The cozy brick bungalow stood on a short lane of similarly modest houses with a small, mostly overgrown park at the far end and an intersection leading to Darlington High Street.

There’s all these picturesque poems, anecdotes about scattering loved ones’ ashes. Things meant to be profound, symbolic.

There was a long conversation then, and many qualifications and a great deal of sympathy; but the long and short of it was that I had aggressive macular degeneration, which is a fancy way of saying: I was going blind.

Fifteen minutes to the deadline. Fifteen minutes to write the words that would end the career of a man who had once saved his life...

Private Alexander Huxley sat in the hull of the C-47, jaw clenched and lips twisted into a savage grimace. The weight of his parachute kept him hunched in his seat, and the straps of his harness and weapon case chafed raw swathes into his skin.

Where am I? She wonders. None of the details of the room feel familiar. She gets up. Slowly. It feels like her body is bound; it is almost suffocating. Why do I ache so much?

“Going souling", they used to call it. I can remember m’grandad telling me he used to do it, when he were little, going round the houses and offering to say prayers for the dead, in exchange for these little cakes, soul cakes they called ‘em.

When he was only six years old his mother sent him to the mosque to learn the Quran

Her notes were played as the light dance steps of lovers...

The tree stood at ten, maybe twelve feet tall, but as far as the boy was concerned, it might as well have reached the grainy, spring sky.

He dances maida maida, like a butterfly around the candle.

Death came around once a month...

Kerryn watched as the lotus bud took shape...

Stephen tells me the wrinkles methodology is a hoax...

They heard the sirens in the distance and they watched the flames gasping into the night and he thought that this must be what the end of the world was going to look like.