Showing results by narrator "Natalie Simpson" in All Categories

Since 2015 the Pin Drop Short Story Award has discovered new and exciting talent from around the world and showcased new works from more familiar names. This anthology collects the 2017 final short-list, including the winning entry, ‘Morelia Spilota’ by Cherise Saywell - an absorbing tale of a priest, a hitchhiker and a snake together and alone in the Australian countryside; which of them should be most wary of being bitten, and by whom?

Queen’s Ford, seat of the Forde family for centuries, is crumbling into ruin. Devastated by their reduced circumstances, handsome and bored Jeremy Forcombe is determined to find a solution. He persuades his sister, Mariota, to go along with his outlandish plan to masquerade as highwaymen. Things go awry when they meet their match in their victim and there is an accident with a gun. Now the handsome Earl of Buckenham is injured, and the siblings are praying for his recovery – to save them from the gallows, and perhaps so much more.

When Noel Dupree’s mother passes away from a sudden illness, she inherits the family home and their much-loved florist business. While still in mourning, her unscrupulous father resurfaces after many years’ absence and finds a way to undermine her mother’s will. Without regard for Noel’s welfare, he claims everything is rightly his, and the family lawyer can’t produce documents to prove otherwise. By invitation from her best friend, Noel makes a hard choice to leave her childhood hometown in upstate New York and journey to the friend’s house in Pensacola, Florida.