Alison Moore’s short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories, Best British Horror and Best New Horror anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio and collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Her first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards, winning the McKitterick Prize. Both The Lighthouse and her second novel, He Wants, were Observer Books of the Year. Recent publications include a series for children.
‘Moore is a serious talent. There’s art here. There’s care.’ —Sam Leith, The Financial Times
★★★★★ ‘Moore’s masterful blend of genres and influences makes her third novel feel, as many great novels do, quite unlike anything else I’ve read. In entwining Bonnie and Sylvia’s tales, Death and the Seaside delves deep into its characters’ psyches; the result is quiet and brilliant, unsettling yet thoughtful, dreamlike and thrilling.’ —Blair Rose, Nudge
‘Moore’s writing is beautiful and precise.’ —SJ Watson
‘She is both gifted stylist and talented creator of a new English grotesque.’ —Isabel Berwick, Financial Times
‘He Wants will easily be one of my books of the year... He Wants left me feeling both completely uplifted and utterly devastated, all at once.’ —Simon Savidge, Savidge Reads
‘Alison Moore is very good on modern alienation... She doesn’t so much lay bare a life as shine blinding pinpricks into its darkest corners.’ —Claire Allfree, Metro
‘Brave and rigorous.’ —Rachel Cusk, The Guardian
‘Moore movingly mines the aching gap between aspiration and actuality.’ —Anita Sethi, The Observer
‘Moore’s charming novel, skilfully illustrated by Collins, is about an antique shop whose furniture is haunted by ghosts with unfulfilled dreams and the boy who befriends them.’ —Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times
★★★★★ ‘The plot moves along quickly, and once Sunny finds one ghost, more seem to appear every day, popping up in all sorts of odd places around the shop. It's all jolly, apart from the puzzle of who, or what, is behind the trouble in the shop. Sunny's parents seem inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and don't blame him for it, but I'm not sure they really believe his tale of ghosts either. With a little help from his spectral friends though Sunny manages to track down the trouble maker, and find a way to settle the problem. Further stories are planned so this looks like being the beginning of quite an adventure for Sunny and the Ghosts.’ —Our Book Reviews
‘The story is set in an old junk shop in Devon stuffed with more than its fair share of ghosts, who arrive, wistfully attached to the bric-a-brac, in the state in which they died. There’s pyjama-clad Herbert; Walter, a miner who never learned to read (Sunny teaches him); Violet, who’s writing a novel (in a meta-literary touch, it turns out to be Sunny and the Ghosts); and many others, including a mischief-maker who fills the shop with cats. This is a gentle, intelligent and warm novel about friendship and imagination for children of seven and up.’ —Philip Womack, Literary Review
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Synopsis Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short...
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Synopsis The third in a series of annual anthologies, The Best British Short Stories 2013 reprints the cream of short fiction, by British writers, first published in 2012. These stories...
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Synopsis “Hilary Mantel and Helen Simpson feature in the nation’s favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its fifth year …” Best British Short Stories invites you to...
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Synopsis Inspired by Giles Gordon and David Hughes’s Best Short Stories series, which ran to ten volumes between 1986 and 1995, Best British Short Stories this year reaches its thirteenth...
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Synopsis With an abandoned degree behind her and a thirtieth birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parents’ home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe,...
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Synopsis Observer Book of the Year 2014 Lewis Sullivan, an RE teacher at a secondary school, was approaching retirement when he wondered for the first time whether he ought to...
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Synopsis Having moved from the Fens to the Midlands to the Scottish Borders, Jessie Noon finds herself struggling to leave the past behind. Following a family tragedy, Jessie Noon moved...
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Synopsis Sometimes, when you open a door or lift a lid, you find exactly what you expected to find: coats in the coat cupboard, bread in the bread bin, toys...
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Synopsis On the hottest day of the year, Ana Sharma and her mum check in to the Hotel Splendid, a place where bells seem to ring all by themselves, jam...
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Synopsis‘A notoriously scary ghost is supposed to haunt the ruined medieval castle where Sunny and his friends are spending the day. But when a troubling visitor arrives at the antique...
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Synopsis Winner of the 2013 McKitterick Prize Shortlisted for the 2013 East Midlands Book Award Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 Shortlisted for New Writer of the Year in...
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Synopsis Shortlisted for the East Midland’s Book Award 2014 The Pre-War House and Other Stories is the debut collection from Alison Moore, whose first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for...
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SynopsisSince childhood, Sandra Peters has been fascinated by the small, private island of Lieloh, home to the reclusive silent-film star Valerie Swanson. Having dreamed of going to art college, Sandra...