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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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

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

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

Georges Perec

Georges Perec’s cool, exacting portrait of a couple torn apart by consumer desire 
 
A young couple build their lives around the objects they long to own. From furniture to clothes to carefully imagined interiors, their desires shape their sense of who they are – and who they might become. Yet satisfaction always seems just out of reach.. Precise and quietly ironic, Things explores the promises of material life – and the emptiness that can follow. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Things: A Story of the Sixties

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colette

Colette’s elegant, unsettling study of love turned hostile - and all because of a cat. 
 
A young marriage begins to sour, poisoned by rivalry and resentment. At its centre is a cat – adored by the husband, despised by the wife – whose presence exposes the quiet cruelty and emotional imbalance of the household. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Cat

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

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

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

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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