Showing results by author "William Peskett" in All Categories

Suchard is a wedding-and-baby photographer whose only ambition is to take better portraits. When an old client Rainer comes to him with a commission to film Rainer’s own murder, albeit faked, Suchard is understandably reluctant. However, the fee Rainer offers is impossible to refuse and Suchard finds himself in the pump-room of Rainer’s house, his camera lens protruding through a hole in the wall and a gun in his pocket. By the pool, Rainer’s wife has raised a heavy earthenware mortar over her husband’s head. What could possibly go wrong? This story first appeared in the collection ...

The arc of one man’s life, through love and divorce, via crime and punishment, from Lincolnshire to a cookhouse on a Thai island, told in a diary kept for only one day every five years, Boxing Day. This story first appeared in the collection Mango and Sticky Rice and Other Stories.

This is my latest collection of short stories. As with the previous books, most of these 11 tales are set in Thailand. You can hear about a domestic cleaner who despairs of her feckless husband, a junior bank teller who tries to convince her boss there's been a murder, a lady in a hurry who won't stop to help an old man who's lost his shorts, a butcher and a restaurateur discussing farming techniques, and a lady-boy searching for love.

Gerald is worried about his advancing age. To make matters worse, he discovers some ardent love letters in his wife’s underwear drawer. Is she having an affair? Whatever it takes, he is determined to find out.This story appears in Sweet Song of the Siren and Other Stories.

The Middle Kid is the story of Alex, an ordinary schoolgirl, and her struggle to be noticeable. With an older brother who is set for Olympic glory in the swimming pool and a younger brother who has emerged as a Latin genius, Alex is the middle child and apt to be ignored. Often, she feels she is the only one in her family who feels a responsibility to hold it together. Feeling unappreciated, she knows she needs a plan. With busy parents and brothers with their own interests she first finds comfort in sleeping dreams. When these fail to deliver, she turns to a daytime dream of her own ...

The stories in this selection, taken from William Peskett’s four collections, Mango and Sticky Rice, Mist on the Jungle, Sweet Song of the Siren and The Day of the Tiger, cover the different ways in which people look at how the world works, for example in the clash between a scientific approach and a traditionalist Buddhist mode of thought. And some deal with the impossible yearnings that can motivate or destroy a person. Sometimes these may be shallow—a lust for drink, for money or for sex—and the characters absurdly comic, self-destructive or psychopathic. Sometimes the yearning may...

A young girl, finding herself alone in the world with a retired mining engineer, determines to make something of her life. This story appears in the collection The Day of the Tiger and Other Stories.

Go-go bars as a cultural asset, dentists, chicken's feet, soapy massage, trousers, being struck by lightning, tattoos, luck, breast enhancements, beards, and being a foreigner. These are just some of the aspects of living in Pattaya, Thailand's most exciting city, that come within range of this lively and revealing book. Originally published in the leading fortnightly Pattaya Today, each chapter takes a lighthearted but incisive look at the quirky side of living in a city that is unusual even by Thai standards.

Arlo Aresti is a senior executive of a confectionery company, travelling to Cambodia to sign an important chocolate deal. The stakes are high and the work is demanding. But that’s during office hours. After work there’s play, and Arlo means to exploit all the possibilities that Phnom Penh can offer. It’s as pleasurable as a bar of chocolate, except that he cannot forget his family at home, nor Tik, the ladyboy who is waiting in Bangkok. This story first appeared in the collection Mist on the Jungle and Other Stories.

When there’s a murder at Jirapong’s Stone Carving the three young carvers are suspected of the crime. After all, each has a motive. But old Kosum isn’t convinced. He has been a stone carver for years and understands pareidolia, the phenomenon by which we see faces in the clouds and imagine mythic beasts in the flames. Using his long experience, the old man sets a trap for the killer. This story appears in Sweet Song of the Siren and Other Stories.

Return to the Go-Go is the second volume of insights by Pattaya veteran Khun Pobaan into everyday life in Thailand’s extreme city. The first collection, If You Can’t Stand the Fun, Stay Out Of The Go-Go, gathered together essays that had been previously published in a local newspaper. As is the way of things, the essays went online and the current crop of 45 pieces have been collected from the monthly blog It Occurs to Me. Subjects tackled by the fearless author include hairless women, toothbrushes, the Thai language, censorship, vasectomies, town planning, squid fishing, road safety, ...

Ken Boxer doesn’t really come from Latvia. In fact, he has never been there and knows nothing about it. He actually comes from Nova Scotia. Still, the story Ken invents is enough to call the bluff of Nook, or it could be Ning, who declares that her daughter will shortly be travelling to Latvia and needs urgent advice on her trip. This story first appeared in the collection Mango and Sticky Rice and Other Stories.

This e-b*ndle contains two complete books of humorous essays about life in Pattaya, Thailand’s extreme city. The books, available separately if you prefer, are the popular If You Can’t Stand The Fun, Stay Out Of The Go-Go and its follow-up volume Return To The Go-Go. As a special addition, at the end there’s also an extract from Go-Go Girls, a book of limericks about, well, go-go girls.

What happens when a group of business executives, who find they can no longer exploit the inhabitants of Earth and despoil its natural resources because of do-gooder laws, travel to another world in search of easy profits? They find the locals thought of it first. This romp across the galaxy takes us to Kalista, the larger of the planets of the Smiling Disc star system, where intelligent life has been discovered that has a very different outlook from what we call intelligent life on Earth. The group of travellers gets the opportunity to compare not only business practices on Kalista with ...

Darry Ash is in antiques, but in a small way. He lives in the suburbs with his wife and daughter. He dreams of escaping from his humdrum life by becoming a successful, published poet, but the rejection slips mount up. Into this ordinary life comes Janie – vivacious, depressive and determined to wrest Darry away from his family. When he falls for her, Darry’s life takes a nose-dive into chaos. His business is in debt, Janie is somewhat less than he thought, and he gets no sympathy from his old friend George, who has troubles of his own. Diving for sunken treasure in Thailand with his old...

Lek and Giannis were married for ten years and lived happily with their children in North-East Thailand. Though Giannis spoke often of his Cretan childhood and heritage, he never showed his family the island of his birth. When Giannis dies, his widow takes her two children to Crete on a journey of discovery which will change their lives. This story first appeared in the collection Mist on the Jungle and Other Stories.

In Sixties Belfast, civil unrest is in the air. Patrick Glennie is guided through the terrors of growing up by his friend, the confident Robert Delgano. All Patrick can offer in return is his knowledge of nature, which suggests an alternative way to live. When they meet again, Robert is in trouble. Patrick fears being pulled into the sordid drug-world inhabited by his friend, only to find that he is already involved and that their youthful friendship was not all it seemed. His debt to Robert takes Patrick back to Ireland and then to Spain, where he risks losing everything—even his wife ...

This is a selection of the best of William Peskett's poetry, most chosen from his two collections of poems with the addition of a number of newer works. Most of the poems date from the 1960s and 1970s, when Peskett was part of a vigorous poetic movement that emerged from politically troubled Northern Ireland.

On the face of it, this is the story of Dave Smart, business studies lecturer, as he leads a group of three colleagues on a tour of discovery to the Smiling Disc star system, 19 light years from home. Their main purpose is to investigate business practice on Kalista-mm, the larger of the system's two planets, and gather material for Dave's new book, 'Doing Business on Other Planets'.