MISSING

by Walter de la Mare

Foreword by Russell Hoban

With London in the grip of a heat wave, a man takes refuge from the scorching sun in a tea shop, only to share his table with a stranger who seems determined to make conversation. Too polite to ignore him, and fascinated despite himself, the narrator becomes a reluctant confidant as his new acquaintance begins to relate the confused circumstances of an unexplained disappearance. Elsewhere, altercations between servants and their chilling results are revealed in another highly ambiguous confession to a stranger, and birth, death and the breakdown of a relationship are all bound up in the story of a troubled childhood.

Bringing together three of the best of Walter de la Mare’s short stories, Missing is an unsettling collection of guilty secrets, past hurts, and haunted lives from one of England’s foremost twentieth-century writers.

Publication date: 01/03/2007