Status Updates From A Beautiful Place to Die

13. ‘A Beautiful Place to Die’ - You’ll have to excuse me a minute while I stick my heart back together with duct tape... 5 stars

12. ‘I Got Them Trying To’ - Two seemingly dissimilar people are brought together through their church. A heartbreaking, yet uplifting, story. 5 stars

11. ‘The Dog Whisperer’ - Another well-observed piece about a guy who tries to solve his lack of purpose in life by adopting a dog. Like a couple of the other stories in this book, though, it suffers from the lack of a satisfying conclusion. 3 stars

10. ‘The Hanging Tree’ - A young Boy gets a shock while on a walk in the countryside. A wonderfully observed exercise in empathy. 5 stars

9. ‘Wizards of the Forest’ - Quite entertaining but I’m not sure what the deeper meaning was, if any. 3 stars

8. ‘The Phone Jacker’ - A bizarre encounter on a train, which left me smiling if a little bemused. 4 stars

7. ‘The Watcher Woman’ - A great, emotive story about a homeless woman who ends up having to do a lot more than watch. 4 stars

6. ‘The Gremlin’ - The life of one boy and the physical (?) manifestation of his neuroses. Quite clever. 4 stars

5. ‘I’m Cold Darling’ - A high-maintenance nightmare of a woman learns the hard way that being completely self-centred can have terrible consequences. 4 stars

4. 'The Odd Couple' - I honestly thought this story was going down a horror route but it actually turned out to be quite sweet... sort of. 4 stars

3. ‘The Soldier of Luxury’ - An obnoxious dickhead learns a lesson on a group hike. I liked the premise and it did raise a chuckle but I didn’t quite buy the characters as real people. 3 stars

2. ‘Where’s Amit?’ - A truly heartbreaking story about a lady with dementia in a nursing home. SO well observed that I’m almost certain the author must have some experience of this world; the picture he painted took me right back to my days as a nurse. 5 stars

1. ‘The Coral Tailed Waffle Bird’
A father tries to impart a life lesson to his young daughter on a bird-watching trip, with limited success. 3 stars