These fifteen short stories from Brooke Fieldhouse include six old favourites: the Warner Group prizewinning love story THE GIFT, the liquid nightmare of DROWNING BY NUMBERS and the petrifying tale of immuration RAW CONCRETE. The collection is in three parts: Love, Fear, and Love & Fear, and each story is headed with a colour image taken from original collages by the author. The nine previously unpublished pieces range from the bone chilling THE LILYWHITE BOY, through the heartbreaking story of Deidre’s attempt to achieve immortality by RUNNING WITH THE BULLS, the mysteriously philosophical MINDFULNESS COMPASSION & THE SECOND SEX, to the metaphysical surreal adult fairy tale THERE ISN’T AN OUNCE OF MALICE IN A MOOSE. The group also includes the reconciliatory IN PLAIN SIGHT which was shortlisted for the 2019 Fiction Factory Prize, and the mischievously morbid care home fable A PERFECT LIKENESS which was long-listed for the 2020 Fiction Factory Prize. Fieldhouse dedicates the book to his late parents and elaborates with a brief, thoroughly unsentimental and notably misery-free memoir and a haunting Afterword.
