All the Pubs in Soho (Storycuts)

A keen naturalist, he is more enthralled by the botanical - and carnal - delights of Dunedin than in the wellbeing of his flock. In London, eighty years later, Jack Mackenzie's descendants are middle-aged, searching for a way out of their loneliness. Olive, embittered with her loveless life, steals a baby from a crowded tube; William, distraught at the death of a pupil, abandons his job as headmaster and struggles to fill his empty days.

Jay Pascal, a young New Zealand vagrant of mysterious parentage arrives in London, looking for a place where he might belong. Ruby and I stared at it and each other. With flame-haired, fearless Ruby, April shares secrets, dares and laughter. But Ruby has secrets of her own -bruises that she hides. Also seeking April's friendship is old Mr Greenidge, immaculate in his linen suit, with eyes like blue glass. He follows her around the village with his beguiling dachshund, and wants to learn everything about her.

The transition of Coral Fairweather from village beauty to village outcast begins in the short golden days of autumn with the fathering of her first child by a vagrant painter. Soon, fuelled by the suspicion and gossip of those who see, in Coral's hand-to-mouth existence and crumbling cottage, a rejection of all that is respectable, rather than the fierce pride that prevents her from seeking help from the Authorities or from the man who would love her.

Spurred on by a malicious widow, the Parish Council agree to purge their neat village of this 'pariah' and her children. This bitter witch hunt speeds towards a terrifying climax in a distinctive novel enriched by crystalline images of the natural world. The story begins as an ambulance pulls away from the butcher's shop, taking Mick to the hospital after he has carelessly hacked off a finger while preparing John's order. John's wife, Marguerite, and two young children are forced to live with his uncle until he can find work.

Marguerite has a brief affair, an escape from the poverty and boredom of day-to-day life - and John, attempting to make amends for Mick's lost finger, is chased down by the butcher's buddies. These tumultuous events all take place during the first twenty-five days of December, leaving each character facing a Christmas of poverty, impossible love and loneliness. In A Bowl of Cherries Shena Mackay tells the story of twin brothers whose lives are inexorably intertwined: Rex, a self-absorbed and successful writer, and Stanley, a minor poet who works as a dishwasher.

Rex lives on the family estate being the older of the twins by one minute with his unhappy wife, Daphne, who writes children's books. Their overweight daughter, Daisy, lives nearby, and as a result of a guilty secret of her own, has married an overbearing, misogynist, and skinflint husband, Julian. Rex's illegitimate son, Seamus, 14, discovers Daisy quite by accident and their relationship blossoms despite the many flawed characters that surround them.

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He carries a family secret that proves to be devastating, but which ultimately releases his half-sister Daisy from her torments. The two trade insults daily as they exchange the mail that so often ends up in the wrong letterbox. The tension increases when the owners find that they have adopted the same stray cat. Here is a wonderful collection of short stories by the writer known for 'the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise, encased in leaded lights' Guardian.

In stories as intriguing as their titles - 'Pink Cigarettes', 'Electric Blue Damsels', 'Other People's Bathrobes' - Shena Mackay demonstrates her uncanny ability to expose the menace of everyday life with humour and haunting accuracy. Harnessing Mackay's darkly comic vision, an astonishing originality and vibrant prose, these remarkable short works provide 'novel-worthy dimensions in a few pages' New York Times Book Review. The Laughing Academy is as witty, black and compelling as anything Shena Mackay has written.

From antiques fayres to Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, geriatric wards to Crystal Palace, this collection offers a journey around the bizarre yet familiar characters and settings that Mackay has made her own.

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There are Roy and Muriel Rowley, the fun-running charity-junkies who give blood by the gallon offending their daughter's religious principles ; we meet Gerald Creedy who only loves three beings - his twin brother, Harold, and his two tortoises, Percy and Bysshe - and the mysterious lodger Madame Alphonsine who has the strange powers to make things including tortoises disappear; and then there is the rather arrogant bestselling novelist who gives a reading at a women's bookshop only to find, to her horror, that two of her old schoolfriends are in the audience.

In 'Nanny', Professor Campbell Forsythe gives his lecture on metamorphosis in the dull little town of Ditcham, where events from his past come back unexpectedly to alter him forever. In 'Radio Gannet', Norma chances across a strange pirate radio station, only to realise that the voice issuing from the speakers belongs to none other than her elderly, ramshackle sister Dolly. Part of the Storycuts series, these three stories were previously published in the collection The Atmospheric Railway. But he still keeps his old parrot, a bird who has an illustrious past himself.

In 'The Heart of Saturday Night', Alex spends his weekend contemplating the decline of his writing career and his love for his colleague's wife. In 'Jumbo Takes a Bath', Eloise recognises a kindred spirit in her date. In 'Shalimar', Mrs de Vere, living alone in a house by the sea, has an interesting past. But an accident involving her animal-loving little nephew reconfigures her entire world view.

Part of the Storycuts series, these four stories were previously published in the collection The Atmospheric Railway. In 'Nay, Ivy, Nay', a mean old mycologist, who has fostered a beautiful white holly tree, denies his neighbour a sprig.

In 'Wasps' Nest', will the wasp nest survive the pest controller? In 'Windfalls', picking up the windfall apples with his grandson and remembering his own son as a boy brings Martin true contentment. In 'Swansong', Louisa has returned to her home town to attend the funeral of a friend, but she is distracted by memories of a man she once knew and the sheer number of swans in the town's charity shops.

In 'Bananas', a timid grandmother finds herself increasingly embarrassed by the attentions of the exuberant local foreign shopkeeper whom she has secretly christened 'Bananas'. In 'Where the Carpet Ends', Miss Agnew lives in the rafters of an Eastbourne hotel, amongst eccentric characters drawn together in their 'reduced circumstances'. Stifled by her stale and impoverished surroundings, she dreams of change. In 'Pink Cigarettes', a schoolboy grows tired of his relationship with an aging poet, who is becoming a greater draw on his time by the day. But when it looks as though his behaviour will break the old man's heart, he must listen closely to his own feelings.

Part of the Storycuts series, these two stories were previously published in the collection The Atmospheric Railway. An elderly woman, once an intrepid journalist, is paralysed with apprehension at the thought of meeting the daughter of her… Meer. Alle prijzen zijn inclusief BTW en andere heffingen en exclusief eventuele verzendkosten en servicekosten. Alle artikelen van Shena Mackay. Shena Mackay The Artist's Widow. Shena Mackay The Orchard on Fire. Shena Mackay Redhill Rococo. Shena Mackay The Laughing Academy.

Shena Mackay Barbarians Storycuts. Shena Mackay Old Crow. Shena Mackay An Advent Calendar. Shena Mackay The Atmospheric Railway. Shena Mackay Dancing On the Outskirts. Shena Mackay Mackay Orchard on Fire. Type boek Korte verhalen. If I Don't Know. Ten of the Best: School Stories with a Difference.

Tales From A Stone Cottage. The World's Worst Joke Book. Little Marvel and other stories. The Worlds Smallest Unicorn. A Pair of Spoons Storycuts. The Atmospheric Railway Storycuts. En az 0 50 karakter.