Lucy Wood

Straying husbands lured into the sea can be fetched back, for a fee. Magpies whisper to lonely drivers late at night. Trees can makewishes come true - provided you know how to wish properly first. Houses creak, fill with water and keep a fretful watch on their inhabitants, straighteningshower curtains and worrying about frayed carpets.

Diving Belles

Pearl doesn't know how she's ended up in the river - the same messy, cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley she'd been stuck in for years. Or why, for that matter, she'd been stupid enough to fall down those rickety stairs. Ada, Pearl's daughter, doesn't know how she's ended up back in the house she left thirteen years ago - with no heating apart from a fire she can't light, no way of getting around apart from an old car she's scared to drive, and no company apart from echoing footsteps on the damp floorboards.

Weathering

An uncanny, startlingly beautiful story collection steeped in the Cornish landscape, from the award-winning author of Diving Belles and Other Stories and Weathering.

The Sing of the Shore

A debut collection of stories explores how magic, myth and folklore shape the everyday lives of people in Cornwall, from a lonely massage therapist who holds the hands of an invisible lover to a boy and his grandmother who combat despair with an old white door on a windy beach. Original. 20,000 first printing.

And Other Stories

The Little Book of Lincolnshire is a compendium of fascinating information about this historic county, past and present. Contained within is a plethora of entertaining facts about Lincolnshire’s famous and occasionally infamous men and women, its towns and countryside, history, natural history, literary, artistic and sporting achievements, loony laws, customs ancient and modern, transport, battles and ghostly inhabitants. A reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped in to time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the heritage, the secrets and the enduring fascination of the county. A remarkably engaging little book, this is essential reading for visitors and locals alike.

The Little Book of Lincolnshire

Intervention to Get Back on Track

Secure Science - Secure Science for GCSE Teacher Resource Pack

Brenda Fisher: The Story of a Channel Swimmer

Blonde in Deep Water

Lionel Shriver

Lavinia Greenlaw

Sarah Hall

Lisa Blower

Featuring: Lisa Blower, Lavinia Greenlaw, Sarah Hall, Lionel Shriver and Lucy Wood. Edgar Allan Poe once claimed the greatest literary works were those that could be read ’in one sitting’. ‘Brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect,’ he argued, once the effect has been established, of course. The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2013 all use brevity with striking results, whether presenting a complex family history through the snapshots of a time-honoured, annual holiday, or using the form of a letter to demonstrate that a life mourned by a solitary woman is worth no less than one mourned by a nation. Each story sparks into life instantly and, like a struck match, leaves a vivid impression of its characters burning on the retina, long after the story has concluded. The landscapes they play out in also make their mark – from the panic-stricken streets of New York on 9/11, to the eerie quiet of a wood on the outskirts of a city, the haunted corners of an old Cornish house, to the rubble of a bombed-out office block in a country at war with itself. This year’s shortlist was drawn up by a panel of judges that included novelists Deborah Moggach, Mohsin Hamid and Peter Hobbs, as well as BBC Editor of Readings, Di Speirs, and the broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, who chaired the panel and who also introduces the collection.

Lucy Wood

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