Thomas Morris

The new collection from a literary star - five achingly tender, innovative and dazzling stories of (dis)connection.From a child attending his first football match, buoyed by secret magic, and a wincingly humane portrait of adolescence, to the perplexity of grief and loss through the eyes of a seahorse, Thomas Morris seeks to find grace, hope and benevolence in the churning tumult of self-discovery.Philosophically acute. Wincingly humane. Strikingly original. This outstanding suite of stories is bursting with a bracing emotional depth. Open Up cracks the heart as it expands the short story form.

A thrilling investigation of a true Victorian crime at Dublin railway station, shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2022.'All the shocks and surprises of the best crime fiction' The Times Crime ClubDublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk.Yet there is no sign of a murder weapon and the office door is locked, apparently from the inside. Thousands of pounds in gold and silver are left untouched at the scene of the crime.Augustus Guy, Ireland's most experienced detective, teams up with Dublin's leading lawyer to investigate the murder - but the case defies all explanation. Then a local woman comes forward, claiming to know the killer...'An intriguing and compelling true-crime whodunnit' Irish Times'A true-crime masterclass... As compelling as any thriller' Philip Gray, author of Two Storm Wood

A mysterious epidemic of dental explosions, A teenage boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestick A remarkable woman who, like a human fountain, spurted urine from virtually every orifice These are just a few of the anecdotal gems that have until now lain undiscovered in medical journals for centuries. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world. From seventeenth-century Holland to Tsarist Russia, from rural Canada to a whaler in the Pacific, many are monuments to human stupidity – such as the sailor who swallowed dozens of penknives to amuse his shipmates, or the chemistry student who in 1850 arrived at a hospital in New York with his penis trapped inside a bottle, having unwisely decided to relieve himself into a vessel containing highly reactive potassium. Others demonstrate exceptional surgical ingenuity long before the advent of anaesthesia – such as a daring nineteenth-century operation to remove a metal fragment from beneath a conscious patient’s heart. We also hear of the weird, often hilarious remedies employed by physicians of yore – from crow’s vomit to port-wine enemas – the hazards of such everyday objects as cucumbers and false teeth, and miraculous recovery from apparently terminal injuries.

A young video shop assistant exchanges the home comforts of one mother figure for a fleeting sexual encounter with another; a brother and sister find themselves at the bottom of a coal mine with a Japanese tourist; a Welsh stag on a debauched weekend in Dublin confesses an unimaginable truth; and a twice-widowed pensioner tries to persuade the lovely Mrs Morgan to be his date at the town's summer festival... Thomas Morris' debut collection reveals its treasures in unexpected ways, offering vivid and moving glimpses of the lost, lonely and bemused. These entertaining stories portray the lives of the people who know where they are, but don't know what they're doing.