The season's just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time. Frankie is haunted by his daughter's death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist, makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie-obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they've lost.With trademark wit and playfulness, in this stunning linked short-story collection Jan Carson explores complex family dynamics, ageing, immigration, gender politics, the decline of the Church and the legacy of the Troubles. The Last Resort firmly places Carson as one of the most inventive and daring writers of her generation.'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY...

In 2015, suffering from a dreadful case of writer's block, novelist and short story writer Jan Carson set herself the challenge of spending an entire year writing short pieces of microfiction on postcards and mailing these to friends around the world. When 2016 ended, she found it impossible to stop writing postcard stories. The stories in this collection represent the best of some five hundred postcard stories Jan has written since.

When several children from the same village start succumbing to a mysterious illness, the quest to discover the cause has devastating and extraordinary consequences.'Absolutely MAGNIFICENT: dark, witty, charming. I LOVED it.' MARIAN KEYES 'Utterly absorbing' LISA MCINERNEY'Heart-rending, hilarious . . . it's a belter' LOUISE KENNEDY'Blistering...glorious...written from the guts and from the heart.' LUCY CALDWELL'An original and exciting work that's equal parts terrifying, hilarious and memorable.' SUNDAY TIMESIt is late June in Ballylack. Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks' reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other.As others fall ill, questions about what - or who - is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends...

Each day of 2015 Jan Carson wrote a short story on the back of a postcard and mailed it to a friend. Each of these tiny stories was inspired by an event, an overheard conversation, a piece of art or just a fleeting glance of something worth thinking about further. In this collection of highlights, Carson presents a panoramic view of contemporary Belfast – its streets, coffee shops, museums and airports – through a series of small but perfectly formed snapshots of her home.

**Shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature**'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES'Gripping, affecting, surprising. I inhaled it' LISA MCINERNEY 'Captivating, intelligent and courageous' IRISH TIMES'Spectacular. At once grittily real, wildly magical and insanely alluring - a siren-song of a novel. DONAL RYAN'Jan Carson seems to have invented a new Belfast in this gripping, surprising, exhilarating novel. RODDY DOYLE'A brilliant, wry novel, fizzing with energy.' BARNEY NORRIS Dr Jonathan Murray fears his new-born daughter is not as harmless as she seems. Sammy Agnew is wrestling with his dark past, and fears the violence in his blood lurks in his son, too.The city is in flames and the authorities are losing control. As matters fall into frenzy, and as the lines between...

New fiction by:  Suad AldarraCaleb Azumah NelsonJan CarsonElaine FeeneyOona FrawleySinéad GleesonAnna Jean HughesCaleb KlacesNaomi KrügerHenrietta McKerveyPaul McVeighMary MorrissyNuala O'ConnorChris Wright   To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways of being – linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a slightly different perspective of the world. In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from...

Eleven-year-old Malcolm Orange has grown up in the backseat of an ancient Volvo station wagon, crisscrossing America with a diminishing collection of grandparents, one good-for-nothing father, an increasingly absent mother, and an unfortunately ordinary brother. Their journey ends abruptly in a pay-by-the-week motel in Portland, Oregon when his father finally abandons the family. Impoverished and alone, the remaining Oranges find themselves living in Chalet 13 of the Baptist Retirement Village. While his mother develops her own strange means of coping with the loss, Malcolm Orange begins to disappear, becoming more perforated each morning – until there is little of the original Malcolm left. Desperate for a cure, he enlists the help of Soren James Blue, her talking cat, Mr Fluff, and the very elderly members of the People's Committee for Remembering Songs. Malcolm and his friends set off on a hilarious and heartbreaking adventure to discover a cure for disappearing. On...

"Everything leaves marks, even water..." Two children watching their parents argue inside a greenhouse, an armoured boy and his troubled sister, a human statue who's lost the ability to move and a floating six year old tethered to the backyard fence: the characters in Jan Carson's debut story collection are all falling apart in their own peculiar way. Absurdist, allegorical and disturbingly convincing, these characters are both wrongdoers and victims of another's wrongdoing. They are people marked by life yet struggling to forge some kind of future. Mixing Carson's distinctive magic realist voice with a more traditional brand of Irish literary fiction, Children's Children explores the concept of legacy and the influence of one generation upon the next. These are darkly humorous and brilliantly illuminative stories which are both heartbreaking and hopeful and gently critical of post-conflict Northern Ireland. Stories from this collection have appeared in Banshee, The Honest...