Some books

Rather than await an "eagerly anticipated" book, why not rummage on secondhand shelves?

Many of the books I buy are years old, found by chance in charity shops. Charity bookshops nowadays even have sections for "Short stories", which is more than some high street bookshops can manage. The books below aren't really neglected masterpieces, but they've stuck in my memory longer than the more recently published books I've read. Many of them are the author's first books, which may explain why I was impressed by them - they lack padding, and even the pieces that don't work for me have interesting parts.

• "The weather in Kansas: short stories" by Crista Ermiya (Red Squirrel Press, 2015) - short stories. One was in "Best British short stories". There's a Borgesian piece. Most involve marginal people who are as likely to look from a distance at normal people as to look for ghosts or Self.
• "all the beloved ghosts" by Alison MacLeod (Bloomsbury, 2017) - short stories. A wide variety of types, though many are based on real people. One story (the least meta/essay one) was in "Best British short stories".
• "Basic Nest Architecture" by Polly Atkin (Seren, 2017) - Poems from Magma, from her prizewinning MsLexia pamphlet, etc. 3 1st prize winners, 2 2nd prize winners, 3 3rd prizewinners and many shortlisted poems.
• "So many ways to begin", Jon McGregor (Bloomsbury, 2006) - a novel. I prefer this to anything else he's written. I've read it 3 times.
• "Truffle Beds" by Katherine Pierpoint (Faber and Faber, 1995) - poetry. Having been published by Faber, she became Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1996. I've hardly seen her name mentioned since. A shame.

Now I'm in recommendation mode, I'll mention a short story that impressed me - "Rinks without ice" by Jae Vail (The interpreter's house)