Lady with Edelweiss

Human ashes in a tea caddy, a baby delivered in a snowstorm, worm pie, a priest with a passion for airbrushing. How much do we know about our friends, our families, or even ourselves? This debut collection exposes the strangeness of everyday lives, embracing the light and the dark sides of human nature.

Uncomfortably honest and direct, these stories reveal the fears and passions of the mind through their characters, places and situations, an exploration of the boundaries between fantasy and reality. These are people we all know. 

A rich potpourri of character and plot in this intriguing (and sometimes dark) collection of tales from a talented storyteller.

Angela Locke. Author of Dreams of the Blue Poppy (Robert Hale) etc

Steph Newham has empathy with all her characters so presents her stories as rounded pieces for her readers’ enjoyment. Where she takes on characters from history her research is careful and enriches her stories, which range across many subjects.

Vivien Jones. Poet, author. Co-editor Southlight Magazine

Short but not sweet, Steph Newham writes vignettes that blaze out, illuminated briefly by the photo-flash of her pen. And when the light blinks out, you are left wondering as the scene presents itself again like the complexity of good wine, each time leaving a different taste.

Tony Walker. Author of A Christmas Ghost, etc and The Classic Ghost Story podcast.

These stories are atmospheric, the characters well-drawn. In ‘Unwise Words’, I felt the young mother’s regret and shivered in fear as the bonfire was lit. The sights and smell in the four Spanish stories took me to that country and I laughed out loud at the manuring of the roses in The Sand Walk. Something here for everyone.

Gwen Kirkwood. Author of sixteen Scottish novels and novellas (Joffee Books)

Journey's Bend

A poignant collection of short stories with a vivid mix of relatable characters confronting a bend in the road. The lucid prose, rich in imagery, illuminates people’s unyielding courage in challenging times.

Dealing with bereavement, displacement and renewal, the creative tales twist and turn through the vagaries of life. In the opening story, Gran absconding from a care home makes her escape in a red Reliant Robin, an epochal vehicle from her courtship days. Courageously, in ‘Wind Horse’, Maggie harnesses her wild emotions and canters on to fresh green meadows.

Using varied settings and compelling voices of all ages, Journey’s Bend celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. Tinged with humour, the touching stories will resonate with a wide range of readers scrambling through change.

Falling Behind

Do you really know the person you have committed the rest of your life to? Are they the same person you married, once knew, or have you ignored those subtle changes and made compromises just for the sake of happily ever after? Perhaps it is you who has changed, and now everything you once cherished, once hoped for, does not bind you in the way that it once did.

Against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, Beth, and her husband Jake, travel to Samoa to reset and mend a broken marriage. But the suspicion of an affair, an addiction, a crime, or the thought that he just does not want to be around her anymore, travel with her to this island paradise.

How does it feel to lose a child? Your children are not supposed to leave you before you leave them. How do you live in a vacuum, unable to breathe, when sleep and inevitable death are the only reprieve? And then, what happens when you are responsible for their death? An old man and women, isolated from the rest of the world, abandoned by their families and neighbours, grapple with grief.

Falling Behind is a collection of six short stories that explores the character of grief and its manifestation in people and how these very same people attempt to ride it out and hope, at the same time, for it to end. As with Leaving Behind, each story bears an unexpected twist.

Events of an Ordinary Life

Events of an Ordinary Life is a collection of wide-ranging and wildly imaginative tales. The series is a mixture of fiction, supernatural fiction and true event stories that will keep you wanting more. You’ll find comedy, suspense and drama in a very enjoyable reading experience.

Epiphanies

Understanding life and its realities has always been difficult, not only for children but also for those who are considered as adults. Epiphanies is a collection of short stories that portrays challenges of life and illustrates how events can lead to some 'Aha' moments!

Dead Serious

Stanley was a skinny, timid child who dreaded school. Each Friday, his mum, Irene, would bribe him with a toy car, compelling him to attend the following week. She and his father, Pete, provided love and support, but their eldest son always remained anxious, with little self-esteem. Then, at the age of 10, a greater embarrassment caused him even more anxiety: his mother had bought him the wrong shirt for the football team he had joined with his friends.

Previously, the child had been happy to be invisible, allowing disappointment and others to take control of his life. This single incident made him determined to take charge. He had lots of friends, including Glyn and Roy, who would help him; perhaps they might even have some fun. His first test would be to stand in front of hundreds of boys when he took the school assembly.

Stan knew his struggles to change his life would be a long journey, but he was certain he could develop an inner strength and become more confident. He would no longer be 'short straw Stan' – he was ready to take control of his life.

Portrayed through separate, linked novellas, these tales of Stan's life from infancy through his teenage years may be read as one continuous novel. Alternatively, any chapter may be chosen from any novella and read as a short story.

Dead Plague

Warning: do not read this book if you are of a sensitive disposition!

Within this book lies a collection of short stories each different from the other but all connect with aspects of horror, suspense and survival, set within a post-apocalyptic world, where the dead have risen from an unknown viral outbreak, that abidingly seek the flesh of the remaining survivors.

The remaining humans attempt to find some semblance of a life on a reformed earth created by the dead. Each story depicts how the dead have reshaped the lives of the survivors and illustrates how they struggle to conform to the change while trying to hold onto some sanity and attempt to continue with life while pondering how long that life will be.

Day Return to Cocoa Yard

Day Return to Cocoa Yard is an anthology of sixteen novellas and short stories charting the journey of underdogs, whether they're children, adults, murderers or tragic lovers.

Crack and Other Short Stories

Four compelling and visceral tales – very different in their settings and characters, but alike in their vividness and intensity. 

Crack is about the narrator's peculiar encounter with a man he meets smoking crack-cocaine in a phone box. The Prototype is a send-up to late nineteenth-century gothic horror and tells the story of a woman's mayfly resurrection. Our Fathers takes place on the day after the UK EU referendum and it explores the impacts this event had on many people's personal lives. The final story, Etchings on a Stone Wall, is a surreal tale about four people imprisoned in a monolithic structure, who are taunted by the sunlight that shines down from above the wall.

Bart Lambert’s debut short story collection is an energetic and vibrant read, written in a style that is witty, suspenseful and sometimes even shocking.

Collectanea Cygna

Collectanea Cygna is a collection of 25 short stories, ranging from humour to pathos, from fantasy to science fiction and time travel, and from love stories to tragedy. Each story is complete in itself. 

Travel back to the Second World War or forward to a virtual reality environment. Empathise with the loss of loved ones or rejoice in the finding of one’s true love. See inside the mind of a murderer or laugh at the antics of the newly retired. This book will take you on many journeys.

Cleaning Stories And Other Tails

Cleaning Stories And Other Tails is a broad sweep of mainly the underclass. Bread crumbs of prostitution, idyllic adoption and the mumblings of a white woman near an indigenous reserve make the reader ponder, lash out and albeit care for the various winners and losers that cross days and nights.

The characters drawn from a realm of healers, liars and ordinary Joes populate urban landscapes with self-deprecating wit, emotional shortcomings and identifiable crisis.

The first incarnation of this book was a rough sketch I did while working as a maid in the Jewish ghetto of Montreal, Quebec.

There have been many stained mattresses, unavailable rooms, and smoke-inhaled lobbies in the interim.

Christmas Stories 2

Christmas Stories 2 is another collection of ten short magical stories that focus on the parts of Christmas we all love and will take you to a place where time stands still. Each story has been thoughtfully hand-picked from a range of ideas with each tale carefully woven word by word to make Christmas Stories 2 a masterpiece.