A semi-barbaric king devises a semi-barabaric (but entirely fair) method of criminal trial involving two doors, a beautiful lady and a very hungry tiger.

I won’t tell anyone about the diagnosis. Not my mother or sister. Certainly not Jake. Maybe not even Steve.

Here in Saint Lizard, the one road starts on the cliff by the lighthouse and crawls in circles down to the sea. We have enough town to justify a strange-shaped road, but not enough to justify two roads.

Stella cannot remember a time before nature was her haven, her place of peace and healing. It was a big part of her life before she met her husband and the father of her two children.

A flash bursts from behind me, projecting shadows onto the pavement. We turn and all share the same vision. An orange mushroom cloud billows on the horizon, but it continues to rise into the sky.

With its now-familiar rattles and wheezes - some belonging to the van, some to the myriad of potions, weapons, and equipment in the back of it - Iggy got his trusty van to Kysham village.

He crouched down on both knees to look under the vehicle. When he said, “Oh God!” it wasn’t in his adult voice, but in a child’s voice, like the time he had accidentally run over his little brother’s leg with his dirt bike.

Nothing is as visceral as holding a handful of human ash. I resist the impulse to sift it between my fingers as I walk. Everyone, from the mourners to the pastor, are far away and yet too close.

Three o’clock on a Thursday was an odd time for a visit, but it was the only downtime between my part-time jobs that suited Jo. More unusual than the time was the prospect of a one-to-one rendezvous in my bedsit with someone about my age and attractive.

She was not unused to calls of distress, the groans of the feverish, or the cloying stench of broken bodies and all their expulsions, but never so many at a time and never so twisted and ripped.