Short stories are like miniature films, and this prize-winning collection by A M Howcroft delivers a potent screening of art-house tales and Hollywood blockbusters. They are studded with a memorable cast of characters, such as a chicken-factory worker balanced high on a slippery roof, a woman carving saints out of driftwood, teenage boy-racers who've solved life's mysteries, through to a business woman who dies nine times. Each story is set within...