Recent - Stories

Maximilian Hawthorn is eleven years old, terrifyingly clever, and the undisputed master of his school. He runs a black-market homework empire, negotiates better lunch privileges than the prefects, and has reduced his form teacher to tears more times than anyone can count.

Then he notices Gabriel —quiet, unimpressed, and immune to Max's schemes. His carefully constructed world begins to unravel as he discovers that some things can't be outsmarted, some people refuse to be impressed, and sometimes the best strategy is no strategy at all.

Crushes, chaos, and the theatre kids who bring even the most arrogant boys to their knees.

Two high school enemies—a lanky anxious nerd and a brooding bully—end up stuck together working the closing shift at a dead-end grocery store. As summer bleeds away and college looms, they discover the social hierarchy means nothing when you're both scraping gum off linoleum. But when a rainstorm strands them at the bully's rundown apartment, Chad discovers Jake's deepest secret: he's a massive closet geek with a decade of hidden longing. What starts as reluctant friendship becomes something far more complicated—and far more real—than either expected.

Cwtch is a Welsh word, translated into English it means a hug, but the meaning is deeper and more profound than a simple hug. When you give someone a cwtch you also give them a safe place and this is what twenty something Londoner Harry gives Welsh farmboy Aled. The story tells how two souls find each other, and recognise one another immediately. It is attraction, but also love at first sight, although true love is never easy.

This story is also published under the title Eighteen Years by E K Stokes.