Showing results by author "Stacy Aumonier" in All Categories

A wonderful selection of some of the most bizarre and unsettling stories ever written.

Stacy Aumonier was described by John Galsworthy as "one of the best short-story writers of all time". Odd Fish gives a keen insight into why the Nobel Prize winner believed Aumonier would outlive the writers of his day. In this collection of sketches of London Characters, Aumonier amply exhibits his genius for characterisation, his keen wit and his ruthless ascerbity.

One of Stacy Aumonier's best-loved short stories, telling the story of a surprising evening with Colin St Clair Chasseloup: "the kind of man who always looked as though he had just had a cold bath, done Swedish drill, and then passed through the hairdresser’s on his way to your presence." Chasseloup and the narrator are dragged along by their wives to a concert which interests neither of them. Both men make their escape from the concert, and decide to go for a drink, forgetting that it is a Sunday night and the pubs are closed.

The story of two brothers, who could not be more opposite, experience the Great War in different ways. Giles, the elder, popular, sporty brother enlists as a soldier. Robin, the younger, sickly brother is rejected when he tries to join up. Yet a mysterious bond exists between the brothers. When Giles leaves for the trenches, it is as though Robin goes with him. He experiences all the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of his elder brother.

Stacy Aumonier was a British writer, best known for his outstanding short stories. Nobel Prize-winner John Galsworthy described Aumonier as "one of the best short story writers of all time" and predicted that he would "outlive all the writers of his day." Aumonier wrote over 85 short stories in his lifetime. He has been described as the "British Maupassant" owing to his captivating plots and his ability to create complex characters with just a few lines of carefully selected prose.

The small minded and prudish sister of an English clergyman travels on her own to a hotel in Bordeaux. When she closes the door of her room after returning from a bath, she finds a man asleep on the bed. She realises then she is in the wrong room, but the door handle has come off in her hand, and she can’t get out. Then she discovers the man is dead. To be found in a strange man’s bedroom in the night is bad enough, but to be found in a dead man’s bedroom was even worse.

Stacy Aumonier's classic tale tracking a series of initially mundane events which trigger a series of ever-more-extraordinary happenings. A father, scolding his son for stealing apples, throws a piece of bacon rind out of the window, sparking a chain of events which bring down the government.

Everybody remembers Wych Street, a road in London which no longer exists. But nobody can agree on exactly where it used to run. Stacy Aumonier's classic story follows the catastrophic events sparked by a dispute over the location of the elusive street, from pub brawls and murders, to the infamous siege of Aztec Street, to the ignominious ending of a promising young lawyer's career, a broken engagement and a foreign policy fiasco.

Stacy Aumonier's famous depiction of human nature in action. An eight-part series of snapshots, starting with a tramp who feels pangs of envy when he sees someone with a more settled and domesticated life. The focus of the story shifts to this individual, who we discover is jealous of someone else... who in turn is envious of another person and so on.

Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. A Source of Irritation is one such story. Sam Gates, an elderly and somewhat irritable agricultural labourer, is thinning a field of turnips in Norfolk one morning during the Great War. Suddenly he sees an ‘airyplane’ behaving oddly in the sky.

James Wilbraham Waite is living in a bedsit in Praxton Street, London, and feels trapped. Trapped by his life, his job...and particularly by the depressing room he rents. He sees it as his personal hell. His only escape is through reading books and imagining adventures. When he unexpectedly inherits a substantial sum of money from an uncle in Canada, he resolves to take off and live his dream.... He wants to experience life in the desert.

Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. Old Fags is one of Stacy Aumonier's most memorable stories. Set in a miserable and overcrowded block of flats in London, whose inhabitants struggle daily against poverty and starvation, Old Fags is the pariah of the building.

Giles is out of work and deep in debt after being cheated by a business partner. He is desperate to find a way to support his wife Eleanor and his daughter Anna, but he has no obvious marketable skills or talents. His one wealthy relative lends him tiny sums, and is so unpleasant over it that Giles scarcely dares borrow more. Then one day, Giles finds a wallet packed with banknotes in the back of a taxi.

A fascinating collection of short stories by great writers that examine aspects of the first world war, from action in the trenches, to the psychological impact of war on individuals and their relationships, to heroic adventure stories, to ghosts and war graves. A wonderful collection!