Inside Fictional Minds : Dr Stephanie Carty

‘As a psychological thriller author I found this book both educational and inspiring; such a useful resource to help writers create intriguing, authentic characters – and maybe learn something about themselves too.’
~Jackie Kabler, author of the Cora Baxter Mysteries, Am I Guilty? and The Perfect Couple.

‘An invaluable guide to creating authentic characters by peeling back the layers and searching for the ‘why’ that lies behind all our actions. I have really enjoyed applying psychological theory to creative intuition, led by Stephanie’s accessible approach to creating believable, motivated characters.’
~Sarah Steele, author of The Missing Pieces of Nancy Moon and The Schoolteacher of Saint-Michel

‘What are the subliminal influences that really drive a character? How can these be revealed in a way that pulls the reader in and keeps the pages turning? In Inside Fictional Minds Dr Stephanie Carty offers an insightful, easy-to-read guide for all writers seeking to create believable characters who keep us gripped by their choices.’
~Jane Bailey, author of Sorry Isn’t Good Enough and Larksong

Inside Fictional Minds is an accessible and invaluable tool for any writer of fiction wanting to get underneath their character’s skin. Packed with psychological insights into motive, reason and desire, it’ll have you unravelling the intricacies of being human in new and exciting ways.’
~Hannah Persaud, award-winning short story writer and author of The Codes of Love

‘A truly exceptional book, a classic in the making. It offers unique insights into human psychology that are easy to apply to fiction writing, but that also taught me a lot about myself. Inside Fictional Minds is a journey of discovery.’
~Sophie van Llewyn, author of Bottled Goods, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-45-2; 133mm x 203mm; 132pp

£12.99 GBP

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the other side of better : Michelle Elvy

Fresh: yes! Authentic: yes! Poetic: yes! Brilliant: yes!! Here, with Michelle Elvy’s the other side of better, are wise reflections cast through refracted light. Here is the scent of the sea, the rift and grit of childhood. Here is an absorbing cinematic poetry in the telling – breathtakingly honest and elegant stories (personal, yet universal) about how we live, how we struggle and, most enduringly, how we thrive. A wondrous collection!
~ Robert Scotellaro, author of What Are the Chances?; co-editor of New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction

Well-turned stories, rich with wit and detail, that explore the spaces between people and places, from the ‘concrete weight’ of history to the secrets of creeks, islands and oceans
~ Paula Morris, author of False River and co-author of Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde

Michelle Elvy needs no more than this, the smallest white spaces in which to swim the waters between story and poem with humour, colour, imagination and a sharp grace. Elvy watches and listens to her characters, and the places they dance in, bringing us the darkly joyous truth of life’s uncertainties and love’s ambiguities.
~ Tania Hershman, author of and what if we were all allowed to disappear and How High Did She Fly?

The poems and stories in the other side of better hopscotch gingerly between wanderlust and rootedness, desire and exhaustion, memories of reality and dreams of the impossible. This is how Elvy gets you, by luring you in with one wonder and then giving you another. And the trick is never the same twice. This is a collection that surprises not just because it can, but because it understands the surprises of the world.
~ Erik Kennedy, author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime

Modern, humane and pacy… the other side of better is a gorgeous collection about love, the environment, and the things that make people devour and deify each other.
~ Nuala O’Connor, author of NORA, Mother America and The Juno Charm

To read Elvy’s work is to move closer to discovery – is to find a larger view of possibility.
~ Sam Rasnake, author of World within the World and Cinema Verité

These unique stories of love and dreams and oceanic epiphanies could only come alive at the hand of Michelle Elvy. It is a delight to see how she plays with the form and bends it to her will.
~ Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

the other side of better teems with innovative, intimate adventures, each a microcosm of humanity made capacious through Michelle Elvy’s sharp, unique lens.
~ Christopher Allen, Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-02-5; 133mm x 203mm; 172pp

£14.99 GBP

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Echoes in a Hollow Space : Ruth Skrine

For all its small scale, Echoes in a Hollow Space has the heft and reach of a saga. It traces the lives of two women of different generations, both damaged but neither fragile, and the bond that develops between them. The story is anchored in place and time, interweaving natural imagery with narrative. Though it offers no easy solutions, it is grounded in hope.
~Jenny Woodhouse, Creative Writing Group Leader, U3A, Bath

I thoroughly enjoyed Echoes in a Hollow Space. In her debut novella-in-flash, Ruth Skrine has created engaging characters and a compelling narrative. After finishing the novella, I frequently found myself thinking about the complex characters of Evie and Annabel, finding myself missing them both.
~Diane Simmons, author of An Inheritance V.Press (2020)

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-22-3; 133mm x 203mm; 102pp

£10.99 GBP

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The Yet Unknowing World : Fiona J. Mackintosh

“These stories by Fiona J. Mackintosh are miniature masterpieces, resonating far beyond the pages they inhabit. Mackintosh’s pen is assured, her vision clear-eyed yet compassionate. Like the paintings of Edward Hopper, The Yet Unknowing World invites us all to peer into the dark, quiet corners of human yearning and to connect with the flawed, aching beauty of our own hearts.”
~Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

The Yet Unknowing World delights in bringing the reader on gorgeous, rippling voyages to Tahiti, Scotland, Greece, and beyond. In this collection, Fiona J. Mackintosh blindsides the reader, over and over, with the beauty of her imagination. We think we are one place and, suddenly, we’re lifted from the mundanity of care homes and supermarkets into a glorious elsewhere. Some of the journeys in these stories end poignantly, but many more culminate in joy. Simply stunning.”
~Nuala O’Connor, author of Birdie

“This is the world seen differently by an exceptionally gifted writer. These are stories hell-bent on over-stepping their boundaries, and many take on added significance from the stories that surround them. It is these unexpected links that make reading this collection such an exhilarating experience. There is an astonishing historical imagination at play as the writer takes us beyond the canvas with great insight and sensitivity. The writing is so artful it will carry you off on its own wings.”
~Annemarie Neary, author of Siren and The Orphans

The Yet Unknowing World is a debut flash collection of restrained poignancy and beauty. Mackintosh’s economy of language, stunning sensory detail, and gift for simple, declarative narration beam the reader directly into every moment. Each story is wildly delicious, erotically mysterious, and fiercely compelling. We are in the hands of a word-painter whose mastery of character, image, and language suspends our disbelief with every brushstroke. There are emotional tapestries woven into every story, whether historical, futuristic, contemporary, or ekphrastic. Mackintosh’s stories read like lyrical celebrations of being alive.”
~Meg Pokrass, author of The Loss Detector, series co-editor, Best Microfiction

“These stories flash like lightning over the ocean, a wine bottle in the moonlight, a blade at high noon. You will be dazzled by the breadth of subject, the brevity of wit, and the depth of feeling. Mackintosh masters the form and takes you round the world.”
~Keith Donohue, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-06-3; 133mm x 203mm; 108pp

£11.99 GBP

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Gaps in the Light : Iona Winter

Gaps in the Light uses form in innovative ways to express deeply the experience of loss and joy in ways I can’t remember reading anywhere else. Nothing is binary here – everything feels multidimensional, so perfectly complicated, like echoes off multiple surfaces. It’s simply astounding!
~ Pip Adam, author of Nothing to See, The New Animals, I’m Working on a Building, and Everything We Hoped For

To read this work is to enter the forest as an elemental being, and then feel the loss of that forest. The lover, the bereft and the broken are here. It’s a journey of close attention, pain, rage and truth revealed as the path is taken. Gaps in the Light is compassionate, deeply chanted music.
~ Kirstie McKinnon, author of Songs from the Water

Gaps in the Light burns with fierce emotion; multiple voices float in and out until the whole text becomes hypnotic and taut … revealing the depths, nuances and complexities of love in all its forms with an utterly-earned intensity. Iona Winter asks you to stare directly into her eyes … be warned, she won’t blink first.
~ Helen Lehndorf, author of The Comforter and Write to the Centre

Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-04-9; 133mm x 203mm; 110pp

£11.99 GBP

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Restore to Factory Settings : Bath Flash Fiction Volume Five

Our fifth yearly anthology contains micro fictions by writers from all over the world. 136 stories covering many subjects and themes – some focussing on dramas within family relationships, some politically themed or about war, others spanning whole life times and longer. All in 300 words and under – the real, the surreal and the experimental. So much inventiveness and so much to read and enjoy.

“Reading the fifty long listed flashes I received, I knew these stories were – are – loved by their authors. But they were also so much more than that. Each story had its own distinct quality, its own voice, its own style and structure. Each had sentences I underlined and words I circled. Not knowing what I was looking for, I found everything.”
~Santino Prinzi, author of This Alone Could Save Us

“… I read a lot of flash and when I read the BFFA long list I thought there had to be some mistake, I must be reading the short list instead of the long list, so high was the quality of the work I was looking at. This made the judging process incredibly enjoyable on the one hand – to see so much variety, so much stimulating and original work, a wonderful willingness to experiment, and on the other hand, so difficult to choose.”
~Mary Jane Holmes, author of Don’t Tell the Bees

“It’s been a pleasure reading these pieces, the quality indicates how well contributors craft their stories, producing shining gems of literature that demonstrate this genre is not alone alive and well, but thriving. The range of topics and styles on offer show practitioners of this form can still find something fresh, or interpret ideas in a novel way.”
~Nod Ghosh, author of Filthy Sucre

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-10-0, 133mm x 203mm, 262 pages.

£12.99 GBP

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The Bath Short Story Award Anthology 2020

Political turmoil and a raging pandemic might have marked 2020 as a year to forget but in this anthology you’ll find memorable stories to transport you to different worlds, all celebrating the resilience of human nature.

“I appreciated the variety here, be it in voice, form, mood, setting, or time period. Some stories had a literal magical twist; for others the magic was in conjuring a whole world of emotion and humanity in less than 2,200 words. Every single story exhibited a mastery of the written word, and it was tough to choose.”
~The 2020 Judge, Kate Johnson, MacKenzie Wolf Literary Agency.

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-08-7, 133mm x 203mm, 182 pages.

£9.99 GBP

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Something Lost : Louise Watts

Something Lost is a novella about desire and unfulfilled potential. A young girl attempts to escape the drudgery of her life at home in books and in a relationship with her alcoholic English teacher. Meanwhile, her parents’ marriage is coming apart and domestic responsibilities build up.

Something Lost seeks meaning in likely and unlikely places: poems, definitions, recipes, jokes, facts. It moves between innocence and experience as high aspiration is undercut by emotional realities, and an underlying sadness is revealed. Although a coming-of-age story, it is not clear that anyone ever gets the chance to grow up.

A clever and extremely poignant first-person tale of family strife and growing into adulthood, where the reader enjoys reading between the lines of the teenage girl’s narration. The voice is pitch-perfect, the details sensitively chosen to evoke adolescent experience, understanding both less and more than it admits. Louise Watts has created a beautiful novella – funny, disarming, and deep.
~Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

A beautifully woven story of life in the shadows – richly layered, filled with pathos and poetry and yearning. Its narrator’s quiet voice enchants and disturbs, and shines with patient resilience. It is a voice I would happily follow anywhere.
~Gail Anderson, winner of the Scottish Arts Trust Story Award, Reflex Fiction 2019 and Winchester Writers’ Festival 2018

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-12-4, 133mm x 203mm, 66 pages.

£8.49 GBP
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When It’s Not Called Making Love : Karen Jones

Reader, do not be fooled. The brevity of this novella-in-flash belies the breadth and scope of its subject matter. In assured, clear-eyed prose, Karen Jones quickly immerses us into the world of her loyal, smart, brave protagonist. Bernadette is a child who becomes a woman, a bully who becomes the bullied, forever seeking the birthright we all share, that of simple tenderness and understanding. When It’s Not Called Making Love is a breathless, breathtaking, unflinching coming-of-age debut you will not want to miss.
~Kathy Fish, Author of Wild Life: Collected Works

Karen Jones artfully captures the dangers and hurts of life for suburban adolescent Bernadette, who suffers a painful awakening as she negotiates the quagmire of sex and the shifting rules of friendship. Frank and frustrated, Bernadette’s voice is breathless and vibrant, and the reader can only act as witness and wish her well on her journey. Poignant and full of truth, this is gorgeous writing.
~Nuala O’Connor, author of Joyride to Jupiter

I just loved When it’s Not Called Making Love. With an authentic voice, Karen Jones tells the story of the troubled Bernadette as she grows from displaced child to young adult. The stories are at times heart-breaking, at times hilarious, but they are always utterly engrossing. An exemplary novella-in-flash.
~Diane Simmons, author of Finding a Way and An Inheritance

Full of pent up desire and intense observation, this book grips you close, and pulls you hard into the darkness. This is succinct, sharp writing about loneliness, with raw pain and love at its core.
~Elisabeth Ingram Wallace, winner of The Mogford Prize and Writing the Future.

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-16-2, 133mm x 203mm, 50 pages.

£8.49 GBP
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Stormbred : Eleanor Walsh

Eleanor Walsh is an assured storyteller. In Stormbred she reels the reader into the life of Ruby, a young Cornish girl searching for connection – to the world and to others. Walsh explores with perception these themes of connection and disconnection, embedding them skilfully in both the form and the language of the novella. An exceptionally rewarding and immersive read.
~Johanna Robinson, author of Homing

The search for home is a powerful theme in Stormbred, Eleanor Walsh’s extraordinary second novella-in-flash. With a backdrop of the 1990s war in Bosnia, and the displacement of thousands of people, Walsh focuses on Ruby, a troubled and brave young woman from a struggling Cornish farming family who has been mysteriously injured. This a gripping story, written vividly, with great heart and with many layers of meaning pertinent to today’s world. Right from the beginning chapter, it’s impossible not to feel deeply affected by Ruby’s plight and that of the other characters, including the sheep. Read Stormbred to be reminded of how fragile life is, and how resourceful people are.
~Jude Higgins, author of The Chemist’s House

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-48-3, 133mm x 203mm, 82 pages.

£8.99 GBP
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The House on the Corner : Alison Woodhouse

In The House on the Corner, personal tremors large and small unsettle the foundations of a middle-class, nuclear family at the end of the 1980s. Alison Woodhouse has a novelist’s gift for capturing in words the currents and eddies of intimate, private thought. Her characters exist in a world of subtle, shadowy shifts – try as they might to understand what’s happening around them, they are shaped by forces beyond their comprehension and control. Luckily for the reader, Woodhouse knows exactly what she’s doing. She renders her characters’ disappointments and joys in paragraph after paragraph of exquisite prose.
~Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-14-8, 133mm x 203mm, 62 pages.

£8.49 GBP
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if there is no shelter : Tracey Slaughter

A remarkable story of a woman’s life in an unnamed city in the aftermath of a series of earthquakes. It’s written with claustrophobic, relentless and urgent conviction. What’s most compelling is how the story is gleaned mostly through flashbacks, as though, like the city’s buildings, it’s been broken into fragments and we are picking our way through rubble. Gradually, like rescue workers, we uncover the situation of a hospitalized husband, a lover lost to a building’s collapse, and the tender domestic bonds the woman shares with her father and his colleague. This is a dark, oppressive story but, through it, the writer explores how humanity responds to crisis – and has produced a metaphor for our own times.
~Michael Loveday

Tracey Slaughter relates her story of guilt and grief in breathtakingly luminous fragments. These postcards from the red zone – brutal, beautiful – are a lament for what is lost, but also a reminder of what we can salvage when everything shatters. An extraordinary work; you will feel its aftershocks far beyond the final page.
~Catherine Chidgey

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-18-6, 133mm x 203mm, 94 pages.

£9.99 GBP
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Sugar Mountain : Erica Plouffe Lazure

Drawing from a range of youthful voices and adventures, Sugar Mountain explores how children learn to deal with hard truths about themselves, and others, and the great wild world. From roller-skating away the grief of a parent, to soapy pranks by a band of camp bullies, to confronting an angry mass of waterfowl in the throes of a pillow fight, each chapter offers a tiny ticket back to a time when the world only seemed less complicated.

“A stunning sequence of stories about childhood shot through with irresistible yearning, beauty and humour. It’s written in a freewheeling prose that unfurls with detail after gorgeous detail piling up in the sentences. Quirky behaviour, teenage mischief, letdowns, unfulfilled dreams, romance – this novella really gets to the heart of what childhood feels like.”
~Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-20-9, 133mm x 203mm, 58 pages.

£8.49 GBP
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Don’t Tell the Bees : Mary-Jane Holmes

Holmes conjures the best qualities of both the short story and the novel to create a lyrical evocation of the beauty, pain, and wonder of growing up. Don’t Tell the Bees oozes with love and conflict and of a girl’s passage into womanhood. Each chapter is a perfect little stand-alone flash story, a stunning example of what the form can accomplish. The reader is thrust heart-first into the difficult life of No-more and a world of unforgettable characters carved tenderly and precisely. Holmes recreates, in sensory-soaked detail, the world of a small French village near the Second World War. I marvel at how the author blends each stand-alone story into one masterful whole: poignant, compassionate, and profound in emotional impact.
~Meg Pokrass, author of The Dog Seated Next to Me, Pelekinsis.

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-50-6, 133mm x 203mm, 60 pages.

£8.49 GBP
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Going Short: An invitation to Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is changing the way we tell stories. Carving away the excess, eliminating all but the most essential, flash fiction is putting the story through a literary dehydrator, leaving the meat without the fat. And it only looks easy.

Enter Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction. In this, her treatise on the form, veteran writer Nancy Stohlman takes us on a flash fiction journey: from creating, sculpting, revisioning and collecting stories to best practices for writers in any genre. It is both instructive and conversational, witty and practical, and presented in flash fiction chapters that demonstrate the form as they discuss it. If you’re already a flash fiction lover, this book will be a dose of inspiration. If you teach flash fiction, you’ll want it as part of your repertoire. And if you’re new to the form, you might just find yourself ready to begin.

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-912095-79-7, 133mm x 203mm, 156 pages.

£12.99 GBP
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This Alone Could Save Us : Santino Prinzi

‘With This Alone Could Save Us, Santino Prinzi has fashioned a collection of small, smart fictions that read large. Here is work undergirded by innovation, incisive wit, and a keen ability to navigate terrain that is personal, and at once universal to us all.’
—Robert Scotellaro, author of Nothing Is Ever One Thing

‘Santino Prinzi is a word-wizard of the heart—a writer who fearlessly excavates uncomfortable secrets. In This Alone Could Save Us, Prinzi’s first full collection of flash fiction, human nature is the subject, gentle surrealism the medium. Bizarre yet real, funny and crazily sad—it’s mesmerizing to watch Prinzi’s vulnerable characters work to free themselves from life’s stickiest webs. Subversive, haunting, beautiful—a must-have collection!’
—Meg Pokrass, author of Alligators At Night and Series Co-Editor, Best Microfiction 2020

This Alone Could Save Us is a richly varied collection of flash fiction. In these compact gems, Santino Prinzi makes exquisite use of magic and the surreal, but also the quiet, evocative gestures of ordinary life. You will find the deliciously unexpected within these pages, along with moments of breath-taking stillness. Highly recommended.’
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

‘Tender, poetic, and wonderfully surreal, Prinzi understands that stories can save us. Powerful flash fiction that lights up the page, this is the book we all need right now. It is one for the ages. This stunning collection will stay with you for years.’
—Angela Readman, author of Something Like Breathing and Don’t Try This At Home

‘In This Alone Could Save Us, Santino Prinzi demonstrates his enormous talent for drawing readers into his stories, often surprising them with surrealistic touches that appear totally believable and natural. The flash fictions in this impressive collection are widely varied, but each story is unmistakably Prinzi.’
—Diane Simmons, author of Finding a Way

‘Exceptionally engaging, closely observed and thought-provoking, this collection shows us a flash master at work as he explores the fault lines that crack open under our feet at moments of unplanned change. Seen through his eyes, the familiar becomes strange, solid becomes unsteady, and even the moon loses its faith in humanity, so moves on. Sometimes sad, sometimes playful, always memorable.’
—Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Coward’s Tale and five short fiction collections

Paperback; ISBN 978-1-912095-81-0; 196mm x 134mm; 144pp

£9.99 GBP
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With One Eye on the Cows : Bath Flash Fiction Volume Four

This anthology, the fourth from the Bath Flash Fiction Awards, contains 137 micro fictions of 300 words or under by writers from all over the world. The stories cover many topics: relationships in all their forms, familiar, strange, tragic or benign; war and displacement; the climate emergency; historical subjects; the fantastical and surreal. So many different styles and themes. So much to enjoy, make you think, and inspire you to write your own stories.

“From lush description to plot surprises to current events and complicated relationships of all kinds… a wonderful cross-section of flash fiction.”
~Nancy Stohlman, author of Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities

“There’s humor and pathos in these stories, conventional plots alongside innovative structures… personal stories and those concerning larger cultural themes.”
~Christopher Allen author of Other Household Toxins

“A real cornucopia of flash skills…all sparking joy.”
~Vanessa Gebbie author of The Coward’s Tale

Paperback; ISBN 978-1-912095-85-8; 196mm x 134mm; 194pp

£9.99 GBP
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Inland Empire Afternoon : John Brantingham

This novella is a tour de force of narrative manipulation. Set during an afternoon in one urban area (the Inland Empire, California) the story leaps from one resident to another in story after story, offering a highly diverse ensemble cast of over 40 characters. Virtually every flash is deftly linked to the one that precedes, picking up a thread of narrative or location, and centred around certain key events – a hold-up, an earthquake, a wedding, a fire etc. The effect is to create a mesmerising portrait of the daily trials and tribulations of an urban community. Brilliantly conceived and skilfully written, this is an unusual and deeply impressive novella-in-flash.”
~ Michael Loveday author of Three Men On The Edge.

“In an age of superficiality, mediocrity, and sound-cliches, John Brantingham is a genuine throwback to when Men of Letters roamed the literary prairies. His creative and intellectual emanations brim with his enthusiasms, his versatility, and the depths of spirituality and social conscience at the core of his soul. There is no one of whom I could speak more highly, as a writer and as a person.”
~ Gerald Locklin author of The Case of The Missing Blue Volkswagen and others.

“Wise and insightful, Brantingham’s work brilliantly captures the light and darkness in us all.”
~ James Brown author of This River.

Paperback; ISBN 978-1-912095-83-4; 196mm x 134mm; 68pp

£8.49 GBP
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The Way of the Wind : Francine Witte

An unforgettable voice narrates this novella-in-flash, a jilted lover who is obsessed with her ex, struggling to find a settled place to live, and trying to find a way to make peace with both her disapproving mother and the memories of her estranged father. It’s impossible to resist this flawed narrator’s honest, raw humanity. Immediate, alive, sharp, psychologically astute – there is a kind of casual poetry in the writing. On virtually every page there are moments of expressive genius and flair that will either have you laughing or will tug hard at your heart.
—Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

With her first novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind, Francine Witte takes the reader on a pot-holed, unpredictable journey of the heart—a roadtrip for which there is no GPS navigation. Not many writers of flash can conjure comedy and tragedy in perfectly equal doses, but like a magician at the top of her form, this is exactly what happens in Witte’s memorable tour-de-force.
—Meg Pokrass, author of The Dog Seated Next to Me

What do we do with loss—that hollow, unbearable weight we carry around? Do we dissolve? Or do we somehow reassemble our life? These are the central questions Francine Witte tackles head-on in her latest sensational book. With her heart laid bare on both sleeves, Witte also asks, What if? What if I’d been more? What if I’d mattered more? Through her spare, yet shimmering prose we get answers to these questions and many more. For the romantic, the philosopher, or anyone still breathing, this is the book you need in order to make sense of that thing we call love.
—Len Kuntz, author of This Is Why I Need You

Paperback; ISBN 978-1-912095-93-3; 196mm x 134mm; 84pp

£9.99 GBP
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Straight Down The Road : Dan Crawley

The stories in this collection by Dan Crawley fit together like beautiful puzzle pieces to create a portrait of a broken family on the world’s worst road trip: a father dragging his wife and children into his dreams; a mother wishing for her own kind of freedom; their children, trapped in their parents’ narrative, wanting to create their own. Each piece is its own story, powerful in its own right, but together they create a beautiful, heartbreaking whole.
— Cathy Ulrich, author of Ghosts of You

As if it were some rediscovered Raymond Carver manuscript, this is a classic novella-in-flash in the mainstream American tradition. A working class family try to keep themselves afloat, travelling the country by car after the father quits his job. The writing is warmly affectionate towards the characters even though they’re flawed. There’s an appealing, breezy, summery quality even though real tension bubbles up – it feels like an authentic family dynamic. Some bond of grudging love is keeping this family together, even though they’re stretched to breaking point. Each flash has the clarity of a distinct memory – like each one might be a family legend. A vivid and highly effective novella-in-flash.
— Michael Loveday, author of Three Men on the Edge

I admire the agility and surprise, the ferocity of this book’s verbal sleights of hand, Straight Down the Road is so wonderfully inventive, and emotionally precise. Crawley’s stories contain speaker’s voices that don’t suppress, voices and conflicts that brim with verve, rueful humor, and a new topography between head and heart. This is a writer who pressures language and transforms into improvisational, masterfully controlled, and yet fragile constructions. An intensely gripping collection.
— Robert Vaughan, author of Funhouse, EIC of Bending Genres

This novella-in-flash chronicles a joyful family road trip that quickly gives way to instability and uncertainty. Unmoored, and with an increasingly threadbare safety net beneath them, a couple and their gaggle of kids have no choice but to keep moving. Told with exquisite attention to detail, and an eye for all that is peculiar, arresting, and emblematic of America in the 70s, Dan Crawley’s Straight Down the Road is a gorgeous and unforgettable debut.
— Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works

Paperback; ISBN 978-1-912095-91-96; 196mm x 134mm; 68pp

£8.49 GBP
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