Read a story from Diving Belles, by Lucy Wood

With a luminous, startling and utterly spellbinding debut collection, Lucy Wood is a spectacular new voice in contemporary British fiction.

Alan Bennett reads from Smut

Smut: Two Unseemly Stories is the brand new book from Alan Bennett. Co-published by Faber and Profile Books, both ‘unseemly stories’ concern women in middle-life: Mrs Donaldson, whom sex takes by surprise, and Mrs Forbes, who is not surprised at all. The stories are naughty, honest and very funny.

A Motorcycle for a Horse, by Willy Vlautin

Listen to a spoken word short story by Willy Vlautin, frontman of the band Richmond Fontaine, and author of the novels Lean on Pete, Northline and The Motel Life. The story features characters from Lean on Pete, and music by Richmond Fontaine.

Jarvis Cocker reads a story from David Eagleman’s Sum

In this startling book, David Eagleman shows us forty possibilities of life beyond death. With wit and humanity, he asks the key questions about existence, hope, technology and love. These short stories are full of big ideas and bold imagination – hear Jarvis Cocker read Descent of Species.

Maile Meloy on Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

Find out about new short story collection Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It from author Maile Meloy, and read one of the stories here on Bookhugger.

Little Hands Clapping and a short film

Canongate is re-issuing Dan Rhodes’s Anthropology and Timoleon Vieta Come Home to coincide with the publication of Little Hands Clapping, the latest novel from the man described by the Guardian as ‘reliably odd but fabulous’.

The early years of Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) came from an unlikely background for a future literary celebrity. Unlike most of his fellow writers, he wasn’t from an aristocratic family but a conservative, merchant one. Rosamund Bartlett, who edited and translated the stories in the collection About Love, introduces Chekhov

Listen now

Oscar Wilde, a “Jester at the Court of English Literature”?

Though perhaps better known for his plays and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde published three collections of short stories during his lifetime. John Sloan introduces Oscar Wilde’s literary career and the place of the short story within it.

Listen now

Short Story Collection Wins Guardian First Book Award 2009

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah, published by Faber, has won the Guardian First Book Award 2009, in association with Waterstone’s.

Listen to an interview with Petina Gappah

Read an extract from An Elegy for Easterly

November Contemporary Fiction Round-up

The best and the brightest new fiction from the Bookhugger publishers in November – including some great stocking fillers!

Scare yourself with Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters

Nominated for a 2009 World Fantasy Award, this weird, wicked, spooky and delicious book of tall tales will keep you up all night. Read one of the stories here on Bookhugger.

The Loudest Sound and Nothing, by Clare Wigfall

Read the title story from Clare Wigfall’s acclaimed short story collection, here on Bookhugger.

The Stephen Fry effect

One tweet from Stephen Fry was all it took to send sales of David Eagleman’s Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives soaring in to the heavens…

An interview with Petina Gappah

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer whose short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel. Here, she talks to George Miller about her early life, the grim reality of modern Zimbabwe, and her debut collection of short stories, An Elegy for Easterly.

Listen now

Read ‘Greta’ from Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity

From the author of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a Richard & Judy Summer Read 2008 and Sunday Times bestseller, comes a vibrantly fresh and lustrous short story collection. Rebecca Miller explores the multifaceted lives of women in seven arresting portraits.

Kazuo Ishiguro: Nocturnes trailer

A beautiful animated trailer by George Wu for Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall.