BY THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Delve inside this CHRISTMAS STOCKING choc-full of perfectly themed, never-before-published seasonal short stories perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings.

This book is an absolute page turner and will never fail to impress.

A wonderful and magical Christmas read! Katie Fforde has done it again with six seasonal stories you’ll be transformed into a world of romance, humor and happy ever-afters.

Gloriously festive… beautiful anthology…Every single one will remind you why this time of year is referred to as the most wonderful of them all. You’ll be decking the halls and feeling jolly before you know it.

The Sunday Times Top 10 romance story legend will warm the cockles of your heart with this heady cocktail of festive season tales.

perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings

An ideal gift for someone to find in their stocking on Christmas morning.

Katie Fforde's short stories burst with warmth and good cheer… Pure enjoyment, and indulgent pleasure!

perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings.

Katie is a fantastic author and she really knows how to get you in the Christmassy feels.

A wonderfully festive Christmas collection

Wonderfully festive… The perfect gift for Christmas

Katie Fforde gives the reader a real treat with this book. The stories are full of warmth, magic, love, friendship, mince pies and mulled wine! So if you are looking for a book to dip in and out of in between wrapping presents and putting decorations up then look no further!

the perfect antidote to seasonal stress

If you're looking for an escape from the rush of busy shopping centres, then take a breather and enjoy a short break with The Christmas Stocking and Other Stories.

This gorgeous festive selection fills every criteria of a perfect Christmas read

Each story is wonderfully imagined, with a pleasing absence of authorial sermonising. Ambitious and haunting, these expertly executed vignette – confident in their concision and control – seem hard to improve upon.

What Szalay does so well is the minute-by-minute apprehension of the close-up world…combined…with an impressively global vision… It’s part of Szalay’s genius that he can encompass the distance between the two.

Powerful stuff… incisive writing.

High-concept and highbrow… a surprisingly poignant lap around the world

Turbulence…works brilliantly, with each tale carrying on from the last, interconnected by characters on a journey somewhere. The transitory nature of modern life is captured magnificently, building into a fine meditation on 21st-century anxiety.

Turbulence… comes together as a whole wonderfully, showing great insight and empathy, as well as a subtle yet gifted writing style. A beautiful little book!

Moments of startling insight into the hidden – and often uncomfortable – truths underneath modern relationships… there are some stellar moments of pithy clarity: In 'Scarred,' upon summoning a way to cheat desire, the protagonist muses, ‘I had everything that could be wanted. I invented new needs just to satisfy.’ This is a promising debut.

Roupenian’s tales from the frontline of modern relationships are perfect for an alternative Valentine’s Day display.

A collection of short stories which cover the same murky waters of attraction as "Cat Person".

There is always some anxiety following such a short, steep rise to recognition, but in this collection Roupenian lives up to those high expectations. The stories are wonderfully varied in execution, from realist to surreal, staying fresh while circling one primary concern: how men and women relate to one another, and how often that relationship can go wrong.

[A] sharp, powerful and uncomfortable debut collection of stories… [Roupenian] is always in narrative control.

Abrasive, painfully aware accounts of relationships in turmoil… You know you want this collection.

You Know You Want This seems to touch on conversations that the country has yet to have — often using horror and magical realism to illuminate the darker corners of our world.

In Look at Your Game, Girl and The Boy in the Pool, naïve female desire is so brilliantly and lushly evoked… [Biter] shows a flair for satire and comic timing… I look forward to Roupenian’s next book.

The best fiction leaves us thinking about it long after turning the last page, and with [Cat Person], author Kristen Roupenian established herself as a writer to watch. Her short-story collection, You Know You Want This, includes that story and others, all of which will have you talking about them long after finishing.

In her highly anticipated debut collection, the author behind the viral Cat Person story offers up a host of strange, fascinating, and downright delightful narratives you won't be able to stop talking about. Spanning a range of genres and topics, it is equal parts dark, uncomfortable, and funny.

Readers who are looking for more uncomfortably realistic renderings of awkward romantic encounters won’t be disappointed, but this collection is so much more than that, offering an array of biting (sometimes literally!) looks at the ways our most hidden perversions manifest in our lives. It’s a razor-sharp, often ruthless, never less than relentless examination of the way we are now. Scary, right? But you know you want it.

[You Know You Want This captures] the torturous and complicated justifications for untoward behaviour in the search for closeness and connection.

What unites the collection is less her [Roupenian’s] gender politics than her interest in the way fantasies become distorted, disappointing, even dangerous when they approach reality… narrative twist[s] changes the direction of a story and leads it somewhere new. Roupenian’s desire to have her moral and reject it too could be said to put a twist on the twist.

Roupenian remains rooted in realism, she gives pause by exposing the sinister side of sexuality, and one looks forward to seeing what she might accomplish with the novel form.

Kristen Roupenian's debut short stories fulfil all expectations… she infuses mundane reality with a thrilling layer of menace.

One of the most anticipated story collections of the year.

Violence, cruelty or misunderstanding are never far away in these 12 stories, which are by turns, unsettling, ruthless and often funny.

Walker’s laconic, Hemingway-esque prose style perfectly complements his low-key approach to his material: the matter-of-fact tone in which he recalls his most horrific experiences in Iraq makes them seem all the more horrible. It works equally well with deadpan humour.

Roupenian is a wizard of provocative, psychological fiction, exploring the dark side of the human psyche. Each of her short stories is terrifyingly relatable, making the reader fear something much more relevant than more supernatural horror stories.

A fascinating and repugnant series of stories, all tremendous examples of what this unsung hero of a literary form can do.

Roupenian’s wildly discomfiting new collection, You Know You Want This… is often wonderfully, if grotesquely, physical… This book isn’t bedtime reading.

These are stories that make you feel fascinated but repelled, scared but delighted, revolted but aroused.

You Know You Want This is an alarming but compelling book. Roupenian’s short stories, weaving together science fiction, confession and fantasy, are like infections spreading across the senses, blocking out everything except the compulsion to read on… Roupenian achieves something few other writers have: providing a balanced reflection on a very difficult subject.

A new collection of stories that explores the complex - and often darkly funny - connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.