The Chess Board Execution and Other Stories

The stories in this book touch upon the author’s own life and his sense of humour and wide-ranging interests.

‘By the Waters of Stepney Green’ is half historical recollection, half romantic dream.

‘Gilda’, a story set in Burma in World War II, will keep you reading well into the night.

‘Gareth’ is the story of a young man from orphanage to officer and tells how deep friendship can emerge from enmity, while ‘Chess Board Execution’ is a story of love, deception and revenge.

These stories will appeal to all readers who enjoy a mixture of genres and moods.

The Camera Obscure

Supernatural secrets; psychopathy; disturbing dystopias; vanity and Victorian graveyards. Each story, evoking an atmosphere of gothic classics, will take you on a journey through past, present and possibilities, where the familiar becomes strange. The new tenant above a bookshop uncovers a terrifying truth; a man looks out of his window to discover he is completely alone; a young man’s vanity ends up ensnaring him. You will anxiously anticipate characters’ fates, whilst reflecting on your own lives and experiences. It may lead you to speculate that there are many ways to be haunted, and that the most frightening spectres walk within us and among us. 

The Aged Infant and Other Stories

In this volume, Margery Hargest Jones – whose previous books for Austin Macauley have covered some of the most iconic folk tales of the British Isles, from the Mabinogion and King Arthur to Robin Hood – now tells, or re-tells, some of her favourite stories. Three of these are given in full, while the other four are compressed into intriguing and resonant summary form.

The title story, ‘The Aged Infant’, is set in the author’s native Wales and concerns a devoted mother’s troubles with a changeling child. The next, ‘The Miraculous Watermelon’, reads like one of the piquantly comic tales from The Arabian Nights. The final tale in this section, ‘Caravan Joe’, details how the eponymous character deals with the mischievous inhabitants of Squirrel Wood.

The four subsequent summaries range from a simple anecdote about Larry the Lamb and other much-loved characters of ‘ToyTown’ to a mini-epic in which the Nordic hero Sigmund battles with a she-wolf.

Tales from Here and There

From country bars, back seats of cars
and colonies on Mars,
there’s tales to be told.

Three dozen such tales spanning irony,
pathos and humour from here and there
are presented in no particular order.

So, start anywhere
for your first ten minutes of distraction
from the cares of life.

Symmetry

Drawing on her thirty years’ experience as a social worker in England and three Australian states, Margaret Hughes’ stories explore the dark world at the heart of modern Western society. In this hidden world, children and the elderly suffer misfortune, violence and tragedy. The perpetrators of abuse and exploitation range from poor, illiterate parents to the privileged elite. The response from the authorities is, at times, protective and benign while at other times incompetent and even destructive.

But above all else, it is the survivors who shine through. Their remarkable resilience and their uniquely creative solutions break through the adversity they have suffered.

There is symmetry between the dilemmas they face and the answers they find.

Survivors of War

In Survivors of War, traverse the gripping journey from the streets of England to far-flung battlefields, spanning the years from 1931 to a post-war Christmas in 1949. This emotionally charged narrative grapples with a poignant question: How can one find joy and fulfilment after witnessing the horror and brutality of war?

The story delves into the psyche of a young man forever changed by the atrocities he encountered during World War II. Explore the transformative elements – love, friendship, and perhaps a dash of serendipity – that offer the resilience to overcome the lingering scars of battle.

The other stories in this selection cover a range of genre including crime (‘The Parcel’, ‘Behind Closed Doors’), mystery (‘The Mists of Time’, ‘Is My Twin My Sister?’), Sci-Fi (‘Phantom Island Refuge’), and romance (‘Similitude’, ‘When One Door Closes’). The stories tease the reader’s imagination in a variety of locations and scenarios.

Strange and Surreal Stories

This book is intended to amuse and interest you. You’ll meet many characters from history and see how they might have behaved in situations you’re sure to know about. There are also murderers and victims – some real and some fictitious; there’s ‘Who Dunnits’ and barbaric actions by ordinary people; there are unreal situations faced by very real characters.

There are 20 different stories for you to choose and all as fascinating as each other. Was Benedict Arnold a traitor or a hero? Did William Shakespeare really desert his wife for a better life in London? How did Abraham Lincoln earn the name ‘Honest Abe? Was Rabbie Burns as enamoured of the lassies as he was said to be? (I think you’ll find he was.)

The above are just a few examples to grip your interest – but there’s much, much more to keep you glued until the end of each story. As for the answers to the above questions, perhaps you’ll have a better idea after you’ve read this book.

Stories and Anecdotes

This is a collection of stories, anecdotes, and reminiscences written, collected, and compiled over a long professional life.

They amuse or provoke serious thought, aiming to make the reader laugh for a few moments and think for much longer.

Most are in short essay form, some with a discursive introductory beginning leading to a serious or amusing ending, the real thrust of the story.

Most are based on personal experience. The stories about bees are factual and based on a life-long hobby of beekeeping.

The last thoughtfully written section from a lifetime as a doctor is entirely serious, educational, and thought-provoking.

Spurious Conversations with Ghosts

Ghosts

A series of mild-mannered, malcontent, miscreants telling stories of mischief, malevolence, and murder.

“I think that there are ghosts.

I haven’t seen or heard

anything. I’ve definitely felt

something, but it’s not scary.”

Robbie Williams

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Ryan Gosling

Some People Come in Pairs

An unapologetic collection of writing. Some People Come in Pairs talks of Saskia and Matthew, an inseparable twin brother and sister who get sent out of London during the Blitz at the outbreak of World War 2. They get sent to live with the Jago family in a tiny fishing village in Cornwall. They discover a world of adventure, the consequence of war, a family in grief, what it means to love and be loved, the feeling of portrayal, the value of friendship, the preciousness of life itself and that well and truly some people do come in pairs.

The Comedy of Love is a short humorous story based on Lady Vester and her cavalier who go to visit her mad uncle in the country where everything goes disastrously wrong.

The Veterinary Crisis is a short comedy about a terrible day in a veterinary surgery that everyone wants to forget. This collection is completed by a series of emotive, to-the-point, thought-provoking poems. Myth, The Waves, Moor Poem and Steeplejack will be sure to make your mind wonder and your heart warmer.

Some of the Consequences

Here’s a selection of stories and poetry; some I’ve written during – or about – times of working and travelling in diverse locations.

They reflect contrasting moods and passions; the quirks and inconsistencies that shape our lives and which will ever take us unaware.

We are all, perhaps, somewhere in these pages.

Or will be…

Small Doses

Martin Penny, a disillusioned and awkward young man, looks back to a turning point in his life – when his old, boring, and enthusiasm-destroying English teacher was arrested for pimping and was replaced by a fresh new teacher, a man who managed to blow off the dead-dust of his predecessor and rekindle the reader and writer in Martin. Martin, now an English teacher himself, has to come to terms with which of these two teachers he has come to resemble most – the one he hates or the one he emulates.

Written in a free and easy style, Small Doses is a celebration of reading, writing, poetry, diary-keeping and of the little bits of magic poked, prodded and relighted back to life from the embers of memory.