North-east author Paul Heatley is most at home writing fiction that’s dark, bleak and a bit scary. So where did his love of crime stories come from? Your books have a strong undercurrent of violence and gangster-type activities. Did you start out to write crime thrillers, or did it happen by accident? By accident. When…
Category: Short Stories
‘Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection’ by Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection (Audiobook) From his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes has delighted crime and detective fans throughout the world. In this mammoth collection, read by Stephen Fry, we get all the novels and stories along with Fry’s personal introductions to each title. Running to a total of 71…
‘Short Stories – Volume Two’ by Neal James
Short Stories – Volume Two In his second serving of short stories, Neal James dishes up tales of crime, horror and science fiction as well as a fair bit of humour. Of the twenty-six tales, I can truly say there is something for everyone. As always in any collection of stories, the author takes the…
‘Dark Visions’ Edited by Dan Alatorre
Dark Visions Compiled and edited by Dan Alatorre, this is another gathering of spooky stories that will appeal to horror fans, with tales from 27 different authors, including Alatorre himself. What I like about collections of horror stories is that there’s usually something for everyone – whether you enjoy being scared witless or prefer to…
‘Radar Road: the Best of On Impulse’ by Nath Jones
Radar Road: the Best of On Impulse In the On Impulse series readers are invited to contemplate how we use language. In this collection by Nath Jones, Morgan Kiger has selected thoughtful and witty stories that have a sense of the familiar and the unusual. With any collection of short stories, it’s rare for readers…
‘ ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Stephen King
’Salem’s Lot When writer Ben Mears returns to the town of ‘Salem’s Lot, he hopes to rid himself of a bad experience from his childhood by writing a book about the old Marsten house. But these days things aren’t quite what they seem in the Lot, and Mears learns that the old house has been…
‘Meat Bubbles and other stories’ by Tom Leins
Meat Bubbles and other stories Private investigator Joe Rey gets down and dirty in the not-so-picturesque seaside-town of Paignton. Tracking down a disturbed plastic surgeon, he encounters a variety of low-life scumbags, prostitutes, hitmen and bent coppers. If he’s lucky, he might wake up with all his body parts intact, but when almost everyone seems…
‘The Magic Vodka Wardrobe’ by Sheila Patel
The Magic Vodka Wardrobe Sisters Shaz and Trace work in the family corner shop by day but spend their nights glugging vodka and disco-dancing with Aunt Sheila in a magical wardrobe. With characters including Tattoo Tony and Dammit Janet, this is a surreal story that could rival any TV soap-opera, apart from the lack of…
‘Four American Tales’ by Jack Messenger
Four American Tales Jack Messenger’s first collection of stories throws up an eclectic mix of characters and situations, binding the tales together with themes of love and loss, struggle and ambition. The possibilities of starting again feature in the first two stories: ‘Wichega’ finds a classic automobile prodding a child into imagining what might be…
‘The Order of Actaeon’ by Tam May
The Order of Actaeon Heir to the fortune and name of the Alderdice family, Jake struggles with a passion for art that is despised by his mother. Along with sister Vivian, the young man is taken to the fashionable resort of Waxwood, where beady-eyed matriarch Larissa hopes to instil in him some of the values…
Colin Garrow 