Jeffrey Archer returns with his eagerly-awaited collection of short stories Tell Tale, giving readers a fascinating, exciting and sometimes poignant insight into the people he has met, the stories he has come across and the countries he has visited. Find out what happens to the hapless young detective from Naples who travels to an Italian hillside town to find out Who Killed the Mayor? and the pretentious schoolboy in A Road to Damascus, whose discovery of the origins of his father’s wealth changes his life in the most profound way. Revel in the stories of the 1930’s woman who dares to challenge the men at her Ivy League University in A Gentleman and A Scholar while another young woman who thumbs a lift gets more than she bargained for in A Wasted Hour. These wonderfully engaging and always refreshingly original tales prove why Archer has been described by The Times as probably the greatest storyteller of our age.

This landmark anthology of short fiction presents six electrifying voices from Singapore: Alfian bin Sa’at, Wena Poon, Jeffrey Lim, Tan Mei Ching, Claire Tham, and Dave Chua. The tales they tell are graphic, gritty, and evocative, examining the lives of an array of complex characters, tormented by dilemmas that nonetheless go on to shape and direct them. Masterfully sequenced by editor Gwee Li Sui, and chosen for their perspectives on contemporary Singapore as much as for their own intrinsic merits as fiction, Telltale is a collection shedding new light on a budding literature of international merit.

'I was confined, locked into my library, tracing my heartbeats from way, way back.'In Telltale, Carmel Bird seizes on the enforced isolation of the pandemic to re-read a rich dispensary of books from her past. A rule she sets herself is that she can consult only the books in her house, even if some, such as the much-loved Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, appear to be stubbornly elusive. Her library is comprehensive, and each book chosen - or that cannot be refused - enables an opening, a connection to people, time, place, myth, image, and the experience of a writing life. From her father's bomb shelter to her mother's raspberry jam, from a lost Georgian public library with 'narrow little streets of books' to the memory of crossing by bridge the turbulent waters of the Tamar River, to a revelatory picnic at Tasmania's Cataract Gorge in 1945, this is the most intimate of memoirs.It is one that never shies from the horrors of world history, the treatment of First Nations People, or the literary misrepresentations of the past. Original, lyrical, and hugely enjoyable, Telltale, with its finely wrought insight and artful storytelling, is destined to delight.'A book about books that dreams you through a library of life.' Bruce Pascoe'I have so loved this book! It walks us through the encounters of a lifetime, always with a delightful eye for strange connections and elusive memories. It is testimony to a life of great intellectual generosity and human compassion. It is irresistible.'Michael McGirr