Showing results by author "R. B. Russell" in All Categories

Everything went right for Jayne just as it appeared to be going wrong. Or, at least, that's what she assumed. To begin with she lost her home and her job.

When I heard the knock at the door on that Friday afternoon in early December I was in my workshop at the back of the house. I was carving some panels that were to form the backs of a set of chairs and the last thing I wanted was an interruption.

David Riley knew that he spent rather too much time watching the world go by as he worked at his desk in the window of his shabby flat. He looked down on a busy city street and in a couple of months he had come to recognise the familiar faces of those who lived and worked there.

At the edges of everyday life, on geographical boundaries and in the margins of society, certainties and realities can wear thin. And if we find ourselves in such occult and outland territory late at night, we might glimpse phenomena out of the corner of our eye that cannot possibly be there. At such times even the past, apparently fixed and unchanging in memories and dreams, cannot be relied upon. But what happens if we find ourselves passing beyond even these frayed perimeters of life? Can others follow us, or are we on our own?

When young Lucian Miller visits the house of a friend it is everything he had long fantasised about; decay and grandeur, lofty rooms, dark red shadows and dust. The evening, however, is a disaster, and Lucian finds himself apparently alone with the sophisticated but troubled Miranda Honeyman. They shut all of the doors in an attempt to keep their problems out, but it soon becomes apparent that someone else may have access to the house. On the threshold of adulthood, in a heightening atmosphere of sexual uncertainty and violence, Lucian tries to make sense of what is happening around him.

Mr Gabo was an unlikely looking author, but then most of their authors were unlikely looking. Asphodel Books always attracted the improbable.

My father was one of seven boys and all of them married young and went on to have large families of their own. Consequently I ended up with more uncles and aunts than I have ever been comfortable with, and the number of cousins was almost incalculable.

Birgit made the mistake of sitting down and closing her eyes for a few moments. She knew she shouldn't have done it because when she opened them again and tried to stand the room reeled around her.

I had to go outside. The air in the room had grown almost unbreathable from the cloying smoke; a mixture of hashish and incense. Normally I revelled in such an atmosphere, in the artificial light and warmth.

: She was an odd-looking, insubstantial little thing; ill at ease in their company, sipping determinedly at a sparkling water that didn't seem to get any lower in her glass. Her attention was firmly fixed upon it.

I spent nearly forty years working for the District Council in their Housing Department, and now that I've retired I look back and wonder whether I wasted my life there?

Up until the moment I approached the door everything had been effortless. My connections from Amsterdam to Bialystok had been on time, and there, at the airport, had been my old friend David to greet me.

Justin had been humiliated many times in front of his fellow students. On a regular basis they were all made to put their work up on the studio wall for a Criticism, when their tutors would patiently explain exactly how and why their art failed.

Marianne had no choice but to take the position of night porter at the St. Denis Hotel; it was either that or have her job-seeker's allowance cut because she had already turned down too many other offers of work.

Henry was back in his childhood bedroom for the first time in ten years and it was as though he had never been away.

David knew that there would come a time when he would have to meet Salvatore Ruiz. After all, Toledo is a small city and they had several mutual friends and acquaintances. However, David did not expect to meet the man at Matías's flat, and certainly not on a Friday evening for one of their all-night card sessions.

Le Grand Meaulnes is a story of the end of youth, with its sense of wonder and idealism, and the transition to adulthood and experience. In a story which exquisitely blends realism with a hint of fantasy, Augustin Meaulnes is haunted by the memory of a beautiful girl briefly encountered in a fantastic 'domain'. However, Meaulnes finds himself unable to return there both physically and emotionally. An acknowledged modern classic, Le Grand Meaulnes is offered here in a new translation which is more sympathetic to the poetic original than previous editions.

R.B.RUSSELL has only recently started writing fiction seriously, having previously written lyrics, composed music, and drawn in pen and ink for his own amusement. He runs Tartarus Press with Rosalie Parker from their home in the Yorkshire Dales. AFTERWARDS: Toby has left. I suppose that his departure was inevitable. After the people in the army vehicles had gone, he spent more and more time in the top room, staring out of the window, looking for possible visitors.

R.B.RUSSELL has only recently started writing fiction seriously, having previously written lyrics, composed music, and drawn in pen and ink for his own amusement. He runs Tartarus Press with Rosalie Parker from their home in the Yorkshire Dales. AT THE END OF THE WORLD: was disappointed to discover that my brother, Paul, when he finally came back from his adventures in South America, decided to take up residence in one of the old converted railway carriages on Pagham beach. It was the last place I would have expected him to want to live.

At the edges of everyday life, on geographical boundaries and in the margins of society, certainties and realities can wear thin. And if we find ourselves in such occult and outland territory late at night, we might glimpse phenomena out of the corner of our eye that cannot possibly be there. At such times even the past, apparently fixed and unchanging in memories and dreams, cannot be relied upon.