What I loved most as a reader about her is that her strength was not displayed in the conventional ways that most fantasy books tend to use to depict a powerful woman.

He had been practising saying his name out loud every night before going to sleep so that his ears remained accustomed to hearing his own name

The monsoons have passed. Moti has grown so healthy, so strong and so big that no other cocks even dare to be near him.

“It’s a type of Brazilian music, this elevator is playing The Girl From Ipanema.”

More than anything, Suzuki shows that the key to being an alien is not to be outlandish but to be sickeningly more human.

She walked, entranced, into the water until it reached her chin, the wing of her little pink butterfly stuck out like a shark fin.

As a juvenile bibliophile, I used to see the copies as a delicate object greeting with utter care and affection.

Overnight, the saffron summer afternoons and evenings of dreamy stargazing tumble into a tale of grief, guilt, and pain.

Talespeople presents The Screaming Shorts, partnered with Daily Star Books and Star Literature.

Talespeople presents The Screaming Shorts, partnered with Daily Star Books and Star Literature

The two friends grew up together playing cricket in the garage, watching Pokémon routinely at 6 PM on Cartoon Network at Zuhayer's flat, and chasing stringless kites.

Ratan Da walked away, waddling the way he came from, whispering, “Don’t let it go to waste, don’t let it go to waste.”

Back in 2006 at the age of 11, I was introduced to faith, in the most domestic way possible.

From the beginning we see Benjamin Honey, the patriarch of the island, longing to return to his past, in a garden, the Eden of his childhood where he reminisces about being with a woman who might or might not have been her mother.

The deeper the night, the louder the sound.

“Rapture’s coming, son. We best be happy when we embrace the Lord,” was all I heard him say as he pushed a needle into my arm.

My mother took me on her horse and started to ride south. I clutched my bleeding arm, the pain snapping me fully awake.

If you're Red-marked, you may be forever scarred.

A story of an ordinary man and his very ordinary journey.

'1 new message' is the top winner of DS Books and Star Literature's Halloween writing contest Spook-off in the two-sentence fiction category.