‘A beautifully crafted tale of interlocking lives in London and Norway, imbued with a Scandinavian melancholy.’ Monocle Magazine

Love approaches at odd angles; death too. Yet these may be hard to spot, while so much else is competing for attention: a seafaring parrot, a kissing brothel, Latvian wrestlers, a watercolorist witch, a dismembered mannequin . . . Encompassing the interleaving lives of Eva, Bjørn, Paul and Marianne, The White Room is a zigzag descent into darkness, lit by those moments when you can sit in a tree and see eternity.

Born in 1972, Erik Houston is a violinist who has played as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe and in the United States, Japan and Russia. He teaches at the Purcell School and at the Royal College of Music.

Jennie Walker 24 for 3

‘This is a little marvel of a novella. It’s funny, clever, illuminating, deeply kind-hearted, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s not self-indulgent: things happen in it, surprising things, like in an old-fashioned novel, yet it’s perfectly contemporary; and every word has been chosen with subtle care.’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman’s attention is torn between a husband who is all too keen to explain the rules, a lover who prefers mystery, and a sixteen-year-old son who hasn’t come home. By Tuesday night the match will have been won or lost, or will have drifted towards a draw in which only pride may be salvaged.

The CBe edition of 24 for 3 has been replaced by a new and revised edition published by Bloomsbury in August 2008 (ISBN 978–0–7475–9792–6).

Jack Robinson  Days and Nights in W12
ISBN 978–0–9557285–2–5; 54pp; £6

A book of idle speculation, unlikely stories and occasional history lessons prompted by dull photographs of Shepherd’s Bush, London w12.

Alongside the famous (Alfred Hitchcock) and the infamous (the spy George Blake), here are a woman who lives in a shed, an inventive crime syndicate, a chameleon, a right-wing dog, gnomes, a jogger, a traffic warden, a compulsive maker of wedding cakes, a businessman down on his luck and a woman still waiting for a lover who didn’t turn up in 1911. The whole amounts to a modern-day topographical sketchbook with portraits from life, more or less.

Jack Robinson is a freelance writer and editor living in West London.

Stefan Grabinski  In Sarah’s House
translated by Wiesiek Powaga
ISBN 978–0–9557285–3–2; 124pp; £6

Two young chimney sweeps fail to emerge from the stack of an old brewery. A doctor investigates a case of all-consuming sexual obsession. On a disused stretch of track, a retired railwayman cultivates a yearning towards death. An infection acquired during what appears to be a troubling dream leaves its victim hideously scarred.

Set among the villages and small towns of Poland around the start of the twentieth century, these tales of the supernatural by Stefan Grabinski (1887–1936) are written with an abounding lyricism that accentuates their elements of horror and fantasy.

Wiesiek Powaga, who has translated these stories and provided an introduction to Grabinski, lives in London and in a village in Hungary. He edited and translated The Dedalus Book of Polish Fantasy (Dedalus, 1996) and translated White Raven by Andrzej Stasiuk (Serpent’s Tail, 2001).