WINNER OF THE 2022 REFLEX PRESS NOVELLA AWARD

Through a series of vignettes, the nameless female narrator of Quotidian revisits the rooms of her past to reconcile the malcontent she experiences as a mother, wife and homemaker. Unearthing repressed disappointments, desires, fears and expectations, she begins piecing together, in an intimate and honest narrative, her perceived ordinary, inconsequential life. In doing so, she becomes increasingly estranged from her spouse and her invisible friend, Miss C. When her life begins to spiral into free fall, the narrator, despite struggling to maintain normalcy, toys briefly with a sham flirtation before salvation arrives in the unlikely form of a homeless musician.

Praise for Quotidian

‘The rooms the woman narrator of Quotidian occupies are varied: menacing, lonely, melancholic, and sensuous. In stark, tender, concise, and beautiful prose, we witness an originally told, gripping self-excavation.’
—Nuala O’Connor, author of Nora: A Love Story of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce

‘Intriguing, textured and imaginative, with sentences as beautiful as strings of polished beads.’
—Martina Devlin, author of Edith: A Novel

‘An original, scrolling mosaic of a novel in which the beautiful and dangerous details of a lived life are carefully laid before the reader.’
—Mike McCormack, author of Solar Bones

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Capital Vices is a story collection like no other. Dark, disturbing, wild and comic. An exhilarating joyride in the splendid company of outlaws, chancers, rogues and vagabonds.

Praise for Capital Vices

Conor Montague is a fearless writer with an uncanny ability to take the reader further, faster. Fierce, poetic, innovative and often very funny. This collection has it all; the depths and the darkness, as well as images that ring clear as a bell and linger. A brilliant body of work.
—Jess Kidd, author of The Night Ship

Flan O’Brien meets Hunter S – Fear and Loathing in Ballinasloe and beyond. Montague’s wild book is akin to strapping yourself onto a rollercoaster that snakes around three continents, and just when you are upside down and crying for mercy, you swerve off to a different place, moved by characters rarely written about in Irish fiction. Brilliantly written with a natural ear for dialogue and a deep love for those unrooted headcases who wander the globe open to adventure. From the dark institutions of Ireland they take on the world and grab life bare handed, as if it were the throat of a cobra slithering into your jail cell.
—Emer Martin, author of Thirsty Ghosts

Montague writes with a direct, visceral poetry and this whole collection is the work of a born storyteller.
—Mike McCormack, author of Solar Bones

Conor Montague writes neon draped prose, characters caught, lost, or living entranced in a smelter of realities. His words conjure a misfit’s vision, a child’s delight, a killer’s desperate play-land. Akin to Henry Miller, Conor Montague writes of ‘lost souls downtown’ and the constant lurking yearn for lives other than our own.
—Órfhlaith Foyle, author of Three Houses in Rome

The characters in Capital Vices are tightly wound and on edge in Montague’s intense visceral dramas. Montague has the ear of a dramatist — acute to the darkly funny sounds of people trying to talk their way out of trouble. Both lyrical and absurd, Montague’s stories are a joy to read.
—Martina Evans, author of American Mules

With Capital Vices Montague has created a memorable cast of characters; errant, wayward, misplaced, and all the time scavenging for their place in the scheme of things. A collection replete with whiskey wisdom; ache and edge; heart and humour; vigour and poignancy, the swish and bluster of life.
—Alan McMonagle, author of Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame

A roller coaster ride through time, from Ireland to India with a stopover in Disney World. Montague’s stories are packed to the brim with craic and cringe in equal measure. Written in technicolour, an ensemble cast of characters are all tested to the limit with unexpected results. This magical blend of flash fiction and short stories is fresh and inventive, I laughed out loud and cried in turn.
—Aoibheann McCann, author of Marina

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WINNER OF THE 2021 REFLEX PRESS NOVELLA AWARD

A Life in Chameleons recounts the queer and fascinating life of Leopoldo Fregoli, an Italian quick-change artist known as ‘The Chameleon’. Fregoli is born just before cinema first jerks into motion and lives in constant fast-forward. A Life in Chameleons stages Fregoli’s story as the moving image of a life.

Fregoli’s daring feats of drag entangle him with the Lumière brothers, the serpentine dancer Loïe Fuller, the duelling actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, his stage double (and lover) Romolo, and the mad futurist F.T. Marinetti. As Fregoli changes himself into them, the narrative splices new forms together; with every jump cut, he is a new actress. But the only women in the life of Fregoli, really, are the ones he becomes himself. When women like Fregoli’s wife, Velia, begin to ask their own questions about becoming, he can offer them nothing more than empty dresses and hapless jokes. Both a light waltz among the extravagant characters of early cinema and a queer feminist slant on life-writing, A Life in Chameleons is a sort of biography written in film strips.

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Among the new arrivals is smart, devious Angelina. She is escaping the shame of her mixed heritage, determined not to live in poverty. Angelina casts a single die, inherited from her father, to help decide her fate.

Over the course of thirty flashes, Throw a Seven follows Angelina and her fellow immigrants, a fascinating cast of characters, as they live, love and fight together over three decades.

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On a small Scottish island, a woman believes that her dead husband has come back to her as a dog. In the suburbs of a city, a judge is haunted by the shade of a man he has recently sent to prison. On a remote caravan site, a group of strangers prepare for the end of the world.

These stories uncover the uncanny and the mysterious within everyday life. Moving from Scottish towns and cities to wild highland landscapes, The Dog Husband explores the boggy ground between reason and unreason, playing with questions of superstition, faith, madness and desire.

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Within these pages, the traditional narrative shares space with the experimental. Humour sits alongside tragedy. Each of these page-long stories packs a punch greater than its word count suggests.

In Defence of Pseudoscience is the perfect introduction to readers new to flash fiction and essential reading for those already familiar with the form.

Includes prize-winning flash fiction from Annette Edwards-Hill, Jeanine Skowronski, Thomas Malloch, Joshua Jones, Kirsteen Ure, Simon Linter, Morgan Quinn, Matt Kendrick, Evelyn Forest, Becca Yenser, Karen Jones, Rosaleen Lynch, Nora Nadjarian, Jo Withers, and Katja Sass.

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The Peculiarities of Yearning is a collection of short fiction of various lengths and genres that is pulled together by a thread of exploration of what it means to yearn: to long for, suppress, and ultimately allow what matters to emerge and be acted on – thus reflecting the journey of psychotherapy.

Praise for The Peculiarities of Yearning

Carty dives deep in her stories. The stories are a tightrope of psychology and its impact on the body. In sharp prose, girls live in a world without red, natural laws transform, the dead are preserved, DNA disobeys, babies are kept in stasis. Dark, astute and always surprising, this is utterly fascinating writing. Yearning has never been so good.
—Angela Readman, author of Don’t Try This at Home and Something like Breathing

Carty’s beguiling and lyrical prose is displayed perfectly in this inventive and varied collection that runs the gamut of human emotions. Shocking, witty, sad and funny, these are stories that show humanity at its best and worst.
—Lucie McKnight Hardy, author of Dead Relatives and Water Will Refuse Them

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Rachel is ten years old when a dog is rocketed into space. When she is sixteen, the first female astronaut orbits the Earth. At seventeen, she falls in love with Tommy. But Rachel and Tommy’s love is not written in those distant stars. Facing disapproval and uncertainty, they are forced apart.

Half a century later, they cross paths in a hotel bar and are confronted with a lifetime of what-ifs. Rachel’s life of social conformity has brought her the joys and heartbreaks of motherhood. Tommy’s marriage into high society has made him the most famous artist of a generation. But what if they had never given up on their dreams of adventure? Is what they gained apart worth as much as what they might have had together?

At the Bottom of the Stairs is a story of female space explorers and climbing trees, of loving the life you didn’t lead and learning to love the one you did.

Praise for At the Bottom of the Stairs

Full of wisdom, beauty and skill, Banks creates a powerful story that pierces the soul.
—FJ Morris, author of This Is (Not About) David Bowie

At the Bottom of the Stairs is a genuinely touching book and a pleasure to read.
—Gaynor Jones, author of Among These Animals

A love letter to language, such is the quality of Banks’ prose.
—Michael Loveday, author of Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash and Three Men on the Edge

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In 1982, the year of the Falklands War, three naïve and self-absorbed students move to the dystopic Lovelace Flats and become unwittingly embroiled in a series of deaths. Petra, Woody, and Stan know the flats are run-down and disreputable, but the year starts with a cold winter, and underfloor heating is included in the rent — as if the flats were built directly over the firepits of hell.

Praise for Lovelace Flats

A complex, ambitious, and deeply impressive novella, Lovelace Flats has real charm as well as an edge. Jupiter Jones builds a rich story-world from vivid settings, and her ensemble cast is a 1980s society in microcosm.
—Michael Loveday, author of Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash

Jupiter Jones is that rare thing — a writer with a voice entirely, unmistakably her own. In darkly comic prose, packed full of startling linguistic brio, Lovelace Flats transports us to the concrete walkways and landings of the 1980s inner-city flats. A tautly plotted story building to a terrifying climax.
—David Rhymes, author of The Last Days of the Union

In this novella, Jupiter Jones achieves a perfect balance of tension and humour. Each character, whether central or peripheral, is intricately drawn — complex, surprising, often vulnerable. I loved it.
—Johanna Robinson, author of Homing

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"Some homeschool days, the lounge is a sea, stairs a snowcapped mountain, bathroom a jungle, Mum and Dad’s bedroom a sun-seared dessert…"

The stories in The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain speak of togetherness and separation: how we strive to connect with that one person who could save us, and how we attempt to save the people who most matter to us.

Discover the lost, the self-conscious, the reckless. Learn how to milk an alpaca. Encounter a river with one thing on its mind. Touch on moments of isolation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Find out how a ghost tree could bring a community together. Witness the moment when friendship sparks into something more. Consume a life in one mouthful. Meet the lovers, the families and the undefinable others who make up these worlds and sweep us along.

Darley has a beguiling and distinct voice; her writing is never less than beautiful. A captivating collection.
—Amanda Huggins, author of Crossing the Lines and All Our Squandered Beauty

Beautifully written and frequently surprising, this book is a wonderful read for these unusual and uncertain times.
—Gaynor Jones, author of Among These Animals

There’s so much loveliness in Darley’s collection, often in the most unexpected places. In every way, this is a collection for all the senses to savour.
—Fiona J Mackintosh, author of The Yet Unknowing World

This wise and tender collection, steeped in nature and human nature, is a balm for an aching soul. Rich and diverse, deep but accessible, this dark forest of stories is endlessly dappled with intelligence, empathy, wit, kindness, and hope.
—Tom O’Brien, author of Straw Gods

Darley’s dexterous writing converges with the often intangible complexities when connecting to self, other, and the environment. This extraordinary collection provokes us to engage with each of our senses simultaneously so that we may float untethered...
—Iona Winter, author of Gaps in the Light and then the wind came

I will revisit these stories again and again because their surreal and exquisite evocation of the everyday really made me think.
—Jan Kaneen, author of The Naming of Bones

Judy Darley asks what it is to be alive today, in this world, right now, in a way that constantly surprises, informs and excites.
—Alison Woodhouse, author of The House on the Corner and Family Frames

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