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The Dreamed

Robert McLiam Wilson

‘His life needed more magic. Or more God.’

The Flesh Strip

Adrian Van Young

‘No person or doll had anatomy like that. It was, she reasoned, some mistake, a dud in the assembly line, but something about it felt special, auspicious.’

A story by Adrian Van Young.

The Fucking Lake

Diane Williams

New short fiction from Diane Williams. ‘The major events of my life are done with, except, of course, for my final downfall.’

The Great Santa

Geoffrey Wolff

‘The Great Santa, like circumstance itself, blew hot and cold; He was all caprice, chance, crapshoot.’

The Invisible Harbour

Deniz Utlu

‘Only from a distance does the observer understand the object that remained an enigma from close up.’

Fiction by Deniz Utlu, translated by Jackie Smith.

The Island

Jack Underwood

‘She draws from her mind the image of a giant steel girder, pictures it smashing through the wall of the bar, obliterating everything, legs and arms reaching and waving.’

The Kabul Markhor

Nell Zink

‘He felt very lonely after spending the winter holed up in his cabin eating Doritos.’

The Landlady

Geling Yan

‘After all, they were landlady and tenant; what right did he have to meddle?’

The Last Thing We Need

Claire Vaye Watkins

‘I think there will be lightning tonight; the air has that feel.’

The Legion

Shaun Wilson

‘A should probably write that it hit uz like a smack in the guts, or the red mist cem down or sumet like that, but in all honesty, a can just remember feelen upset.’

New fiction by Shaun Wilson.

The Lens Factory

John Updike

‘It made him feel lopsided, this sense of being plucked at by nervousness and dread.’

The Little Winter

Joy Williams

‘She remembered being happy off and on that day, and then looking at things and finding it all unkind.’

The Mountain Road

William Wall

‘Funeral homes are always cold. There were pine benches in lines like a church. They had been varnished recently and there was that heady smell. It reminded me of my father’s boat, the wheelhouse brightwork newly touched up. It was the smell of childhood.’

The Penitenitary

Tim Willocks

‘A million man-years of confinement had burnished the surface of the granite flags to a greasy smoothness ingrained deeply with filth and despair.’