Steven Gardner thinks they are. He grabs the chance to highlight, through his feature in The National Standard, the myriad ways that men in his country abuse the women in their lives. Week after week, Gardner churns out story after story of women's dreadful mistreatment at the hands of the men they had the misfortune to love.
This journalist is on a mission to change all that. He wants women to stand up and demand that men do better. But Gardner does not foresee the storm that breaks over his head in the form of pushback from colleagues, from random haters – and even from himself.
Can one flawed man change a nation?
Abandoned by her mother, a young girl is left to face a horrible betrayal by the man entrusted to look after her – her father.
Just when Savitri thinks she has escaped that nightmare, she wakes to find herself in another as terrifying as the first…
Something has gone horribly wrong with Josephine...
As her children struggle to accept a life-changing diagnosis, one son cloaks himself in denial while his sister subversively plots her escape from the unfolding nightmare.
It's left to the younger son to cope with his mother's increasingly bizarre symptoms, but his own stability begins to erode under the strain—with devastating results.
MISADVENTURES OF A SINGLE GUY
Clay Powers is a 40-year old with a big problem: he’s still a virgin. He just knows that Miss Right & Perfect is somewhere out there with her gorgeous, brainy self, waiting for him to knock on her door and sweep her off her feet into a life of married bliss and—yes!!!—lots and lots of sex.
Clay is determined to keep his underwear on until his true love appears, but a series of comely and not-so-comely ladies, not to mention a dude or two, have other plans for his private parts...
Riotously funny and painful, familiar and shocking, offensive and heart-breaking, this honest and raw novel follows the misadventures of a single guy who just tries to do the right thing—but keeps falling flat on his face.
Getting in was easy. Getting out was impossible.
Prime Minister-Elect David Maharaj is on the run. Desperate to be free of the Fraternity of the Consecrated that has made him the most powerful man in the land, he abandons the life that they created for him.
The ancient cult isn’t taking David’s betrayal lightly. As he bolts from one country to another, the powers that seek him begin to systematically target the loved ones he left behind in order to flush him out.
Now David must decide. Should he keep running until they inevitably catch up with him? Or return and deliver himself into the hands of this demonic order?
Unseemly Behavior is set in the Caribbean - not the scenic Caribbean of sun, sand and carefree living but a Caribbean beset with troubling realities born of a bloody history and nurtured by generational trauma.
In these tales, Stanford selects diverse strands of his society and paints them in their stark realism. A school teacher must confront a student who attempts to rape another; an adult survivor of childhood sex abuse faces her tormentor; overbearing parents drive their son to madness; young men take extreme action to deal with runaway crime on their island. There are simmering racial tensions, crises of faith and betrayals on a grand and intimate scale. Yet here and there, like tropical sunlight filtering through a rotted roof, the human spirit triumphs.
Mysteria...a place of beauty and innocence…a magical land where humans and animals live in harmony—until something sinister comes along.
—Fabien the Fish teaches himself to walk bringing the ridicule of his family down on his head.
—Little Bird risks his life by going to war with Big Bird over a meal.
—Sana the cow jumps to conclusions—and into danger.
—Dart the horse challenges the gods.
TALES FROM MYSTERIA is a collection of animal stories in which readers of all ages are drawn into a fantasy world where difference, acceptance, loyalty and betrayal are explored.
DESIRE is the story of Every teacher as he faces the students whose youth, beauty and promise are constantly at war with the damage inflicted on them by their toxic, convulsing society. Teacher Adrian Greene is one of the nicest guys at a secondary school on the island of Trinidad, but when one of his juniors is attacked by a senior he loses his famous cool. Things get out of hand when he confronts the boy about the incident and the two end up in a scuffle in the schoolyard...
Short story
Mainstream
8,300 words
First published in the anthology DESIRES: A COLLECTION OF CARIBBEAN SHORT STORIES.
"I feel this man doesn't love me." The ugly thought raised its head as they stood outside the church taking wedding pictures. But she dismissed it. After all, all brides had their doubts. But she should have listened to her gut.