Don't Try This at Home

A girl repeatedly chops her boyfriend in half but, while her “other half” multiplies, she is still not satisfied. Love transforms a mother working down the fish and chip shop – into Elvis. Clary’s father puts antlers on stuffed rabbits to make jackalopes, but when her mother walks out on them, Clary has to help her father if they are to survive.

Beautiful, sharp and fearless, Costa Short Story Award winner Angela Readman’s debut collection is aptly titled, for each story packs its share of explosive material. Exposing all kinds of prejudice – against age, status, disability – the stories also offer quirky new strategies for troubled lives.

If Angela Carter is Readman’s fairy godmother, then David Lynch is her wicked stepbrother. Don’t say you weren’t warned. . .

Angela Readman’s stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines, winning awards such as the Inskpill Magazine Short Story Competition and the National Flash Fiction Competition. In 2012 she was shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award for Don’t Try This at Home – an award she would go on to win in 2013 with the story The Keeper of the Jackalopes. In 2015, Readman won the Saboteur Awards Best Short Story Collection and the 2015 Rubery Book Award (Short Fiction Winner) for Don't Try this at Home. Readman is also a published poet.