The Exploding Boy and other tiny tales: short stories

'Astonishing... forty two short, swift, crowd-pleasing stories. Full of little pleasure bursts. Proof that the short story is still a public good.'Ian Sansom, The Guardian.

'I bloody LOVE these stories: short, clever, oblique. Just what the form is for.' John Mitchinson, author of QI: The Book of General Ignorance.

'Creepily brilliant' The Mail on Sunday

'Fit to rub shoulders with the likes of Richard Brautigan... a tremendous collection which sets the bar extremely high.' Bookmunch

These forty two short, funny and sometimes strange short stories ask the questions that are on everybody's lips: Why did the national anthem turn out rubbish? Why has the supply teacher blacked out all the windows? Why have the islanders run amok like that? Where do those ladders go, anyway? And what, exactly, is up with all the walruses?

Parker's brilliantly bizarre stories have been compared to George Saunders, Magnus Mills, Edward Gorey, Tim Burton, Donald Barthelme and Richard Brautigan. (Which made him feel pretty smug, as you can probably imagine.)

By day, Nick Parker is creative director of language consultancy The Writer.

By night, he writes his tiny tales, at an excruciatingly slow pace.

By the by, he once wrote a book about toast. ('Toast: Homage to a Superfood', Prion 2002.)