The French have a saying: Il faut cultiver son jardin. The English have a slightly different approach: You have to develop your talents. After years of loyal service to the Treasury department of a busy City corporation, Chris Bower's narrator is forced out of the rat race after an unexpected heart attack. Following bypass surgery, he is told to take 'gardening leave', with a nice pay-off to look forward to. And nothing else. Disheartened, he and his lovely wife, Sally, are left to pick up the pieces. Tired of moping, he eventually turns to painting and decides to develop his talent, which...

Fiction. MY VERY END OF THE UNIVERSE is a celebration and study of an increasingly popular genre: the novella-in-flash, a novella built of standalone flash stories. The novellas in this collection Betty Superman by Tiff Holland, Here, Where We Live by Meg Pokrass, Shampoo Horns by Aaron Teel, Bell and Bargain by Margaret Patton Chapman, and The Family Dogs by Chris Bower are compact and specific, yet whole and universal, using the flexibility of the genre to offer a polyphony of setting and emotion. Accompanying each novella-in-flash is a craft...