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

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.

Most people seem to consider Nina Monkman to be a self-assured, confident young woman, but I have known her long enough to realise that this is not quite the truth.

Samuel Miller discovered the photograph tucked away in the back of his father's wallet. The hospital had given it to him along with the other items the old man had been carrying when he had been admitted.

The Restaurant San Martín in Mendoza did not appear to have changed at all in its ninety-five-year history. It was still richly decorated and plushly upholstered in a hopelessly antique style, and Ernesto Galman revered it.

'I am sure that a professional gentleman such as yourself could afford to rent rooms like this as a single tenant?' The landlord smiled at Komensk ingratiatingly. 'We could come to an arrangement so that I wouldn't have to find another occupant to share with you?

The past doesn't always stay where it should. It is as though somebody, or something, is forever trying to bring it painfully into the present. Flavian Bennett is trying to leave his past behind when he goes to work in his father's bookshop in Paris. But a curious customer, Reginald Hopper, is desperate to resurrect his own murky origins. Hopper believes that a rare and mysterious book, The Dark Return of Time, may be the key to what happened before he arrived in Paris. In this quiet thriller by R.B. Russell, the futures - and pasts - of these two men will soon cross.

I awoke this morning in what appeared to be a strange house and I lay between unfamiliar sheets trying to remember exactly where I might be. I was not especially worried at first.

Maria said to him, 'I'd be tempted to rent the house for just this one room.' 'It is lovely, yes.' 'The way the light comes in from that window, through the curtains on to the plain walls . . .

If only we would take the time to look a little closer, delve a little deeper, when ordinary life goes awry, we might find the world more strange and unexpected than we ever could have imagined.

Following on from Literary Remains, R.B. Russell's previous collection for PS_Publishing, the twelve stories of Leave Your Sleep concern sex and death, love and loss. Russell allows his characters to disappear, slip into alternate realities, or re-write their own histories. They find they are able to do the most extraordinary things, even though they may not immediately realise it. And who is in control of their actions, or those around them?

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 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.

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.

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

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. BRIGHTHELMSTONE: I am not sure how old I was when I visited Brighton with my mother; I could only have been about ten or eleven. My father had been dead for about a year and I recall it as the first holiday that we took without him.

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. LOUP-GAROU: I first saw the film, Loup-garou, in 1989, in a little arts cinema in the centre of Birmingham. I had driven there for a job interview and, as usual, I had allowed far more time for the journey than was required.