General & Contemporary

Russo's protagonist is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television.

When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof, or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking - to save someone else's life.

Marian is in her mid-30s and trying to get over the shock of her 18-year-old twins leaving her to live with their father in the USA. As a distraction she takes a job looking after a younger woman, Stella, on a coach tour to Greece. It seems to be the answer to all her worries - financial and otherwise - although there is some mystery surrounding Stella's background. As the tour gets underway, strange things begin happen, including some serious accidents. People become suspicious, and nobody is at all sure whom they can trust. Marion becomes increasingly worried, both for her own sake and for Stella's....

From vicious rival brothers to desperate single mothers, frisky newlyweds to frigid life partners, Patrick McGinley covers all kinds of Irish (or simply human) relationship in this collection of short stories. In fourteen stories, some brief glimpses of an hour in the life, some longer explorations of years of growing animosity, McGinley explores the ties that bind us: the bond of family, unbreakable even when we wish it severed; the financial and emotional connections we make with our neighbours and colleagues; even the brief and tenuous link between a con artist and his prey.