Something strange is going on in the village. A dead pig is carried through the lanes in a coffin, a heap of signposts are buried in a field and a mummy walks the streets late at night, scaring the local ladies half to death. Things have never been the same since the evacuee arrived and the Five Boys mistook him for a Nazi spy. The village has had a whole host of visitors since: the Americans are down the road preparing for D-Day, a deserter is hiding out in the woods. But it is the arrival of the Bee King which makes the biggest impression. He is a law unto himself and has his own strange rituals, and the villagers fear that he is beginning to exert the same charm over their boys as he does over his bees.

Five Boys

Literature & Fiction

Mick Jackson

Contemporary

Faber&Faber

The Widow's Tale

Literary

What happens when the everyday meets the surreal, when the adult world of middle England meets the imagination of children? In a series of dark and magical tales, Mick Jackson explores the possibilities, and revives the art, of storytelling. From the only child who falls asleep for fifteen years, to the hermit-like Pearce sisters, who prey on the strangers on 'their' beach; and from the homemade row boat that leads one old man from his cellar to a magical cavern for the retired, to the little boy who discovers the secrets for bringing butterflies back to life, Ten Sorry Tales is an exquisite collection at turns funny, gothic, moving and sad.

Ten Sorry Tales

Short Stories & Anthologies

A newly-widowed woman has done a runner. She just jumped in her car, abandoned her (very nice) house in north London and kept on driving until she reached the Norfolk coast. Now she's rented a tiny cottage and holed herself away there, if only to escape the ceaseless sympathy and insincere concern. She's not quite sure, but thinks she may be having a bit of a breakdown. Or perhaps this sense of dislocation is perfectly normal in the circumstances. All she knows is that she can't sleep and may be drinking a little more than she ought to. But as her story unfolds we discover that her marriage was far from perfect. That it was, in fact, full of frustration and disappointment, as well as one or two significant secrets, and that by running away to this particular village she might actually be making her own personal pilgrimage. By turns elegiac and highly comical, "The Widow's Tale" conjures up this most defiantly unapologetic of narrators as she begins to pick over the wreckage of her life and decide what has real value and what she should leave behind.

Yuki chan in Bronte Country

The Red Sledge

Walker Books

Ella May Does It Her Way

Humor & Satire

The Quarto Group

We're Going Places

Pavilion Books

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Books by Mick Jackson