This story collection carries us like an outgoing tide, on a wave retreating from the underworld of 21st century London to a Dublin hinterland in the 1970's and beyond, to the time of coalmen, tenements, and bicycles. "They're all here, the charmers, the snakes, the innocent, the complaisant, the guilt-ridden and the guilty, the Brothers, the whores, the poor and the young, the invulnerable, the jailed and the dead, the green and the truant, the music box and the p.a, the skaters, the crooners, and the pink neon sign that blinks all night, saying keys, keys, keys..."

This anthology of the best of the international Willesden Short Story Prize is a feast of new stories from Willie Davis, Steve Finbow, James Lawless, Lee Joans, Nicholas Hogg, Wes Lee, Vanessa Gebbie, Jonathan Attrill, Laura Solomon, Shakti Bhatt, Laura Heggie, Olesya Mishechkina, and Arthur Allan.

"A while back, when I was going through a bit of a tough time, this guy I knew, Paul, bought himself a restaurant, and when it was still pretty new and he'd spent all his money on forks and skewers and real people who knew how to run a restaurant, he asked if I would help out, and I said yes because I didn't have a job and I didn't seem to be capable of getting a job and I didn't have a clue how to get myself out of the hole I'd fallen into." (The opening sentence of Work by Jo Lloyd). Celebrate the miracle of wonderful fiction with the best new short stories of the year from Jenny Barden,...

Fourteen of the best short stories of the year 2010 from brilliant new and award-winning authors, seven by men and seven by women. The stories are set in Australia, Ireland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, UK, US and more. Contributors: Wena Poon, Toby Litt, Julia Goubert, Willie Davis, Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Kevin Spaide, Carys Davies, Jonathan Attrill, Peggy Riley, Tom Vowler, Paul McGuire, Jo Cannon, Jarred McGinnis, Henrietta Rose-Innes.

The best of the Willesden Herald international short story prize 2011. Twelve new stories set as far afield as China and New Zealand, Sweden and the US as well as several from Britain and Ireland.'Every human type and taste is here - sad, funny, fresh, sharp, gripping, sour and sweet - delicious small mysteries that suddenly reveal their secret hearts.' (Maggie Gee)

The best new short stories of 2013, as submitted to the Willesden Herald international short story competition. This year we are transported to locations in Australia, Britain, Ireland, Italy and Nigeria as vividly as in a waking dream. Relationships within and around families are played out in dramatic scenes of crisis, social alienation, dark humour and ultimately compassion. All in the company of ten writers with effulgent and compelling narrative gifts.

Sensual and atmospheric, embattled and defiant, in the throes of turbulent events and viewing from a distance, these stories are windows that open onto the men, women and children of our twenty-first century world. The people portrayed do not seek our pity nor our love but with each turn of a page, we may feel that we want to reach out to them to say, I know, I know, I know - you are not alone. Short stories by Jo Barker Scott, Joan Brennan, Gina Challen, Nick Holdstock, CG Menon, Dan Powell, Angela Sherlock, Megan Taylor, Medina Tenour Whiteman, Lindsay Waller-Wilkinson.

"If the lady at table twenty-four asks me for another side of ranch dressing, I'm going to stab her in the neck with a fork..." Scott Holden lives two lives. In one, he waits tables, enduring an unending siege of abuse from customers, co-workers, and bosses. Invisible to them, he also feels like there's a target on his back. In the other, Scott is a writer during furloughs from his working-class nightmare. But the line between his work identity and his artistic one is blurring under the strain. Is his life filling his fiction with violent daydreams or is his writing fueling the real-life...