Melville

Herman Melville's enduringly comic and affecting tale of a man who takes quiet quitting to its extreme 
 
A new clerk in a Wall Street lawyer’s office causes dismay and confusion when, after a productive start, he suddenly refuses to do his job. But how to deal with Bartleby, the Scrivener, when he refuses to leave the office altogether? 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Bartleby, The Scrivener

Yi Mun-Yol

The life of a poet becomes a parable of hope in Yi Mun-yol’s searching novella of art, status and selfhood.With their family condemned as traitors, two young brothers are sent away in disguise to save their lives. One grows up by his wits, accepting what has been lost. The other is set on a different path, shaped by a determination to restore the family’s place in the world. As he wanders in search of recognition as a poet, ambition and survival begin to pull him in opposing directions. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Poet

Jane Austen

Outrageous, and wickedly funny, Lady Susan introduces Jane Austen at her most scandalous 
 
Recently widowed and dangerously charming, Lady Susan Vernon arrives among her relatives determined to secure her own advantage. Through a flurry of letters, alliances shift, affections are tested, and reputations quietly unravel. Lady Susan is Jane Austen’s sharp, mischievous portrait of a woman who refuses to behave. Bold, manipulative and irresistibly alive, it reveals Austen at her most daring – and her most amused. 
 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Lady Susan

Simone de Beauvoir

Two sisters must find their way in a world designed to confine them. 
 
Marcelle is the elder sister, a woman whose ambitions focus on becoming the companion of a 'man of genius'. Marguerite is the younger sister, a girl whose sanity depends on breaking free of the oppressive expectations of society. Both end up focusing their attentions on the same disappointing man. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Woman of Genius

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

Margery Allingham

A fiendishly brutal but brilliant, charming English murder mystery, from Agatha Christie's favourite writer - the criminally underrated, Margery Allingham. 
 
Private detective Albert Campion is summoned to the village of Kepesake to investigate a particularly distasteful death. The body turns out to be that of Pig Peters, freshly killed five months after his own funeral. Soon other corpses start to turn up, just as Peters's body goes missing. It takes all Campion's coolly incisive powers of detection to unravel the crime. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Case of the Late Pig

Louisa May Alcott

This is Alcott as you have never seen her before - gothic, and gloriously unsettling 
 
A young governess arrives at a grand country house and quickly wins the confidence of its family. Humble and modest, Jean Muir seems to embody every virtue expected of her. But beneath her meticulous performance lies a will sharpened by resentment, ambition and rage. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Behind a Mask

Roberto Bolaño

A dazzling, daring tale of poets at the end of the world, Distant Star is Roberto Bolano's miniature dystopian masterpiece 
 
Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unpromising member of Chile’s young poetry scene. But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile’s leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder, known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins? Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator’s attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Distant Star

Ingmar Bergman

One of Cinema's great masters revisits his childhood - and the end of his parent's marriage - in a novella of awakening 
 
Over the course of one summer, eight-year-old Pu Bergman realises that his parents are no longer in love. Surrounded by the quiet idyll of the Swedish countryside, with its ponds, rivers and woods, the daily chaos of the family’s ramshackle summer home threatens to end the bright, brilliant haze of Pu’s childhood world. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Sunday's Children

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

Toni Cade Bambara

At once a gripping thriller and a heartbreaking elegy, this is Toni Cade Bambara's powerful final testament, a hymn to Atlanta's missing children. 
 
Zala Spencer is barely surviving on the margins of Atlanta's booming economy when she awakens one summer’s morning in 1980 to find her teenage son, Sonny, has disappeared. As she takes to the streets to track down what happened to him, Zala is drawn into the nightmare of a city stalked by fear. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

First Light

J G Ballard

Welcome to Vermilion Sands, the fully automated desert-resort ready to fulfil your most exotic whims. 
 
Out over the towering Coral D, sky artists paint the sky with clouds. A musical statue is broken down, but finds new life in unwanted places. A mysterious new resident introduces a new way of making poetry - aided by machine. Drawing together some of the most mesmerising and mind-blowing stories from J.G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands art-infused universe, this short collection is a passport into the genius of science fiction's most visionary pioneer. 
 
Includes the stories: Cry Hope, Cry Fury!, The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral-D, Venus Smiles and Studio 5, The Stars 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

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