Shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, this book explores the passing of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and comic pitfalls.

Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography.

Jack McNulty, a former UN observer, has worked around the world and seen extraordinary things but, as he contemplates his return to Ireland after many years, his memories are dominated by his tumultuous marriage to Mai Kirwan. A great beauty with a vivid mind, Mai was also an elusive and troubled soul, stuck in a marriage that couldn't last.

When James proposes, it seems like an opportunity for Jane to leave her lonely past behind and become part of a family. But the presence of a woman in the cottage near their remote farmhouse threatens Jane's new-found happiness.

Severely wounded in the Iraq war, Leroy has lived a half-life in a group home for eight years. Unable to bear it any longer, he commits a desperate act which helps him to disappear to another place. Freddie is the night porter at the home, who works two jobs yet can't make ends meet.

Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She is attractive. She drives a red Corvette. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed and devoted to her. But Celeste has a secret. She has a singular sexual obsession - fourteen-year-old boys. It is a craving she pursues with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought.

When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the physical likeness of a long-dead lover.

A title that brings together eight stories: 'The Next Glade', 'Bind Your Hair' and 'The Stains' appeared together in The Wine-Dark Sea in 1988 while 'The Unsettled Dust', 'The House of the Russians', 'No Stronger Than a Flower', 'The Cicerones' and 'Ravissante' first appeared in Sub Rosa in 1968.

Robert Aickman (1914-1981) was the grandson of Richard Marsh, a leading Victorian novelist of the occult. Though his chief occupation in life was first as a conservationist of England's canals he eventually turned his talents to writing what he called 'strange stories.' This book tells his story.

In a forgotten corner of a rain-lashed park in Amsterdam, the body of a tramp is found. The scarring on his body suggests he may be the latest victim of a serial killer terrorizing the city, but the police can find no name, only the telephone number of a young Englishman.

When Gaby Baillieux, a young woman from suburban Melbourne, releases the Angel Worm into the computers of Australias prison system, hundreds of asylum seekers walk free. Worse: the system is run by an American corporation, so some 5,000 US prisons are also infected. Doors spring open. Both countries' secrets threaten to pour out.

Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven paces by nine, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires and temptations.

When two police officers knock on Laura's door, her life changes forever. Her nine-year-old daughter Betty has been killed in a hit-and-run car accident. When the death is ruled an accident, Laura takes revenge into her own hands. But will her daughter's killer be brought to justice?

Ram Karan, a corrupt official in the Delhi school system, lives in one of the city's slums with his widowed daughter and his eight-year-old granddaughter. Bumbling, contradictory, sad, Ram is a man corroded by a guilty secret.

Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.

Once an officer in the Irish War for Independence, Moran is now a widower, eking out a living on a small farm where he raises his two sons and three daughters. Adrift from the structure and security of the military, he keeps control by binding his family close to him.

Tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour.

Offering a strange sort of summation and laughter, this titles casts light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence.

Ajaiyi is a man born into poverty who is determined to improve his situation. In the hope of finding the money he needs, he travels through unfamiliar lands filled with strange creatures. He meets the Spirit of Fire with its huge feathered head and flaming body, and receives assistance from a wizard and a unicorn.

Simbi is a rich and beautiful girl with a wonderful singing voice. She tires of her comfortable lifestyle, and decides that she must come to know poverty and punishment.

The people of a Yoruba village gather on ten memorable nights to hear the stories and wisdom of their chief. They learn of his adventures, among them his encounter with the Jungle Witch and her ostrich, his visit to the town of the water people and his imprisonment by the Goddess of Diamonds.

The major and stunning new novel about wartime espionage from bestselling author William Boyd

Contains stories from the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and is illustrated by Charles Vess. This book includes the characters of a conceited Regency clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish doctor and Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as two characters from "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: Strange himself and the Raven King".

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, brilliantly coached by Joey 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from the parish hall to the steps of the studio door.