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.

**AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW**The new collection from a literary star - five achingly tender, innovative and dazzling stories of (dis)connection.Everything felt familiar and nostalgic. It was the joy and blood-thrill of being understood, of being ready to give himself entirely to another.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 and 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.Praise for We Don't Know What We're Doing:'Heart-hurtingly acute, laugh-out-loud funny, and one of the most satisfying collections I've read for years.' ALI SMITH, Guardian 'Books of the Year''Masterly. . . marvellous grace and wit.' PHILLIP HENSHER'That tonic gift, the sense of truth - the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own'. The tonic comes in large doses in Thomas Morris's debut short-story collection.' Irish Times'Morris's fresh, direct writing style feels brand new.' Metro'Radiant' Independent

Serce – najgłębsza tajemnica, dom duszy, esencja życia i źródło sił duchowych. Przez tysiące lat pozostawało niedostępne dla medyków zarówno ze względu na kulturowe i religijne tabu, jak i ze względów praktycznych: skoro pacjent miał pozostać żywy, serce nie mogło przestać bić – a jak operować organ pozostający w ciągłym ruchu? Thomas Morris, ceniony dziennikarz BBC, relacjonując jedenaście przełomowych operacji, opowiada historię kardiochirurgii – dzieje porażek i triumfów, brawury, zazdrości i rywalizacji. Od 1872 roku i zabiegu wyjęcia igły wbitej przypadkiem w pierś londyńskiego blacharza, poprzez historyczną operację usunięcia odłamka szrapnela z serca żołnierza rannego w Normandii, po hodowlę organów w bioreaktorze i protezy z drukarki 3D – opowiadana przez Thomasa Morrisa historia ludzkiego geniuszu nie jest zamknięta, a ludzkie serce wciąż kryje tajemnice i co najmniej kilka przełomów w kardiochirurgii jest jeszcze przed nami.

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

For millennia, the human heart was the deepest of mysteries, as untouchable as the human soul. But we have always been curious and frail, and by the twentieth surgeons were exploring the secret recesses of the human body, searching out the heart’s imperfections, holes and tears, and with the advent of World War, bullets. The implications of these life-changing endeavours stretch far beyond the merely surgical and into a dizzying moral maze. What should we make of the grotesque and macabre experiments of the Russian surgeons who created bizarre and unnatural animal hybrids, the advances of vivisection, or the moral dilemma of transplants that led to the redefinition of death across the globe and the coining of the phrase ‘brain dead’? The Matter of the Heart is a story of human ingenuity, perseverance and ambition, an astonishing compendium of technological invention, alongside some catastrophic failures, bringing us right up to the medical miracles of the present day.

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.