Fiction

 The little party wandered slowly along the rows of the hillside garden, pausing in the warm afternoon Northern California sun to examine one vegetable...

Dur e Aziz Amna received second prize in our Short Story Competition 2017. The year Asma moved in with us, we were living in a two-family...

‘So. What do we want today?’I’m sitting in my local barbers chair, caped up like a clown - my head bulging through the top...

There’s someone in the kitchen. I hear the kettle being filled. I look at the clock, it’s not yet seven, he’s up early. He...

It had been twenty years since they last met. Thirty eight year old Eoghan O’Dullach was nervous inside; and in his brain he was...

 Pavements slick from rain and a market at night, risen dripping from the oily roads like a brand new continent. Brunch alongside nails alongside...

CharlesI could see him from beside the door. He was surrounded by men in suits, pointing at the ceiling, looking at their drinks or...

‘Shoeshine, sir?’ asked the young lad with a shoeshine box in his hand, as I peered into the window of a shop in New...

It was three weeks into Kurt’s big adventure that his digital self was stolen. Before that, everything had been going to plan. He’d been...

Winner of The London Magazine Short Story Competition 2015.Sometime between 1858 and 1864, Emily Dickinson embarked upon her self-publishing career. She copied out in...

As the young man came over the hill the first thin blowing of rain met him. He turned his coat-collar up and stood on top of the shelving rabbit-riddled hedgebank, looking down into the valley. He had come too far. What had set out as a walk along pleasantly-remembered tarmac lanes had turned dreamily by gate and path and hedge-gap into a cross-ploughland trek, his shoes ruined, the dark mud of the lower fields inching up the trouser legs of his grey suit where they [...]

The landlady watches herself in the living room mirror, phone held to her ear. In the blurred morning light her face looks young again,...

From The London Magazine Stories 11, 1979Then the brothel was raided. Christ, he’d only gone down to Spinoza’s to confront Patience with her handiwork. She hadn’t...

A bee is trapped behind the curtains––its silhouette circles the head of a printed flower. Edith pulls her arm free of the tightly tucked...

You had never heard of the word until an hour ago, but already your designers are as familiar with the concept as they are...

That afternoon was a particularly trying one for Mary. Having changed her mother’s incontinence pad and left her on the sofa watching ‘Homes under...

She communicates through flowers. Daffodils are for happiness, carnations for sadness, snowdrops mean hope and tulips stand for strength. She saves dahlias for saints’...

IN THE SUMMER, while their shells are still a pale colour, you may eat the white kernels of unripe hazel nuts. You extract their...

Frank’s Englishness was all about him for he dressed in country wear:  tweed sports jackets, check shirts, Burberry rain macs, and a perpetual woollen...

  Wednesday, 21 August 1968  The moment you and Slava enter the dining room, he throws himself on the first person he sees, kisses both of...

Excerpt from Chapter OneThe battle was over, but still Kazuteru ran. He had duty to fulfil. The young samurai ignored the howling of his...