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Duets - Launching tomorrow!
Tomorrow - the 17th October - the truly unique Duets goes on sale... Eight stories each co-written by two authors. Featuring: Eley...
Oct 16, 20241 min read
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Announcing: The Unreliable Nature Writer - 6th June
A dark, delicious, dreamy immersion in a much hotter way of living...
May 25, 20241 min read
146 views
3 comments


Scratch A4 Summer '24 - Submissions Open
Submissions are now open for the summer Scratch A4 until 25 May... Enter your < 1000 word story for the Summer '24 event on Saturday...
Apr 1, 20241 min read
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The Reverse Engineering series turns two!
Woah... that went quick! It was two years ago this month that Scratch Books published Reverse Engineering! To celebrate, we're offering...
Mar 2, 20241 min read
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‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ by Ambrose Bierce
Introduction by Darran Anderson One of the appeals of poetry is its ability to decelerate time until life appears as strange as it really...
Feb 10, 202418 min read
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'The Gentleman's Companion' by Machado de Assis
Introduction by James Young I first read Machado de Assis in 2006, when the teacher of the Português Para Estrangeiros class at Paraíba...
Feb 3, 202416 min read
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'Her Letters' by Kate Chopin
Introduction by Carrie Beth Esposito 'Her Letters' by Kate Chopin tells the story of a woman unable to burn letters to and from her lover...
Jan 27, 202413 min read
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'A Just Man In Sodom' by Caradoc Evans
Introduction by Joshua Jones I often find a certain comfort in the depraved. Like shining a torch under the bed and having a good...
Jan 20, 20249 min read
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'Monday or Tuesday' by Virginia Woolf
Introduction by Łukasz Drobnik Virginia Woolf’s “Monday or Tuesday”, the titular story from her 1921 collection, eludes categorisation....
Jan 13, 20243 min read
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'Fallmerayer the Stationmaster' by Joseph Roth
Introduction by Aidan Cottrell-Boyce Roth wrote this story in 1933, soon after he and his partner – Andrea Manga Bell – had fled Germany...
Dec 16, 202333 min read
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'America 1918' by Maria Messina
Introduction by Jayson Carcione This was the summer Sicily burned, another summer of lives lost in a graveyard sea – and I keep going...
Dec 9, 202312 min read
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Buy Scratch Books - Winter Sale!
For all friends and family interested in how fiction works, buy 'em the Reverse Engineering books... At a special 30% off, all December!...
Dec 3, 20231 min read
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'To Build A Fire' by Jack London
Introduction by Livi Michael ‘To Build a Fire’ Is a story about a man who sets out in the freezing Yukon winter, accompanied only by a...
Nov 25, 202328 min read
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'The Tell-tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe
Introduction by Jacqueline Doyle Edgar Allan Poe insisted that every great short story focuses on a “single effect,” and that every word...
Nov 18, 202310 min read
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'The Inconsiderate Waiter' by J.M. Barrie
Introduction by Cath Barton The Scottish novelist and playwright James Matthew Barrie was appointed a baronet by King George V in 1913....
Nov 11, 202327 min read
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'A Garden by the Sea' by Forrest Reid
Introduction by Chris Wright In his 1981 essay, Escaping from Belfast, V.S. Pritchett wrote at length about a forgotten Ulster writer by...
Nov 4, 20238 min read
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'The Lumber Room' by Saki
Introduction by Fiona McKay Many years ago, when I was in school, we had an anthology of short stories, Exploring English 1. It was my...
Oct 20, 202310 min read
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'White Nights' by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Introduction by Luca Serra I believe certain pieces of fiction find you when you most need it. This was the case for me with White...
Oct 13, 202374 min read
4,443 views
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'Laura Silver Bell' by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Introduction by Rebekah King A young woman, demurely dressed, is looking wistfully away from the viewer at a sinister figure who holds...
Oct 6, 202319 min read
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'The Hill' from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
Introduction by Stu Hennigan This is a real curio; a collection of free verse poems in which over two hundred people who have lived and...
Sep 29, 20233 min read
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