“Stories are mysterious things; they have a life of their own”- Joan Aiken In a writing career spanning six decades, Joan Aiken wrote stories of wolves, naughty pet ravens, pirates, necklaces made of raindrops, and much more. This Christmas, we publish a collection of her favourite stories, including The Gift Giving, which you can read exclusively below. The…
Inspired by our re-issue of four Daphne du Maurier collections this month, earlier this year we teamed up with Stylist Magazine and asked your for your chilling short stories. The entries poured in – covering everything from magical realism to mental illness – and having whittled down almost 500 entries to a shortlist of 10, our judges have finally selected a winner….
The Freeze–Dried Groom The next thing is that his car won’t start. It’s the fault of the freak cold snap, caused by the polar vortex – a term that’s already spawned a bunch of online jokes by stand-up comics about their wives’ vaginas. Sam can relate to that. Before she finally cut him off,…
Peacocks A short story from Foreign Brides – an extract The strangest thing about this house is that the boiler is in the attic. Whenever the heating goes off, which happens quite often, Vera has to climb up the old aluminium ladder, squeeze through the narrow square opening in the floorboards and relight the pilot….
This month we published two of Daphne du Maurier‘s best-loved and most spine-tingling short story collections as Virago Modern Classics designer hardbacks. Both The Birds and Don’t Look Now come with covers by award-winning textiles designer Neisha Crosland – find out more about them on the gorgeous Selvedge blog. Du Maurier is the queen of…
