Here, a man acts rashly and life-threateningly to ensure he wins a prize . . .Dip in the Pool is taken from the short story collection Someone Like You, which includes seventeen other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who serves a dish that baffles the police; a curious machine that reveals the horrifying truth about plants; the man waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach; and others.'The absolute master of the twist in the tale.' (Observer )This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Adrian Scarborough.Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

    Cross-Genre. Asian American Studies. In this new prose document, Bhanu Kapil follows a film crew to the Bengal jungle to re-encounter the true account of two girls found living with wolves in 1921. Taking as its source text the diary of the missionary who strove to rehabilitate these orphans--through language instruction and forcible correction of supinated limbs--HUMANIMAL functions as a healing mutation for three bodies and a companion poiesis for future physiologies. Through wolfgirls Kamala and Amala, there is a grafting: what scars down into the feral opens out also into the fierce, into a remembrance of Kapil's father. The humanimal text becomes one in which personal and postcolonial histories cross a wilderness to form supported metabiology. Lucidly, holographically, your heart pulsed in the air next to your body; then my eyes clicked the photo into place. Future child, in the time you lived in, your arms always itched and flaked. To write this, the memoir of your body, I slip my arms into the sleeves of your shirt. I slip my arms into yours, to become four-limbed.

    Living and working on the idyllic island of Mauritius is the stuff dreams are made of – until she bumps into a man who threatens to destroy it all.Tanay Devkumar is cynical and shuttered – events in his past have cast a long and deep shadow. Convinced that Mita Ramphul represents a threat to his sister’s happiness, he seeks her out, determined to block her nefarious plans.They meet in circumstances that can only be described as hostile – suspicions abound and resentments flare on both sides, even as attraction simmers beneath the surface. A series of disastrous events follow and they are compelled to pretend that they are in love and wish to marry.It is meant to be a temporary engagement – but will Mita be able to resist her fake fiancé or will his scorching kisses make her yearn for something more permanent?Take One Fake Fiancé is a refurbished, revamped, remodelled, updated version of “Scorched by His Fire” which was published by Harlequin/Mills and Boon in 2014.

    And about men surprised by women who are unconventional, unafraid and independent. It is the story of Meena, rebellious and unexamined, and Yuri, as complex as Meena is naive. Of Hajime, outsider to two cultures, and Prakash, unable to see beyond his limited horizons. It is also the story of Haruko who has dedicated herself to her art, and of Leela who is determined to break gender roles and learn the traditional gold-craft of her community. Set between Japan and Jaipur, Kintsugi follows the lives of these characters as they intersect and diverge, collide and break and join again in unexpected ways. The result is a brilliantly original novel as profound as it is playful, as emotionally moving as it is gripping.

    Zayn has been shuttled from city to city when he was growing up. She is comfortable watching her life from the sidelines. He wants to feel rooted to a place he can call ‘home’. They meet each other quite by chance. And both seize the chance to be someone they both need in their lives: For Zayn, it’s a 'Partner-In-Crime'. For Akriti, someone who just knows how to be there for her… When their worlds collide, It is not what either of them expected it to be. Zayn has a steady girlfriend. And Akriti has a crush on him. What happens when these two become friends? The biggest adventure of their lives? Or the road to heartbreak? What happens when two completely different people collide? Do they become friends? Or, is their friendship doomed from the start? 'When Our Worlds Collide' is the story of two twenty-three-year olds, Who are finally growing up and finding their feet in the world. A tale of friendship and love, crushes and betrayals, messes and second chances, Marriage and divorce… and the elusive happily ever after!

    A painter who owes his small success to a man he despises, discovers that his passivity has cost him the love that might have set him free. A writer of modest talents encounters the old love who once betrayed him; now she repels him, yet the unfinished novel she leaves in his hands may surpass anything he could ever produce himself. An American poet in Rome finds herself forced to choose between her lover and a world so alien it takes her voice away. A print maker, who has reached a certain age, enters so deeply into the magical world of her imagination that she can never find her way back. In captivating, luminous prose, Martin explores the trials and rewards of human relationships and creative endeavor with all the ease and insight of a writer at the top of her form.

    A short story on forbidden love

    Yet it seems like only yesterday when I had my first book, Let's Meet on Platform 8, published. I'm so lucky to have an enthusiastic and devoted following of readers - some who've stayed with me from the very beginning and some who are recent converts. Without you reading and enjoying my books, I would never have had the fabulous career I've been blessed with. We make a great team!I thought it would be nice for you all to join the celebration with me and to offer a small token of my thanks and appreciation for all your support over the years. I love writing short stories and that's what helped to get me started on this road so I've put together a collection of a few of my favourites that have interspersed the last twenty-five books. Each one is very special to me for a different reason and has lovely memories. I hope you enjoy them too. Find half an hour to curl up on the sofa with them and raise a glass to toast twenty-five books and us!*Includes an exclusive extract from The Cake Shop in the Garden*

    In this story from Indrapramit Das, a journalist strives to understand Krishna's actions and what they say about the rest of society and how we treat our dead.

    Once awkward and forgettable, Michael Kinnick has become a famous, wealthy, and absurdly confident lifestyle guru. Of all the people who’d want to catch up, why Michael? After thirty divergent years, why now? Mildly apprehensive, Andy is also very curious.Curtis Sittenfeld’s The Tomorrow Box is part of Currency, a compounding collection of stories about wealth, class, competition, and collapse. If time is money, deposit here with interest. Read or listen in a single sitting.

    You will find yourself in the middle of a torrid liaison in The Affair , revel in the euphoria of budding romance in Just One Glance and discover what it means to let go of your loved one in The Impasse .Love can also be brutal and unconventional as The Unseen Boundaries of Love and Something about Karen will show you. But most of all, as Death of a Widower and Siddharth show, you will see that love is all about hope and taking the leap of faith.Selected from a nationwide Romance Contest conducted by Rupa Publications, this heart-warming collection of stories urges you to believe that love is eternal...and forever.

    In music, these strengths have earned him comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, the ardent devotion of his fans, and the admiration of the media. And Earle does a lot: he is singer, songwriter, producer, social activist, teacher. . . . He’s not only someone who makes great music; he’s someone to believe in. With the publication of his first collection of short stories, Doghouse Roses, he gives us yet another reason to believe. Earle’s stories reflect the many facets of the man and the hard-fought struggles, the defeats, and the eventual triumphs he has experienced during a career spanning three decades. In the title story he offers us a gut-wrenchingly honest portrait of a nearly famous singer whose life and soul have been all but devoured by drugs. “Billy the Kid” is a fable about everything that will never happen in Nashville, and “Wheeler County” tells a romantic, sweet-tempered tale about a hitchhiker stranded for years in a small Texas town. A story about the husband of a murder victim witnessing an execution addresses a subject Earle has passionately taken on as a social activist, and a cycle of stories features “the American,” a shady international wanderer, Vietnam vet, and sometime drug smuggler — a character who can be seen as Earle’s alter ego, the person he might have become if he had been drafted. Earle is a songwriter’s songwriter, and here he takes his writing gift into another medium, along with all the grace, poetry, and deep feeling that has made his music honored around the world.

    For the special edition slipcase please go here.You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America. This year's slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.

    But when he discovers a smuggling ring rumored to be protected by powerful magic, he seeks out old friends and new to lend a hand. A tale set in Alex Bledsoe's popular medieval noir world.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Whether he is writing about the players in a rickety bisexual love triangle or a woman visiting her husband in a nursing home, probing the psychic mainspring of a grimly obsessive weight lifter or sifting through the layers of resentment, need, and pity in a friendship that has gone on a few decades too long, Baxter enchants us with the elegant balance of his prose and the unexpectedness of his insights. Long admired and now once more available in paperback, Harmony of the World is a masterpiece of lucidity and compassion.