Growing Pains Author:Ian Whates Growing Pains is a new collection featuring 11 outstanding short tales from the highly talented British author and editor Ian Whates. The works are small in scale, often about ordinary people faced with an inexplicable incursion into their everyday reality. The stories of Ian Whates manifest a vivid particularity of place ... more »and a clarity of suspenseful plotting, along with an endearing ability to conjure up vivid characters both noble and nasty. His beautifully malleable tone ranges from arch and witty to dead serious.
Contents:
Growing Pains: A farmer with a secret problem has a visit from his sister. The farmer’s son enjoys keeping the problem in check.
Coffee Break: a Men-In-Black-style secret agent won't let anything, not even an alien invasion, get in the way of his morning coffee;
The Assistant: one shift with an office building’s highly skilled Sanitation and Cleansing Team...the unusual things office cleaners have to deal with at night, when the office workers are at home in bed;
A Question of Timing: companionship and the imaginary friend;
Walking the Dog: companionship, love, loss and grief;
Morphs: a bloody, bizarre and transgressive tale;
The Outsider: a cogent, grim explanation as to why the aliens are elsewhere;
Hobbies: meet Josh, an everyday fellow who enjoys nothing better than shooting random targets. Random human targets. It makes him feel alive. Then he meets an equally committed hobbyist with a different enthusiasm;
Peeling an Onion: a scientific research programme to explore empathy, luck and sociopathy;
Shop Talk: Calli is dubious that the new shop in town is anything special. She changes her mind when she meets the shopkeeper. But the locals are hostile and the shop is not staying. Calli has a difficult choice to make;
The Piano Song: sort-of ghost story about the power of music and memory. Like all good ghosts it lingers, and haunts.