Horror’s and hilarity in this month’s short stories: JEEVES AGAIN by various authors, THE
JEEVES AGAIN by P. G. Wodehouse and various authors (Hutchinson and Heinemann £22, 384pp)
A SERIES of mishaps and misunderstandings in the clueless life of Bertie Wooster and his unflappable valet Jeeves are par for the course in these 12 whip-smart stories from authors including Alan Titchmarsh, Frank Skinner and Scarlett Curtis.
Inspired by P. G. Wodehouse’s tales, Roddy Doyle relocates the action from pre-war uppercrust England to modern-day Dublin in the company of lottery winner Bernie McDevitt in Ah Jaysus Jeeves.
A glitchy digital butler upends a money-making scheme in William Rayfet Hunter’s Just Ask Jeeves, while Ian Moore’s uproarious Jeeves By A Nose reveals that, without the ineffable presence of Jeeves, Bertie has ‘the gait of a motherless fawn’ in a tale of horse racing, bets and a winning double bluff.
THE WITCHING HOUR: GHOSTLY TALES FOR THE DARKEST NIGHTS by Bridget Collins and various authors (Sphere £18.99, 480pp)
THIS cracking collection of spooky tales is perfect for the season of darkling nights. Here are hauntings and strange happenings in the Arctic chill of Svalbard and terrible visitations in the wakeful hours of the mullioned environs of Pentecost College.
Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s splendid The Second Witness comes with a twist as a supernatural sceptic and a ghost summoner meet in 1780 on the hunt for a possible murderer.
In Two Go Together, author Imogen Hermes Gowar heads to Massachusetts, 1718, in the company of coffin maker Mr Peachment, whose visit to a bereaved mother reveals a secret about her daughter Snow.
And Stuart Turton unspools a spine-chilling tale in messages and desperate letters from 1881 and 1932 concerning the satanic Claredon Manor in An Age Of Evil.
What Remains After a Fire is available now
WHAT REMAINS AFTER A FIRE by Kanza Javed (W. W. Norton £18.99, 240pp)
JAVED takes an unflinching look at the lives of Pakistani women, both at home and in America, giving voice to an ill-treated maid, a lonely school girl, a dying woman and a twin lost in the misery of a failing marriage.
Constrained by family expectations and religious restrictions, living with unsupportive husbands, and at the mercy of their own yearning for a life of freedom that seems continually out of reach, the women have become ‘reservoirs of hurt’, and the tales they tell are heartbreaking, brimful of dark truths and pain.