Short Cuts: Collected Short Stories Vol 1

A collection of short stories by Erik Boman:

- Ghost of Past and Present
A man flees the city for a childhood beach, where he discovers lost and precious memories – but his memories prove more dangerous than he could have imagined...

- Sessions
In the near future, virtual images of ourselves can be stored, and death is not always the end of an relation. Lars’s deceased wife is stuck in an afterlife he and she never expected – but can he let her go?

- Once upon a time in Peter’s Special Book
In a treasured storybook, an invincible – or so he would like to think – hero faces challenges beyond his narrative...

- Fight and Flight
In Kyoto, a businessman and a despairing samurai face overwhelming challenges. They are separated by centuries, but joined by ancestry and a mutual watershed moment…

- The Perfect Hit
In a busy train station, a frustrated hitman is running late for the shot of his target’s life…

- The Diary of Emma Anderson
A wounded WW1 soldier arrives at night to a remote New Zealand spa, a world away from the raging combat – but the battlefield will not give up its claims so easily…

- A London Night Shift
On the London Underground, a librarian with a side interest in vampires debates with a group of youths – but his spontaneous lecture has unexpected consequences…

This collection features stories that vary greatly in setting and tone, but they are knit together by a common theme: They’re less about what you see around you, and more about what goes on when you’re not looking.

Some stories are projected into the future; some rest in the past. Some tales dwell in whimsical and upbeat places; others hide in deeper, darker waters. You will meet businessmen, hitmen, ghosts, lovers and a certain breed of well-known fanged beings. Hopefully, you will meet them in a new light.

These stories are all about people. They are about what drives us, what haunts us, and what makes us start when something in the night goes bump – or even speaks out loud.
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Erik Boman is a writer from Oxford. He is the author of "Short Cuts" and was awarded with the A.M. Heath literary prize in 2011.