Christopher Dolley Bücher

This volume contains sixteen examples of the English short story at its best: immediately captivating and hugely entertaining. Some stories are classics, such as James Joyce�s �The Dead�; others � like �Mr Loveday�s Little Outing� by Evelyn Waugh � are relatively unknown and a joy to discover. The collection also includes Charles Dickens� premonitory tale, �The Signalman� which was inspired by his own horrific experiences in a train crash. Katherine Mansfield�s �The Voyage�, meanwhile, is a sensual narrative centring on a boat journey and set in her native New Zealand. Virginia Woolf�s �Kew Gardens� is different again, dramatically evoking its setting, awash with colour and light. Tragic or comic, traditional or modernist, each and every piece demonstrates perfectly how the short story form can be as engaging and satisfying as a novel, if not more so.

Graham Smith is a 33 year-old office messenger. To the outside world he's an obsessive-compulsive mute ? weird but harmless. But to Graham Smith, it's the world that's weird. And far from harmless. He sees things others can't . . . or won't. He knows that roads can change course, people disappear, office blocks migrate across town. All at night when no one's looking. The world's an unstable place, still growing, sloughing off layers of reality like dead skin. One day you drive by, and it's changed. Annalise Mercado hears voices, all from girls calling themselves Annalise. Sometimes she thinks they're spirit guides, sometimes she thinks she's crazy. But then they start telling her about Graham Smith and the men who want to kill him. That's when they meet. So begins the story of two people whose lives are fragmented across alternate realities. And how they hold the key to the future of a billion planets. . . .