In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers on a remote Scottish island - battered by Atlantic storms and the intense emotions of confinement - disappear without trace, leaving an enduring mystery in this most mysterious of places.

Fleeing an abusive relationship, a young woman returns to her hometown and her bereaved mother. ***Please Note: This story is also available in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

As the city swelters in a heatwave, an unfaithful husband makes his way home to a wife whose eyes are no longer closed. ***Please Note: This story is also available in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

Twelve stories for anyone who's ever been burned. Errant husbands, doomed newlyweds, bruised boxers, abandoned wives, damaged former-soldiers and, of course, the ghosts of the ones that got away - these are just a few of the protagonists that feature in a collection of stories and vignettes that explore the dark side of love. Ranging from the visceral to the tender, each deals with what can happen when the light of its promise gives way to the dark of its night. How it can injure, corrode and corrupt. What it does to us and what it can make us do. ***Please Note: Three stories from this collection - "Glass Jaw", "Itch/Scratch" and "Hocus Pocus" are also available separately on this site.*** The following extract is from the story "Needs":

Everyone knows it will happen. But who do we blame? Ourselves? Each other? Me? You? Them?

A boxer finds himself taking a beating in the early rounds of a prize-fight, but his opponent isn't the only thing he's fighting. ***Please Note: This story also appears in the collection "Indelible and Other Stories".***

After a sealing a deal that is going to save his year, a salesman finds his good run continues during a boozy card game with colleagues. But the hangover is coming...

A married woman sits in a hotel bar on the verge of starting an affair. The rest should be simple.

13 Tales of loss and longing.

What the story of St Clare doesn't tell... In this poem, Alwyn Marriage suggests that St Clare (1194-1253) may be a rather more interesting figure than history suggests. Clare Offreduccio (Chiara) was a normal, healthy and enthusiastic teenager until she was swept off her feet by the dashing young Francis, whom she heard preach with passion. Abandoning her previous life to follow him, she devoted herself to a life of chastity and charity. Images of St Clare in art tend to depict her as an icon of humble obedience and purity, but there may well be more to the story than that. While not wishing to diminish Clare's genuine piety and good works at all, this story suggests that Clare's obvious love of St Francis was more full-blooded and passionate than the official stories have suggested, and that ending up in a convent was not quite what Clare had in mind. (Please note: This is a poem, rather than a story)

“When she first arrived they said nothing to her, they just looked. An ordinary enough woman, halfway through her life perhaps … modest and respectful, but they were shocked at this female on her own… She said her village had been wiped out in a mudslide, she alone had survived… The gods favoured her, then? No, she said, just lucky.” (from Too Much Too Soon) Across twenty bite-size flash-fiction stories of no more than 500 words each, the reader can travel from Pre-Conquest Latin America to Post-Catastrophe Britain; or see inside the mind of Don Quixote’s horse and the mind of an impatient would-be suicide bomber; or meet the mythological character who delights in other people’s dilemmas and the woman who decided not to tell the world about her supernatural experiences. Perhaps you will find the answer to questions you never thought to ask: What was the real effect of The Great Plague? And how did British cities end up with such woeful transport provision? If you get annoyed when others try to tell you what to feel, you’ll sympathise with Jeffery in “Che Bello!” And if some people just leave you exhausted but you don’t understand why, you’ll sympathise with Eddie in “Is This a Law of Thermodynamics?”

A young couple are taken on a life-changing journey. A story based on real events.

A young woman tries to escape her stifling and superstitious community.

London in the eighteenth century is no place to raise a child alone, without money or a place to live. Lili knows that the only hope her son has of living a better life is to take him to the Foundling Hospital where he might, if he's lucky, find a place in Mr Handel's famous choir. ('Mr H's Angels' was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Short Story Prize in 2014)

Nigel is long past his peak, and a string of trivial incidents during a boozy day at the pub bring it home to him. Memories of times gone by are of no solace when you don't get the respect you think you deserve.

An ambitious artist seeks to reconnect with influential figures from his past.

Ahead of a visit from her returning sister, a woman considers the effect of her father on their family.

A collection of eight short speculative fictions with a Lake District flavour.

Back in the early 1970's, three ten-year old friends go up town to cause trouble.

Everyone hits Paul Doe, the teacher's pet. But what happens when you don't?

A woman leaving town decides to have a farewell drink with her ex-partner.

Memories around a short-term summer job years ago still linger.

A soldier home on leave sees things he cannot quite believe and finds his wife in a strange, compromising position. "The Boathouse Café had an air about it that suggested sea and sand. If it had been inland patrons would have drank their coffee, eaten their scones and felt nostalgic for the beach without knowing why. It was the décor, Phillip decided. Crisp white walls, low beams, driftwood picture frames, and a candy striped canopy over the ice-cream booth outside. He ordered a fried egg and sausage bap but the assistant with a tattoo on her boney arm, written in a script he couldn’t decipher, informed him that it was after eleven o’clock. They didn’t serve breakfast after eleven, but since when had fried egg and sausage become solely breakfast food? Had he been away that long? If he decided to take the next tour – Middle East, Mosul or Marshhad no doubt – would he come back to find soup sold at lunchtime only or teacakes served only after three in the afternoon? The girl’s lip curled when she spoke to him as if he were the hundredth person to ask for sausage and egg that day. Did she have no respect for a uniform? For all he knew she might have thought his clothes were fancy dress and him, just another case of too much sun to the head. The sun had a lot to answer for in these parts..."

From a gently insidious dystopian future, a woman looks back on her life and the true love she knows she missed out on. Finally, she remains undismayed, confident that the human span isn't everything.

A handy beginners' guide to invisibility. "First, remove all colour from your wardrobe – especially white; white is eye-catching and stands out in a crowd..."

A Danish painter is driven into exile by his father. But he can never escape the chains of the family's dark secrets.

A collection of twenty five flash fictions. Most of these were written during 2016/17 although a handful date from earlier. The Flash Fiction label is a mixed blessing, not least because it doesn’t seem to have settled down yet into any specific meaning. Discussion centres around that word flash. American originators of the term meant the flash of a single white page being turned. Some writers I know feel the story should have some sort of jolt, or flash, at the end: Ta Dah! All except one of the stories here are less than 500 words. Other than that, they are simply short stories, as varied as any other group of stories I might produce, joined perhaps by the one facet I look for in all short stories, however long or short, that they have a narrator who knows why he, she, or it, is telling the story!

A young footman's eyes are opened to the reality of life when he takes up a position working for a glamorous couple. (This e-book also includes the story "What Have You Done To Your Hand, John?")

Morning walks, an irrational fear, and a story of past, lethal transgression revealed.

During her anniversary holiday in Egypt, Judy decides that one honeymoon is one too many, and it's time for a change.

Memories of her disappeared little brother won't let Nadine go.

Dan has persuaded Amanda to accompany him on a cruise of the Faro Islands, to see the eclipse. But are they being followed? In this chilling tale, we find Dan must make hard decisions, in order to safeguard his marriage.

Opportunity could be about to knock for a young musician.

On the road, escaping from a confrontation a young man unexpectedly returns home, but when his friend retells the story, does he get it right?

An estranged daughter goes to her father's funeral.

With a subtle spice of gingerbread in the air, a lonely woman walks where the wind guides her. A suburban fairy tale, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's early works.

A woman in a controlling marriage is liberated by an unfortunate turn of events.

A story about friendship, loss and seemingly supernatural forces that may or may not be the product of a disturbed mind.

A multi-generational story, set in a tower block in London, told from the POV of a brick in a wall.

Double the rent or half a flat. Your choice.

Helen is someone who takes hosting Christmas very seriously. Everything is planned to the last detail. But things don't always go the we plan them to.

Terrible things happen down by the river: it is a place of despair where humans do their worst to each other. Yet it is also a place where ghosts can be laid to rest. In this story, originally published in Umber (2011), the voices of a bereaved 60 year old woman, a teenage boy who’s lost his way in life and a murdered Viking are woven into a dark story of revenge and tragedy.

Morgan is concerned about her mother...

It’s early 1950’s and 4-year-old Ruth is embarking on a new phase of her young life. She’s off to live at the seaside, with her great aunts, Constance, Rose and Pearly Trice. The story covers the next few years of Ruth’s life as she struggles to come to terms with the mystery surrounding her father and the bewildering behaviour of adults.

Where the Four Winds Meet is the first novella in a Trilogy. This story reveals the emotional journey through time of one man as he tries to discover how his biological father really died. ‘I’m fifty-two years old and today I saw a picture of my father for the very first time. Can you imagine how that feels?’ Bobby is about to open Pandora’s Box to unlock the secrets of his past – but is he prepared for the turbulent secrets which are about to be revealed about his biological father? ‘You know when I was in Germany? A woman came to me and she said, “‘Your husband’s given me a baby as well.’” How will the two immensely different scenarios, one good, one bad, impact upon the present and especially upon his two sons, a moody wannabe rock star and a ghostbuster who falls for a mental medium? ‘He was a wonderful man you know, your father. Such a lovely brother to have.’ Bobby uncovers what he believes is the truth and resolves to let the past go – until it surfaces once more to haunt him.

“Many who waded through the water coloured it with their blood, wine-red – a new meaning for the wine-dark sea of legend…” The battle of Marathon, fought in a time of treachery, danger and intense fear and superstition, was a military disaster for the Persians. But it was not the end of danger for Greece, and the courier’s famous triumphant journey, commemorated in the Olympic race, carried a frightening secret: “His own shadow, long and thin in front of him, was like a rope pulling him towards Athens; as he neared his destination so it gradually shortened, so the sun rose, so the enemy fleet moved towards Phalerum.” What of the Athenian runner himself? Surely, there was no way he could have known how his feat would be celebrated: “Thousands upon thousands of people running. In all the known world, and even lands beyond.” He would surely not have known or cared how fast he was running. And he would not have been able to predict that two messengers, not one, would be named in the annals. Or would he?

Anna Maria is an opera singer who, following an accident, has forgotten how to sing. She starts to find her voice again in the most unlikely place and with the most unlikely people, in a place of sanctuary where the strangest character of all is a young boy whom only she can see.

David wants to give his wife Kate everything she didn't have before meeting him: security, a nice home, another baby. He wants to be a good step-dad to Josh and erase the memories of Tom, Kate's first love and Josh's father. But none of this seems enough for Kate and after the birth of their daughter she slips into depression, her only solace the run-down summerhouse at the bottom of their garden. When David discovers what he thinks is her betrayal he sets out on a path of destruction. (The Summerhouse, a novella, was shortlisted for Gateway's New Fictions prize in late 2014)

‘Beyond Her Scream’ is the story of a mother-daughter relationship strained by the effects of FGM. It is set against a background of cross-cultural differences and contrasting worldviews. It contains some graphic descriptions which may not be suitable for younger readers.

Set in Edinburgh's 'Sick Kids' Hospital, this heart-warming seasonal tale tells of a cleaner's interest in the Ebola crisis during the festive season in 2014, a seemingly lonely young girl, and the connections his kindness enables. ‘I held the tip of the pen against the window. Jeez, I’d not drawn a thing since primary school. It was a bit squint but you could tell it was a star. The expression on her face didn’t change but I saw a wee click in her eyes. I started on a Christmas tree.’ A story written as part of Linda Cracknell’s writer’s residency at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, illustrated by Cate James. All author’s royalties go to the Sick Kids Friends Foundation http://www.edinburghsickkids.org/ Scottish Charity No. SC020862.

Ten flash fictions of last words, last actions, and last loves.

An unexpected twist in the closing frames of an old home movie sends Rose hurtling back to her childhood - a time and a place where no one else's parents were divorcing, and where stepmothers were as exotic as shop-bought cake. Revisiting her memories of glamorous part-time fathers and fortnightly treats, Rose unpicks the unspoken adult acrimony, and the childish confusion: "Each time they were returned to her with their bounty she was tight-lipped and unimpressed, flattening their ebullience to a shapeless guilt, their double bind of love and loyalty teaching them early to suppress their enthusiasm in her company." Dual Carriageway is about parents and children, and how complicated it all is.

A woman and her young daughter are invited for morning tea at a the home of her ex-husband and his new wife. A story about the distance between how people want things to be and how they really are.

A young girl from a poor family walks to and from her job in a factory in clothes ill suited to the cold winter weather. Her father, despite their lack of money, thinks something should be done about this.

Yasuko works in a brothel in Tokyo. One night she is visited by a new client...

How will Graciela cope with the spells and the men now Granny is gone? Bring on the Iguanas.... "The alarm snake swayed above her bed. He hissed until Graciela opened her eyes, then spiralled back into the roof. Job done. Graciela could take her time in the mornings now there was no old woman to clean up. She fetched water and washed, lifting her hair away from her neck and spearing it with pins of shell. She struggled into the blue cotton dress and wrapped her shawl around herself, so that nothing could move. The straw hat, big as a planet, waited on the rocking chair. Granny’s voice whispered, Wear the hat, Graciela. Wear it as your crown."

Laxmi, a girl from the lowest caste of a village in the remote west of Nepal, is told that she is the unlucky kind. But, resourceful and fiercely protective of her sister and niece, she is determined that low birth will not ruin their lives. All profits from this story go to aid work in Nepal.

How do we cope with loss? If we don't cope, can we ever come back? An exploration of grief.

The story is about urban alienation and redemption and focuses on a despondent young woman whose life changes following a freak zoological event.

It's Hallowe'en and the residents of Sexton Way gather for a street party. Both the living and the dead.

A mobile phone in the wrong hands, can lead to who knows what messages in the wrong ears...

Providence is a collection of three short memoirs. The stories reveal a mother haunted by the loss of her family. Her child becomes a woman, shaped by the loss of her ancestors, deepened by the compassion for the suffering she witnessed and the resilience that grew from it.

Some people you just shouldn't push.

At the end of a long hot summer holiday, as family conflicts simmer, the unexpected appearance of a stranger tests and then shatters the bond of friendship between two boys. Excerpt: ''During the last summer holidays before I started secondary school, my father decided to dig a pond in the back garden. I think my mother must have encouraged him, because she loved animals and wild flowers. Large yellow and white dog daisies sprawled over the rim of the broad earthenware vase on the sill behind the sink, competing for space with the bamboo wind chimes that tinkled whenever the window was open. Even when my mother wasn't washing up, she'd often rest her hands on the edge of the draining board and watch as a robin or some other feathered visitor plucked a nut from the wire cylinder that hung from the bird table''.

Paul Marshall appeared out of nowhere. The hazy autumn sky had just started to darken, and I was sitting in the bus-shelter killing time.

A woman waits for her friend on a station concourse even though she knows she will never arrive. Winner of the 2012 Waterstones' Crime in the City Competition

A family's new life in Australia is threatened by a bush fire, but this is not the first time the family have had to run from fire. This story won the Eileen Gilmour Creative Writing Competition in 2009

A young woman discovers something that threatens the family traditions that keep her safe.

The past isn't necessarily done with.

Set in the mid 1960s, Tim Bristow is a teenager who cannot make a decision for himself and always does what his mates want to do. Religion, sex and the idea of the body have their part to play in this tale.

A poignant story of how a broken piece of porcelain and a biscuit tin crammed with packets of seeds allow a couple to confront the tragedy in their lives.

Sometimes you just can't see the big picture. It's all too confusing and you need to put a bit of distance between yourself and what you're trying to see. I could see you, but things still weren't really clear.

There you are, minding your own business, trying to get this jigsaw started and there's a knock at the door. Who is this strange woman? Actually, she does look a little familiar, and she seems to know who you are. But you have to be careful. Don't trust anyone. Even the inanimate objects are out to get you...

A coming of age tale...but what kind of age, and can this boy bear it?

Nobody knew exactly when or why the war started. Some people thought it was Fred's earrings, but it went back a long way before that.

Will felt like he was getting closer to understanding what they meant, in a way. He would sit on the grass and look up, watching, listening and letting their truth come to him. If he forced it too much, it would not be the truth. That mattered.

Strange goings on at the parish church. Good Friday's not so good.

A story about the plight of the many children working in the fireworks factories of India. It is important that the voices of such people are heard through literature.

A college drama student finds himself in the lead role of an improvised omnibus production.

There was nowhere to hide from this sightless pain that struck me to the ground, in fear of my life.

Danger, drudgery; male solidarity and female oppression summed up life in the colliery villages in County Durham during much of the nineteenth century.

Africa and a Hippo named Nelly

My work and the people of Russia

An Igbo tribesman in the Congo Tulu Hills

A struggling writer's interest in an abandoned car reflects how small his life has become. That is until the car starts to beckon him in the dead of night.

A collection of three disturbingly dark flashes of fiction, Insomnia, In The End and LOL.

Consuela exacts a unique revenge on her philandering husband Arturo - inspired by a true story!

Alice has grown tired of life.

A young mother ponders her life during an outing with her daughter who has special needs.

A woman begins an affair with a man she meets while visiting her mother at a residential care home.

From between the pages of the very last book I picked up, fell a sheet of paper. Stained manila with ragged edge where it had been ripped from a journal. The network of creases, suggestive of the roads and railways on a map, showed that once torn from its source it had been crumpled and perhaps thrown across the room.

A woman finds escape from her tortured life in a mysterious flight of fancy.

When I first saw the beach hut I realised it would probably be more expensive than a two bedroom town house. I pictured the agent’s face; the mocking laughter, shrieking down her phone to colleagues; ‘She thinks she can afford a beach hut!’

The second of two companion stories about people returning to their south-coast hometown. Both have disappointments and something to conceal.

The first of two companion stories about people returning, in disappointment, to live in their south-coast hometown. Both have something to conceal.

Following an argument with her husband, Cara decides to take a walk in the park. There she meets an elderly man. The two begin to talk. Their conversation reveals startling insights and a troubled situation left to wither in the past.

A flash fiction - a man is ominously pursued. What is he fleeing from? What is following him? Will he manage to escape?

Two sisters, one sister quiet and assuring and one sister a little overwhelming and demanding.

A young Arab woman is to be married to an older man already with wives and children. He crosses the desert with his family to the town of Asyut where she sits on the roof tops crying in vain.

The best promises are very hard to keep.

A man has an encounter with his doppleganger and sees himself in a different light. Their meeting has a knock on effect for not only him but his wife too. His wife begins to warm to this stranger to devestating effect.

Someone has been vandalising the road signs around the village of Shilbottle.

Life and all its daily pleasures, hopes, frustrations - and poetry - as the years pass in a small New York state community.

A young man follows a young woman out of a tube station.

An old woman trapped by floods.

A story about a grudge match that invokes a background of class as competition, strong passions and a sought-after revenge.

Propelled thousands of miles away by childhood grief, Trish's search for happiness takes some unusual twists and turns.

Jake escapes his old life only to discover that things may not be what they seem on the idyllic 'Black Isle'.

A boat trip on the fens with the ghost of Conrad.

Tasha has just moved into her new house, hoping for friendly neighbours. Instead she is faced with Satanic Snarl.

Twelve workers trapped underground working on a momentous project. But 'God' has other ideas.

I was sitting with Sal in the Strawberry Fields café on Penny Lane. Sal of the orange hair, black leggings and red lipstick. Sal, with the dark voice, who I fancied something rotten. Sal, who scared the shit out of me...

A flash fiction set on a porch in Illinois

This is a new adult story about a student called Nicky. She juggles caring responsibility challenges alongside attempting to have a social life.

A forty-something man attends a friends funeral up North, and has a strange encounter with an old lover, and with the local characters...

Bill keeps seeing the same woman on his way to and from the train - at least, he thinks she's the same woman...

Hell hath no fury like a mountain underestimated, and on one bleak spring day just about everyone underestimates the Old Woman, with disasterous consequences.

When Daniel finds two runaways hiding in his cellar, he is charmed by their youth and innocence. As he soon learns, however, Imogen and Leo are hiding a dark secret. LOVING IMOGEN is a novella of approximately 32,000 words.

Ten Flash Fictions, from 449 to 96 words short. Illicit affairs and railroad crashes, murderous spouses and vengeful neighbours.

Jeff had betrayed Sandra in the worst possible way and now he wants to come back!

As Carol looked back on that terrible time she soon discovered that she was not alone.

A grieving woman looking back on happy times and in the process discovers something which she never knew which finally gives her the peace she desperately needs.

Keith's obsession with naming things, and with Gerda the newspaper seller outside his office, leads him into danger.

Much has been written about the effects of the millennium bug...I was responsible for saving my crew from this dreadful disease...

A Ship's doctor's trials and tribulations.

From riches to rags in Los Angeles

A young Cuban chambermaid who dreams of becoming a poet

Lenny Waterman thought he could throw his voice. He couldn't - as a Ventriloquist he would have given Archie Andrews palpitations - and then he met with a mysterious old Romany lady who gave him a gift that would change his life forever...

Students take gap years between A levels and university - I took mine when my wife left me for the milkman...

This story is about a pensioner waiting for the Estate Agent to show him around the house he was born in.

I sit here, watching, waiting for everyone to come. Behind these bars, my life is never ending. I see them come, I see them go. No one escapes my attention.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doctor Dominic du Mortier and I am a hundred and sixty one years old. No no, stay where you are please. It’s not that I’m unwilling to shake your hand, please don’t think that. It’s really more a case of my being unable. Permit me to explain. I am beyond reach. And behind glass. And a rodent. Nothing special you understand – just a Rattus norvegicus, or a common brown rat to you. Oh yes, and dead. Did I mention that?

Maureen the Assistant Librarian has spent a night in her suburban garden, having drunk too much champagne at a high class midsummer party in the Holland Park garden of her work colleague Adrian, whose style, wealth and exalted friends raise the question of why he is still working in the Library. As the perfect midsummer night passes into dawn and Maureen thinks about the events of that party, her solitary existence seems to be coming to a crisis – but someone - or something – has followed her home and is in the garden with her.

It's only the intrepid who venture into the world of arranged romance. Amelia casts her fate to the winds of change and learns that not all migrating birds make it home safely.

Ursula has taken a job as an intern, working for a world famous artist in Tuscany. But he has a beautiful wife. Soon Ursula is locked in a triangular relationship and she dreams of mythical beasts emerging from the pine forests.

Henry Swail went missing years ago in peculiar circumstances. No one knows why he left or where he is now. Officially, he’s presumed dead. But who is this strange man asking about him?

Kate is a jazz singer, living happily with her musician husband. That is, until Maggi comes to stay.

Ellie works in a mortuary and lives on the premises. And then she falls in love with someone her employers consider totally unsuitable.

Aine is a wet nurse on a big estate in 19th century Ireland and her life is in danger unless she can escape. But how can she leave the child? And where is she to get the money to go to America.

How do people become the way they are? Old age disguises stories of long ago which the young could never imagine. Why does Mabel especially drink when the black thorn is in bloom?

This is the story a day in the life of eleven-year-old Sara. Like thousands of other children in southern Africa, she’s an orphan, and she’s looking after her younger brothers and sisters. A kindly nun, Sister Constance, is due to visit the family today – but she’s late, and Sara is getting worried. Will she come? What if she doesn’t? Why hasn’t she come? What will the children do if Sister Constance doesn’t turn up?

A bad day at work gets out of hand.

Margot could have danced, but she bashes away on an old typewriter in her husband's carpet business. Feather's Carpet Empire had never amounted to much, and had her husband listened to her, things could have been very different. But, one day, she hears a voice from the fire escape...

Benny Green is worried - passengers are vanishing from his taxi cab and the Police are getting interested. Where are they vanishing to? Benny is desperate to find out...

A coming of age story about a young boy, his greyhound and first love

A retired soldier and widower visits a war grave and so discovers the identity of his father.

If you've ever sat in a doctor's waiting room, wondering how long you are going to have to wait and what you're going to catch whilst you're waiting, then this is the story for you...

Jeremy wonders if he's going mad. Everybody else can see reporter Jill Gibbs on the TV. Why can't he?

See the hand a citizen has to play when he becomes too big for his small town, and, according to the local authorities, stands in the way of progress by his action.

Daisy unwittingly stumbles on the preparations for a terrorist attack and this leads to her finding out far more than she needs to about the relationship between her mom and the leader of the bombers.

Following the death of her husband Nellie makes a return journey to one of their favorite haunts, only to discover it is not the same without him.

My first impression of the cruise liner was of a great white block of flats...

Big JUNE lives alone in her childhood home, a large house in suburban South London. She has been there since 1954 and no-one has re-decorated since 1973. Anyone noticing June thinks she’s odd; people keep their distance. One day, a stranger - a young woman called Lottie - walks in uninvited and starts to ask questions. Over the months, June and the house seem to reveal their secrets. June loves Space and especially, the star of the TV Sci-fi programme to which she is addicted. Lottie helps June to transform her life, build her telescope and finally prepares her to leave to pursue her dream. But where has Lottie gone?

Stop, Look and Listen is a short collection of flash fiction pieces. It features Escape, a story about a son who wants to keep his parents together for the sake of his father, Mannequin, a creepy tale about a husband and his wife's disappearance, as well as the titular story Stop, Look and Listen, an exploration of life through instructions. The collection also includes other pieces by Akeem Balogun that have appeared in various publications throughout his writing career. Stop, Look and Listen is an enjoyable read that will appeal to all fans of the short story form as well as to any reader who is entertained by writing that is precise, fun and thought-provoking.

A small time shop keeper brings his crooked ways to a provincial town, introducing his customers to boozing gambling and sex.

Al Gore, the Internet, the Algonquin Hotel and perhaps some misconceptions.

'The Colour of Haze'[is] about the Nazis [and] is especially pungent. Every kid knew there was a row back then but didn't know what it was about. The past can be disturbing for children, too. - Trevor Reeves, Southern Ocean Review

A duologue between adolescent twins: same life but very different experiences.

An extraordinary personal encounter on the New York subway.

I walked away alone. Tears sprung quickly but not unexpectedly to my eyes - I realised I was now alone!

Peter's quiet night in is high-jacked by a complete stranger...

I looked out over the restless sea my mind fighting through a haze of confusion. Was this the same view I shared with Jeff for all those years? We had been so happy in this place never suspecting that such evil lurked close by!

Do you believe in fate or that things happen for a reason? No? Well neither did I until one day.....

A young woman’s way in and out of a brothel. (This story contains adult themes and explicit sexual references.)

How a nosey GP finds his satisfaction for a happy ever after. (This story contains explicit sexual references.)

a woman's revenge on the men who betrayed her.

Passion in a time of revolution. (This story contains sexually explicit references.)

Set in Northumberland, the Charlton's, a family of tenant hill farmers, struggle to survive against folk who wield the power to control their land usage.

Jamie Mullen is caught in the middle of the wheeling and dealing among Irish Travellers who have returned home for Christmas.

A wartime evacuee's story

A Republican soldier returns in spirit to the battle grounds of the Spanish Civil War.

Choosing when to die can be a tricky business for all concerned.

When global disaster strikes everyone's faith is tested

A one night stand in a seedy hotel leads to an unexpected encounter and stretched boundaries. Would you meet Mr Husband?

A jaded city commuter and office worker is unexpectedly invited to 'break free' from the herd. His joy is short-lived and he is quickly returned to the treadmill. He will never meet her like again. There will be no repetition - or will there?

Angel returns to the island she grew up on, searching for answers, trawling through memories of catastrophe. Is her father still alive? What happened to him? Will she find the answers she seeks or open a whole new can of worms?

The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red . . .

Moving into your first flat with a lover is a stressful time, but when precious objects become damaged, there'll be tears before bedtime. Thank goodness for the Bronte family band!

There centre stage she stands like the star, she always knew she was and waits silently for her applause now please!

When Jack Black, Rat-catcher and Mole destroyer by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, comes to visit he brings hope and love for broken heart

Brian Finnegan hates parties, but tonight the party is for him - and he has to make a speech.

Em has fallen for her BMX instructor. When he does the dirty, she turns the tables in spectacular style.

A memoir piece told in the historical present about a drug fuelled night during the nineteen nineties.

An injured climber shares a gully with a dislodged boulder. Runner-up in the John Muir Trust Wild Writing Competition.

When Ellie Smith went in search of her real family she did not expect to acquire a whole village.

A flash fiction story about transition

An encounter with someone looking for guidance

Institutionalisation.

Not one inhabitant of Bois-Bezolles remained unshocked by Frederique’s suicide. As news spread around the village, disbelief became anger at such an outrageous lie. What was the truth?

Paulo is determined to start a book business in the old Portuguese market, but it looks as though the odds are stacked against him. That is, until a stranger arrives in the village.

Rosa has devised her own solution for combating poverty on the Ria Formosa, where morals are compromised with a strange take on community salvation. When the Englishman arrives, things begin to alter, but with an ironic twist.

A man, his life and the moon.

A society 'gossip' writer follows up a chance meeting and then witnesses the accidental death of his subject. He determines to honour with the dead man's estranged family the 'Six Degrees of Separation' theory.

A woman is abandoned by her father as a baby but he is never really out of her life.

Set during Ireland's ill-famed Celtic Tiger era. A job must be done, a contract must be honoured...

Julie's husband is a drunkard and vicious bully, she is terrified of him, but there comes a turning point....

They had a rented cottage with a rowing boat all to themselves in the north of Scotland but the first trip out on the loch had to be weathered in more ways than one.

A young boy experiences something out of bounds which has more than one reason to be kept secret

Bella takes a bus ride and struggles with her feelings when someone sits beside her.

A woman visits her daughter who has a job that she doesn't approve of, one that brings all her fears to the fore.

A man struggling to get over his girlfriend leaving, turns to eBay auctions as a source of comfort, what he finds is quite unexpected though.

A small boy plays in the falling snow. He tries to understand his broken life. He doesn't cry, but you might. Shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize

September 10th 2001 - Chris and Annie are on the final leg of their road trip around the USA. Heading towards New York, the frayed edges of a relationship spawned from post-graduation euphoria are beginning to show as they confront the end of their summer and the swan-song of their youth. Aware that their lives are going to change, they face up to an uncertain future, completely unaware of the global events into which they are about to be propelled.

A story about links and how many you can find. A sort of 'Spot the Difference' in prose.

This story is about proportionality.

For nearly all her life, Marion has dreamed of the North Woods and eating maple syrup, snow-frozen into Jack Wax, but an innocent trip turns into an obsession.

A visit from a stranger forces a lonely woman to confront the debris of her life.

A story of love and loss, and new beginnings.

This school story quickly darkens into a battle of wills with disastrous consequences, all played out in the context of the entire planet. Voices interchange: narrator, first-person protagonist and a chillingly unidentifiable presence.

A Polish mother tries to make friends with other parents by hosting a dinner party. In spite of her planning, the evening does not go as Vik expects.

Theresa and her sister share a red coat and a deep loss. Years pass until one evening, as the rain lashes down, an unexpected visitor arrives at Theresa's door. Memories and secret sorrows seep once more into their silent lives.

A disabled girl's view on her parents trying to run a small-holding in Norfolk.

George Tiller can't bring himself to open the box of his wife's belongings, neither can he compose himself to pray - but what he can do is perform a miracle...

A couple of runaway teenagers create a secret world... in a suburban cinema.

An elderly woman takes her wheelchair-bound husband on a mysterious journey at dawn - but why? Transit is a tale of the power of life-long love, set against the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

A mother narrates the sad and peculiar tale of how her young daughter's body gradually disappears from her own eyes - everyone can see her daughter, except the daughter herself.

A chance meeting in person develops over an email conversation.

A Midwestern farmer comes to terms with his daughter's weight problem.

Sarah, haunted by an episode with a man in a tower block lift, had an unusual New Year's resolution to make. She needed to set things right. She couldn't risk loosing everything she'd worked so hard to achieve and she could only see one way forward...

A grandmother ponders the way her grand-daughter is learning to assess the world. This story owes a debt to Tove Jansson.

The closeness between her brilliant, beautiful mother and her talented, intelligent daughter re-enforces a woman's sense of her own inferiority. Add to this her lifelong horror of bats, and things go from bad to worse.

A young girl's coming of age in her father's homeland.

A new lighthouse keeper receives a mysterious visitor.

I am wearing my smartest clothes for my mother’s funeral: grey trousers and white shirt without the tie. She meant to give me cash for shoes...

What if the dead could apologise for leaving you?

A chance meeting between John Lennon and Philip Larkin in a motorway service station cafe in 1966.

'A brief study of bitter pride, it's a remarkable example of economical writing, painstaking in its attention to detail.' Nicholas Royle, Time Out

Clara is in a box waiting to be found. She listens to the words outside the box and the words in her head as she waits for Jasper. But who is Jasper and will he get to her in time? Why is she in a box and why can she not speak out?

A boy is traumatized by what a haircut reveals.

A mother, recovering on a psychiatric respite ward, recalls her own mother and her 'other mother', and sees vivid glimpses of hope in the past and present

A boy happens upon a furniture-maker in his workshop while waiting for his sister to finish her violin lesson; it's a meeting that will change them both.

A gun fires in the dark, but who is it? And what is she aiming at?

This is the story of two characters in a small town in Wales who only meet once, with shocking consequences.

A Soviet composer is trying to write the perfect Socialist Realist symphony, before a knock on the door.

A story about Derek, Stockhausen, electronic music, and the ducks in Acton Park.

An account of being, loss, and the sea.

Set during the second world war, Isabel does not understand why everyone seems to be so uptight. The war to her is just an inconvenience. When Edward asks her to write to him at the front, all she can think of is to copy out some of Browning's letters. When Edward credits her with the maturity she does not possess, this changes everything.

A rebound relationship fills with complications that are going to hurt.

Young people who find solace in a vintage shop in a town that seems to be developing around them without including them.

A little girl's First Communion day - when temptation arrives in the form of a bag of sweets

Steve's longing for his own rock band takes him on a journey that gets too close to home for comfort. A story about music, friendship and what happens when you get what you wish for.

The arrival of a young sheep shearer at a farm in New South Wales has a profound effect on the owner, bringing back memories of a pivotal moment from her past. The Gun Shearer was shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award.

A story for everyone who has wondered how to organise their book shelves...

A story of role models, betrayal and journals - from A to Z

It's 'Take Your Father To School Day' and some fathers are better at it than others.