John Saul - The Most Serene Republic

The sky was gold streaks and white streaks, an expensive look, stormy. Diagonals ruled. Under the streaks came blue woodland in bar shapes, sliced up by firebreaks. Somewhere there my brother Ray lived."

As Rivers Flow

Assumin'," she adds between kisses, "you will be lookin' your best as we get outta here. I don't want us goin' someplace and you arrivin' like a flower."

Call It Tender

Father said he would put his kettle on. Shuffling to the kitchen he picked up the phone. Put it down. Came back and sat down; wondered why no water boiled."

As Rivers Flow

Miss Heidi said I could write in my diary Miss Heidi introduced me to sex, there was a broom cupboard on the third floor and we were to go there straight away and we did."

The Most Serene Republic

Your time roaming is over, no more wild praries, no lullaby in the bushes not far from Kenwood, no viola in the corner."

even the butterfly must endure the storm

hopefully he’ll turn out a few more of the same"

Time Out

Two people find love through a chance meeting in the streets of Antwerp. An English sea captain is unfaithful in the Guayaquil of 1910. In the south of France a famous Frenchman looks after his soldier-brother's violin; in Germany a group struggles to save a Jewish cemetery from developers. High above the Thames, a secretary and a clerk share dreams of exotic places. One morning at breakfast a couple express their jealousies through arguing the merits of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. In the title story holidaymakers in Venice experience how differently love may be made.

In the atmosphere of the cities themselves—cities as far apart as Nice, Milton Keynes and Lima—a dozen stories of people pursuing their obsessions and desires unfold. In one love is flourishing in Hamburg, in another dying in London, in a third simply glimpsed on a day of public unrest in Paris. The Most Serene Republic: love stories from cities tells movingly of love in its many guises.

Read with admiration and delight ... these are stories really of the rarest kind: re-readable"

Lorna Tracy, Stand magazine

The Most Serene Republic is published by Salt Publishing
www.saltpublishing.com