Frank Richard Stockton

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.

Love. Perhaps the one word solution for everything. An emotion, a state of mind that we strive for, search for. A wondrous force that binds, inspires, and a force that can spin out of control; unbalanced and fragile. Love reflects, changes and embraces us all.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

Love has many forms, many needs. Some fall into the dark, into the shadows. Forbidden love has connotations of desire, of possession but also of matters far more unsavoury. It’s a delicate facet of love that our classic authors explain with careful words and superbly crafted narratives.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.