Short Stories Challenge 2018 – Part Three

Hello everyone and welcome to my third instalment of what I’ll be reading short story wise for the rest of this year. I mentioned in my Short Stories Challenge Part Two all the way back in April that I was becoming quite disillusioned with short stories. I had read a few that I hadn’t connected as well with as others and it was becoming less enjoyable to read them. At the moment, I’m feeling pretty much the same. I have read some great short stories since April including Set-Up by Dianne Gray and The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter however I’ve also read a couple where I didn’t get on so well with them i.e. The Coincidence Of The Arts by Martin Amis and Four Hundred Rabbits by Simon Levack. I understand that I’m not going to enjoy every single short story that I come across but I’m hoping for great things this time around. At this moment in time, I should be on Part Four of my Short Stories Challenge and I’m only on Part Three. This is because I’m just not feeling motivated to pick up a short story each week like I had planned to do. Ah well, fingers crossed for these!

Ringing Night by Rosy Thornton from the collection Sandlands.

Safe Passage by Ramona Ausubel from the collection A Guide To Being Born.

The Chicken And The Egg by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

“Sorry” Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea by Helen Oyeyemi from the collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.

The Little Photographer by Daphne du Maurier from the collection The Birds And Other Stories.

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe from the collection The Best Short Stories Of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Navigator by Angela Slatter from the collection Sourdough And Other Stories.

The Small Hand by Susan Hill (stand-alone).

Sainte-Thérèse by Kate Mosse from the collection The Mistletoe Bride And Other Haunting Tales.

Sad, Dark Thing by Michael Marshall Smith from the collection A Book Of Horrors.

Blog Tour – Book Spotlight – Sour Fruit by Eli Allison

What’s it all about?:

In a not too distant future, people are split into either Citizens with rights or VOIDs with nothing. Forced to live in the former port, the VOIDs have adapted to the floods; the brutal nature of life outside of society however, is not so easy.

Onion is snatched. Which is proper shit because she still had nearly twenty quid left on her Angry Slut Teen Clothing gift card and now she was never going to get those flamingo-pink leather chaps she’d been eyeing up. She wakes up chained to an armpit of a river city, earmarked for a skin-trader called The Toymaker. Surrounded by a creeping rot she has just three days to escape before the sold sticker becomes a brand.

Forced into a knife fight with a world that has just pulled an AK47 on her, all Onion has to fight with is; a sewer for a mouth, a rusted up moral compass and a spanking anger that can sucker-punch kindness at twenty paces. She might survive but probably not.

Sour Fruit is a dark dystopian novel set in northern Britain, in a river city called Kingston; a rotting scrap yard of misery. The VOIDs are forced to live there not by walls or fences but by being invisible in the new digital world.

The novel explores ideas about what is home, how friendship can come from strange places and the debts we can’t ever pay back.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Eli Allison tells people at parties that she’s a writer, but she mostly spends the day in her knickers swearing at the laptop. She has never written anything of any fame except for a jarringly bad poem which was read out loud at her secondary school assembly (the highlight of everyone else’s school year, predictably not her own). She gave up poetry and switched to the hard stuff soon after. Writing stories about crushed dreams and balding men looking for love that you could buy by the hour. Those were her happier ones. She ping-ponged between one depressing job after another until her husband said, ‘take a year and write your book’. Years later the book is done…There is a sneaking suspicion he would have kept quiet had he known quite how long it would have taken her.

She lives in Yorkshire, works in her head and does not enjoy long walks on the beach or anywhere, in fact she gets upset at having to walk to the fridge for cheese. She suffers badly from cheese sweats but endures.

Website: http://www.eli-allison.com/

Twitter: @EliAllison3

Instagram: @eliallison_author

And for an extra special treat please check out this animation video all about Sour Fruit HERE

Interested? Grab your copy of the book HERE.

Thank you so much to Anne Cater and Unbound Publishers for inviting me to take part in this blog tour, I’ve had a wonderful time doing it. Sour Fruit was published in July 2018 and you can pre-order a limited edition by going to the link above. If you fancy more information don’t forget to check out the rest of the stops on this blog tour for some amazing reviews!

Short Stories Challenge 2018 – Part One

Image from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aniapps.shortstories

Hello everyone and welcome to the first part of my Short Stories Challenge for 2018. In part five of my challenge in 2017, like many of the other parts, I had some absolutely fantastic finds like Seeing Double by Sara Maitland, Unplugged by Dianne Gray and The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands by Stephen King. However, I also had some that I wasn’t particularly fussed about, like The Man From Mars by Margaret Atwood and Freaks by Tess Gerritsen, both of which were huge disappointments. Here’s what I’ve got lined up for the first few months of 2018:

The House At The End Of The World by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky.

Which Reminded Her, Later by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

Books And Roses by Helen Oyeyemi from the collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.

The Apple Tree by Daphne du Maurier from the collection The Birds And Other Stories.

The Balloon Hoax by Edgar Allan Poe from the collection The Best Short Stories Of Edgar Allan Poe.

Dibblespin by Angela Slatter from the collection Sourdough And Other Stories.

Remmy Rothstein Toes The Line by Karin Slaughter (stand-alone).

Why The Yew Tree Lives So Long by Kate Mosse from the collection The Mistletoe Bride And Other Haunting Tales.

A Child’s Problem by Reggie Oliver from the collection A Book Of Horrors.

At The Mountain Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft from the collection The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft.

 

Banned Books – The Titles For 2018 Revealed!

I’m delighted to say my sister and fellow blogger Chrissi Reads and I will be continuing our Banned Books challenge into 2018. Here is what we’ll be reading each month:

JANUARY: Summer Of My German Soldier-Bette Greene

FEBRUARY: Twilight-Stephenie Meyer 

MARCH: Fallen Angels -Walter Dean Myers

APRIL: Saga Volume 3 -Brian K.Vaughan and Fiona Staples

MAY: Blood And Chocolate -Annette Curtis Klause

JUNE: Brave New World-Aldous Huxley

JULY: Julie Of The Wolves -Jean Craighead George

AUGUST: I Am Jazz– Jessica Herthel

SEPTEMBER: Taming The Star Runner– S.E. Hinton

OCTOBER: Beloved -Toni Morrison

NOVEMBER: King & King -Linda de Haan

DECEMBER: Flashcards Of My Life– Charise Mericle Harper

 As always, we’ll be talking about each book on the last Monday of every month so if you’d like to join in, you’re more than welcome! Happy New Year everyone!