This short story adaptation of the award-winning play Cuthbert's Last Stand is now available in this new anthology of comedic short stories from the pen of author and playwright Andrew Biss. Cuthbert's Last Stand: Mrs. Pennington-South has succeeded in coercing a handsome young man - Tristram - back to her home to have tea with her and her ill-tempered son, Cuthbert. What the shy, rather awkward Tristram doesn't realise is that he is, in fact, being presented as a possible suitor for Cuthbert. His mother's matchmaking arrangements, however, have become increasingly intolerable for Cuthbert...

From award-winning author Andrew Biss comes a riveting story of top secret experiments, government deception and fatally misplaced trust. May, 1953. Stalin has just died and the Cold War is in full swing. As relations between East and West continue to deteriorate, the race is on to research and develop the most advanced nuclear and biochemical weaponry, all beneath a heavy cloak of secrecy. A young RAF Leading Aircraftman, meanwhile, has answered an advertisement looking for volunteers for tests to find a cure for the common cold. For fifteen shillings and a precious three-day pass, it was an...

Valentine's parents have decided that the time has finally come for their son to leave home and discover life for himself. As he ventures forth into the vast world beyond, his new adventure is soon drawn to a halt when he is mugged at gunpoint. Frightened and exhausted, he seeks shelter at a bed and breakfast establishment named The End of the World, run by the dour Mrs. Anna. Here Valentine encounters a Bosnian woman with a hole where her stomach used to be, an American entrepreneur with a scheme to implant televisions into people's foreheads, and a Catholic priest who attempts to lure him...

As a boy, Horatio Higgins was ignored by the other children, but that didn't stop him having lots of friends...friends only he could see and whom he'd regale with tales of his fantastical exploits. Eventually, though, his parents became concerned at the inordinate amount of time their son appeared to spend talking to himself and took him for treatment, which, in time, proved successful...almost. One friend remained. Unfortunately it was the spiteful one. Years later, living alone in his tiny London flat, Horatio's loneliness is mitigated only by his acid-tongued friend and the company of what...

After a young student is brutally raped and murdered, her parents, Tom and Christine, are confronted with the daunting task of processing their grief and attempting to come to terms with the horror that befell their child. The paths they take in doing so, however, couldn't be starker in contrast. Christine has withdrawn into a deadened world of suppressed rage and bitterness that has left her incapable of seeing beyond the terrible tragedy that has visited her. Her husband, Tom, on the other hand, has taken the unusual step of publicly announcing his forgiveness of their daughter's killer. At...

A collection of five thematically related, darkly humorous one-act plays from award-winning playwright Andrew Biss, in which ordinary people find themselves in the most extraordinary circumstances. An Honest Mistake: Madge has long since surrendered herself to the verbal abuse doled out to her by her belligerent husband, Stan. On this particular evening, however, her fears of a rat beneath the floorboards, combined with her absent-mindedness, result in her dishing up Stan not only his evening meal - but also his just deserts A Familiar Face: Two elderly women, old friends, meet up in a...