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  The Stonecutter

  Andrew Lang

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  Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a Scottish poet and novelist, best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. 
  The Stonecutter is a fairy tale he collected in Japan. A stonecutter sees how rich people live when he is delivering a gravestone one day. From that day on he is dissatisfied with his own lot and wishes to be rich. His wish is granted by the spirit that lives in the mountain...but the stonecutter is still not satisfied with his life and makes further wishes, each taking him a little further on his quest for happiness.

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  The Secret Sharer

  Joseph Conrad

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  A young man sets out on his first voyage as captain, aboard a vessel and among a crew that are equally unfamiliar to him. A mysterious night-swimmer climbs aboard, and, in keeping the presence of this fugitive a secret, the skipper risks both his captaincy and the safety of his ship. A test of nerve in the Gulf of Siam ensues.

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  Partridge in Pear Tree A: Twelve...

  Stuart MacBride

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  First story in a collection of interlinked tales of crime and retribution laced with dark humour, set around the festive season 
  Billy Partridge wasn’t really cut out to be a cat burglar, but it was ‘do the job, or come up with thirteen grand by Thursday, or have both legs shattered’. 
  ‘Do the job’ seemed the least worst option. But he’s about to find out just how bad the least worst option can be… 
  Stuart MacBride, the Sunday Times bestselling author, weaves a web of mystery and black humour in this top-rated collection. The hard-boiled fiction stories, filled with thrillers and detective elements, are a testament to MacBride's prowess as a bestselling author. 
  For fans of Jd Kirk (A Killer of Influence), Mark Billingham (The Wrong Hands), Andrew Raymond (The Shortlist), James Oswald (All That Lives), and J M Dalgliesh (The Talisker Dead).

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  The Triumphs of a Taxidermist

  H. G. Wells

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  Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels, and is often credited as the father of science fiction."The Triumphs of the Taxidermist" is a tongue in cheek macabre tale of a taxidermist's anecdotes of strange creatures he has stuffed, ranging from fraudulent birds to human beings.

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  Sex & Taipei City

  Yu-Han Chao

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  “In these tales of love, lust and relationships gone awry, Yun-Han Chao portrays a city and culture of secret desires, hidden passions, and endless regret.” —Home Planet News Sex in Taipei City is not what one expects: it is repressed, traded for cash, vengeful, sometimes awkward and almost always secretive. In Sex & Taipei City, a diverse cast of characters finds relationships more trouble than they bargained for. Some are young and innocent: a teenager loses her virginity to a Ching Dynasty torture device in her family’s Strange Objects Museum. Some are far from innocent: a schoolgirl sells her body as an odd form of revenge and a grandfather alienates his family by watching Japanese porn at too loud a volume. For others, sexuality is a battle: a wife leaves her husband over a sexist joke, a foreign nanny steals an American baby, a mail order bride runs away, and a “spinster” beats up a pervert in the MRT station.“From the fascinating quirks of food obsessions to the odd-but-seemingly-ordinary erotic moments of Taiwanese citizens, Yu-Han Chao’s Sex & Taipei City’s stories unfold a world of both the exotic and the familiar, captured in squirmy, disarming details . . . Funny, bold, and in moments, heartbreaking, these nineteen stories make up a stunning debut.” —William J. Cobb, author of The Bird Saviors“Contemporary Taiwan’s contradictions come to life in Yu-Han Chao’s wonderful and gossipy collection Sex and Taipei City . . . These are the stories shared between rounds of karaoke that are so juicy and awful, you don’t realize it when your song comes on.” —Ed Lin, author of the Taipei Night Market novels

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  First Love Last Rites

  Ian McEwan

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  Somerset Maugham Award winner: Dark early fiction by the author of Nutshell—“A splendid magician of fear” (The Village Voice Literary Supplement).   Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, the stories here show us how murder can arise out of boredom, perversity from adolescent curiosity—and how sheer evil can become the solution to unbearable loneliness.   These short fiction pieces from the early career of the New York Times–bestselling and Man Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach are claustrophobic tales of childhood, twisted psychology, and disjointed family life as terrifying as anything by Stephen King—and finely crafted with a lyricism and an intensity that compels us to confront our secret kinship with what repels us.   “A powerful talent that is both weird and wonderful.” —The Boston Sunday Globe   “Ian McEwan’s fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico’s city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb.” —The New York Times

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