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The site was last updated:  

4 January 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Motion

Edited by Liz Joyce & Tony Scofield

2023

178 pages. ISBN 978-1-7384926-0-1.

£7.50

Motion contains twenty-one of the best short stories on the theme of Motion selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2023 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works in the junior category by Pritha Halder, Yuen Tong Law, Gloria Mesa, Radiyah Nouman, Charlotte Moran, Thalia Peterson, Kantaphat Pinaree, Catherine Saunders,
Tessa Shutter, Sarah-Kate Simons and Allison VanHuysen. The senior category comprises works by Steven Jackson, Anna Linstrum, Ashia Mirza, Neong Chee Kein (Arthur), Mary Onions, Katie Rizzo, Kerry Ryan, Jarick Weldon and Keltie Zubko.

The paperback and Kindle ebook are available from most Amazon sites around the world including:

UK Site: Amazon UK & US site: Amazon US

(Use 'Motion Joyce' as the search in the Amazon book section)

Switch

Switch

Edited by Liz Joyce & Tony Scofield

2022

136 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-9-3.

£5.49

Switch contains thirteen of the best short stories on the theme of Switch selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2022 H.G. Wells Short Story
Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Kim A Bigelow,
Amanda D'Errico, Sasha Gill, David McVey, Stephen O'Reilly, Adrian Paul, Susannah Rickards, Jamie Littlewood, Katie Farrell, Ryan Lee, Ginny Martin, Amelie Roscoe and Adriana Tihan.

The paperback and Kindle ebook are available from most Amazon sites including:

UK Site: Amazon.co.uk     US site: Amazon.com  

and more. (Use 'Switch Joyce' as the search in the Amazon book section)

Mask

Edited by Liz Joyce & Tony Scofield

2021

232 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-8-6.

£8.49

Mask contains twenty-one of the best short stories on the theme of 'Mask' selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2021 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition.
Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Jessica Brien, Clara Chiu, Sophia Felsinger, Sarah Holm, Mia Ramage, Sumedha Sengupta, Sarah-Kate Simons, Nathan Steward, Weiyen Tan, Houssam Alissa, Fija Callaghan, Peter Collins, Simha Haddad, Katherine Haynes, E. S. Heffernan, Tony Hunter-Craig, Bethany Ridley-Duff, Lee Stoddart, Sarah Townend, Dan Vanvik and
Stephen Webb.

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Only UK orders are accepted from this site. To order from anywhere else in the world please use amazon.co.uk: Maskpbk

Also available soon as a Kindle download from Amazon

Vision

Vision

Edited by Liz Joyce & Tony Scofield

2020

232 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-7-9.

£7.99

Vision contains twenty of the best short stories on the theme of Vision selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2020 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition.
Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Priyadarshini Barua, Utshaa Basu, Isabel Burns, Hannah Jennison, Tesni Penney, Tabitha Rubens, Dewi Schmidt, Matilda Stepek, Lucy Thynne, Gemma Al-Khayat, Elou Carroll, Ian Critchley, Matthew Dickens, Alwin George V, Newton Grange, Rhiannon Lewis, Susannah Rickards, Paul Sherman, Francine van den Berg and Ali Wilding.

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Also available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Virtues front cover

The Colours of Virtue

Elizabeth Medler

2020

96 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-6-2.

£7.99

This book sketches some of the qualities and virtues we all need for living life well and coming closer to our own Self, whose raiment is pure white and yet contains all the colours of the rainbow. Each offering is accompanied by a meditation which hopefully will go some way towards unfolding its significance and make it relevant to the reader. Rather than being read as a book from beginning to end in linear form, you can dip into it as often as you like and let the page fall where it will.

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It is also available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Time

Time

Edited by Liz Joyce, Tony Scofield & Lee Stoddart

2019

184 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-5-5.

£7.99

Time contains twenty of the best short stories on the theme of Time selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2019 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Kirsty Balfour, Natalie
Boal, Hiya Chowdhury, Sinéad Donaghy, James Huang, Meg Lintern, Laura Maria Steel Pascual, Bethany Ridley-Duff, Shelby de Rond, Krystal Song, Lee Amoss, Charlotte Bracey, David Bradley, Frances Brindle, Cheryl Buck, Lesley Bungay, Beverley Haddon, Matthew McDonald, Saritha Rao Rayachoti and Fiona Salter.

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Also available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Peace

Edited by Charles Bain Smith

2018

192 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-4-8.

£7.99

Peace contains nineteen of the best short stories on the theme of Peace selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2018 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Martha Boyd, Hannah Fagan, Martha Grogan, Marcus McCabe, Jake Muttitt, Bethany Ridley-Duff, Hope Thompson, Rere Ukponu, Abaan Zaidi, Rosie Andrews, Jake Blandford, A V Bruce, Zachary Godin, Bobbie Allen, Mary Onions, Wendy Riley, Nicola Thompson and Diane Wisdom.

OUT OF PRINT

Also available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Draw up a Chair

Edited & compiled by Elizabeth Medler

2018

94 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-3-1.

£7.99

These short stories show that in times of great need, we are supported. This support comes in many ways - through mentors, family, friends, strangers and sometimes from unseen Guardian Angels. These radiant beings drop shining pearls into the pool of our minds, prompting us to act or refrain from acting.  Sometimes we are guided to say or do things which may seem illogical at the time but, with hindsight, prove to be just the right thing. Again we may have been mulling over a thorny problem. These stories and accompanying exercises will help you to relish the joy of living.

OUT OF PRINT

Also available as a Kindle download from Amazon

The Quarry

The Quarry

David Unsworth

2018

44 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-2-4.

£4.99

Curated over many years, 'The Quarry' explores the construction of identity through a deeply emotive, poetic collection. Dream-like and visceral, this personal work is built on life's waterways, a raging confluence of currents, stretching away into the future, resolved, and their directions chosen.

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Casa da Branca

Light

Edited by Charles Bain Smith

2017

181 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-1-7.

£7.00

Light contains twenty of the best short stories on the theme of Light selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2017 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Hazel Atkinson, Mina Bixley, Malak Elsouri, Grace Howarth, Kaylene Jackmore, Francesca Kennedy, Elizabeth Kuiper, Laura Steel Pascual, Sithara Ranasinghe, Ashira Shirali, Alex Reece Abbott, Dianne Bown-Wilson, D R D Bruton, Mark Howard, Anthony Howcroft, Robin Jones, Sally Lane, Anne Petrie, Louise Rimmer

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Also available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Casa da Branca

Casa da Branca

By Rosie Vidovix

2017

209 pages. ISBN 978-0-9955730-0-0.

£7.99

Desperate circumstances force Branquinha, a sensitive, intelligent and fun-loving girl, to work in a brothel in a gold-mining village deep in the Amazon rainforest.
Far from her beloved mother, life is made bearable for her by the company of the other women in the house, the friendship of Zulmira, the kindly cook, and gay bartender, Murilo, but there is also the sadness lurking in the women's personal lives, the violence which can erupt at any moment, and, of course, the men.

How will Branquinha survive in one of the most dangerous and inhospitable places in Brazil?

Based on real stories, Casa da Branca gives an account of life in a land where social conventions are of no significance and people make their own rules.

Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

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Space

Space

Edited by Charles Bain Smith

2016

184 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-9-5.

£7.99

Space contains twenty of the best short stories on the theme of Space selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2016 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Holly Cartwright, Caitlin Evans, Grace Haddon, Eve Lytollis, Charlotte Mullen, Laura Steel Pascual, Alice Sargent, Allison Stevick, Emma Strutt, Jake Trimmer, Victoria Wang, Hilary Dean, Wei-Li Chin, DJ Dingham, Kate L. Jefford, David Norman, Anne Petrie, Michele Sheldon and Diane Wisdom.

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Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Born of the Island and Other Sea Stories

Edited by Rosie Unsworth

2012

246 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-1-9.

£7.99

Born of the Island and Other Sea Stories contains twenty-two of the best short stories on the theme of The Sea selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2012 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors under the age of twenty-six and authors twenty-six years of age and over, and include works by Angus Nesbit, Anastasia Bow-Bertrand, Sinéad Stoddart, Akiho Schilz, Sophie Lister, William Jarrett, Holly Ice, Daisy-Mae Perkins, Karl Mercer, Michele Sheldon, David Griffin, David Shonfield, Mike Umbers, Pat Ashford, Hummel C. Addams, Mel Fawcet, Don Nixon, Andrew Campbell-Kearsey, Fabian Acker, Rik Thomas and Anthony Hulse.

OUT OF PRINT

Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

 

Flight

Edited by Rosie Vidovix Unsworth

2013

196 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-3-3.

£7.99

Flight contains twenty-one of the best short stories on the theme of Flight selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2013 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors under the age of 20 and authors aged 20 years and above and include works by Sithara Ranasinghe, Matthew Thurgood, Lottie Pyper, Benjamin R. Davies, Jonathan Wood, Rebecca Hamilton, Jasmine Ayoubi, Joshua Lambert, Edward Butterfield, Emma Hollands, Christopher Campbell, Sheila Liggett, Diane Wisdom, K. Lockwood Jefford, Paul Burns, Cathy Lennon, Jade Moulds, Sue Healy, Steven M. Dodd, Lee Stoddart and Hermione Laake.

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Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Financial Crisis - The Black UMP

Edward Creto

2014

138 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-4-0.

£6.99

There will always be financial crises. There is an infinite field of potential crises in which we have a camp surrounded by a fence. A new crisis sometimes gets into the camp so we chuck it out and repair the fence. If we discarded money and the financial system then we would have no financial crises but we would find ourselves encamped in a different field surrounded by different problems. These fields are just life seen from different angles and problems cannot be resolved until we all agree what the problems are.
This is about the crises in the camp from 2007 onwards including the Subprime Crisis, the Eurozone Crisis, and unconventional monetary/fiscal responses. It is preceded by some essential background. I have tried hard to make it as concise, clear and simple as possible. It is for anybody interested in the subject and with the ability (with a little effort) to understand it.
Unconventional Monetary Policy (UMP) refers to new, untested policies introduced by Central Banks and governments to stabilise and manage the financial sector and the economy during the crisis. It is not clear how to exit UMP. We may be inside an Unconventional Monetary Policy black hole – a black UMP.

This is the second expanded and revised edition of The Black UMP.

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Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Fortune

Edited by Liz Joyce

2014

192 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-5-7.

£7.50

Fortune contains twenty of the best short stories on the theme of Fortune selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2014 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Esther M. White, Sithara Ranasinghe, Gemma Talbot, Alexandra Jessop, Will Jarrett, John Noden, Rosie Carter, C. Jay Divine, Gabrielle Corry-Mead, K. Lockwood Jefford, Emma Norry, Adam Colton, Catherine Higgins-Moore, Craig Smith, Giselle Evans, Fabian Acker, Amy Licence, Alex Reece Abbott, Ikhtisad Ahmed and Melanie Whipman

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Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

We Simply Didn't Know What it Would be Like

An Anthology by the Children of Folkestone and Beyond

2015

74 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-7-1.

£5.00

The children of Folkestone schools and beyond have produced, letters, poems, diaries, paintings and short stories to illustrate the role of women in the First World War. The project used the material to produce a show at St Mary and St Eanswythe Church in Folkestone. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go the church fund.

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Class

Edited by Liz Joyce

2015

286 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-8-8.

£8.50

Class contains twenty six of the best short stories on the theme of Class selected by the judges from a large entry for the 2015 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition. Stories are divided into two groups: authors 21 years of age and under and authors aged 22 years and above and include works by Georgia Bozianu, William Carroll, Esmé Ford, Holly Friend, Lowri Mathias, Marcus McCabe, Julia Mun, Lauren Ross, Molly Watkins, Cassandra Yong, Dorothy Bruce, Eve Chancellor, Catherine Higgins-Moore, Anne O'Brien, Anne Padley, Daniel Penfold, Thomas Pitts, Auriel Roe, Eleanor Ross, Dave Shonfield, Anstey Spraggan, Lee Stoddart, Thomas Wadsworth, Melanie Whipman and S. Zatland

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Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

Glebeings End

Glebeings End

By Olivia Minerva

2012

229 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-0-2.

£7.95

"Inspector Hoskins says it's a genuine medieval settlement!" Police Constable Avril Lee couldn't contain her awe. "You know," she continued, marvelling volubly, "I had never before actually seen Glebeings End; in fact, until that big fire, when the Mainwaring house burned down, I never even knew this place existed! Then Glebe Close got built where the old house was... Ten houses where one used to be, we heard it was… And now all this other stuff has happened!" She paused a moment, then added, almost accusingly, "But before the upset and everything, you must have been tucked away here for hundreds of years!"

To Marlys, it sometimes felt that way.

As she put it to Myrtle, over the teacups, "We go for decades without a ripple of scandal or disquiet—boring each other to death—and then, suddenly, Doreen collapses and dies at her front gate, the dogs are found slaughtered, George disappears with a woman in a new Subaru and we get two most ghastly murders!"

Myrtle's riposte "Doreen could not help dying" was probably true, as far as it went...

Available as a Kindle download from Amazon

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Paddlesworth

Paddlesworth Court Farm

M.J. Cross

2016

182 pages.

£8.99

Paddlesworth Court Farm 1866-1966. A History of the Cross Family and Farm Diaries
The story of Paddlesworth Court Farm and the Cross family who farmed it for over 100 years from 1866. Farm diaries covering the years 1927 to 1966 give a detailed account of the changes in agricultural practice following the Second World War, the decline in pastoral farming (the selling of all pigs and eventually of the dairy herd but not the sheep) and the increasing cultivation of cereal crops brought about by social, political and economic
forces.

Available from the author. Email for ordering details: info@trencavel.co.uk

Buttoned-up Shapes

Poems by George Tardios

2015

84 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572485-6-4.

£7.99

George Tardios vividly portrays Cypriot characters and ancestors in this image-filled portrait of his mother's village, as it used to be.
The poems gradually become autobiographical as they move to England, where his mother emigrated in 1935.

George Tardios was Director of Totleigh Barton, the Arvon Foundation's first residential creative writing centre in Devon. Has had poems in six 'PEN/Arts Council Anthologies' published by Hutchinson; the 'Puffin Book of Salt Sea Verse' edited by Charles Causley; 'The Way To Write', J. Moat & J. Fairfax (Elm Tree Books); 'English For Me', Eric Boagey (University Tutorial Press); 'Apple Fire', and 'On Common Ground', Jill Pirrie (Bloodaxe Books, and WWF).
A collection of poems, 'BullSong' was published by Charlotte Press. Recently, poems in 'Cadences' (European University of Cyprus), and 'The London Magazine'.
Participated in 'Poets in Schools' scheme and tutored creative writing courses for the Arvon Foundation.
Organised the first 'National Poetry Competition' for the Poetry Society at Earl's Court, and for the Arvon Foundation. Judged the BBC2 'South Bank Show' Poetry Competition.

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Review by George Lucas in London Grip Poetry Review

George Tardios’s Buttoned-Up Shapes has an untroubled, if never bland, relish for the earthly. A Greek-Cypriot by birth, Tardios uses his poems to record and often celebrate village and family life in a culture from which, though he now lives in London, still animates his memories. Photographs of local scenes and people, together with substantial explanatory end-notes, plump out the multi-dimensionality of Tardios’s collection. Like so much Greek art, like so much Greek experience, Buttoned-Up Shapes comes across as a blend of the comic, the tragic, and the fatalistic. If there are moments when Woods’ poems summon up the shade of Cavafy, Tardios’s work, in powerful comparison, is reminiscent of Kazantzakis, of the Cretan’s bare-chested, unflinching acceptance of all that happens to happen.

And yet the word “acceptance” is too passive, too genteel even, to do justice to the full-throated note that Tardios at his best, or most characteristic, habitually sounds. Reading his work you’re aware of how judicious, how risk-free, much Anglo-phone writing by comparison seems.

The sea rang  
round my seven white years.  
I listened to the horizon  
Careful  To catch Aphrodite’s song.  
Perhaps some miracle                           
(“Intitiation at Paphos.”)     

It isn’t fair, you want to mutter. We can’t listen to Aphrodite’s song. It isn’t ours to hear. Still, even Greek poets have to know how to address the history with which they’ve been as much burdened as blessed. Village life in particular can be oppressive and Tardios refuses to sentimentalise. Hence his notating the casual or anyway tolerated cruelty to animals; hence, too, his acknowledgement of how rejection inevitably comes to all who fall foul of convention, of rules they can do nothing to follow.

Elders blamed his parents  
Mother dead  Father in the hills with sheep ….    
As locals foretold he was expelled from school.
The whole village crossed to the other side.                                        
(“Swollen River”).     

I doubt that any one of us born into Northern European cultures can ever fully comprehend the near-laconic fatalism of these unyielding, implacable lines.

It would, however, be quite wrong to give the impression that this collection is dominated by failure, let alone defeat. “And still the grass eternal springs.” John Clare’s great assertion speaks from and to a readiness to more than endure which, though most recognisable perhaps in the long, trampled-on history of peasantry, is discoverable elsewhere. Hence, Tardios’s long poem “Ioulia and Francos”, which celebrates, or anyway attests to, an indomitable persistence of two lovers against the rebuffs they have to endure. And another long poem, “So I’m Told”, perhaps the finest in the collection, is vivid with the particularities of lives remembered, the rhythmic fluency of its narration giving it a strength beyond the merely notational:

Under this shivering light, earth exhales night-time heat.  
Herbal warmth enfolds us both like wings  
Pilgrims to a sun-scorched land asleep  
In the middle-sea of middle-earth –  
Rancid goats, hiccupping donkeys, potent cocks  
Beds laid on flat mud-roots --  
Pointing defiant fingers at the Muslim coast    
Morning, street-sellers chant their wares,  
An isle of wonders ripe with noises. 

This, and other poems in Buttoned-Up Shapes, are, in their atmospheric density, reminiscent of the prose tales of the nineteenth-century master, Alexandros Papadiamantis, bringing onto the page the vivid quality of Greek island life, its rough, grainy texture, though Tardios, perhaps by virtue of writing in verse, knows better than did Papadiamantis where to let well alone, where to stop. Great stuff.

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