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A masterful debut short story collection from the award-winning, critically-acclaimed poet Adam O´Riordan

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A masterful debut short story collection from the award-winning, critically-acclaimed poet Adam O´Riordan
In these eight stories, an English writer focuses his gaze on America´s West Coast, moving from fractured lives in remote, sun-scorched towns to the charged hum of Venice Beach. A man visits his long-distance lover in Los Angeles; the foreman of a desert building project embarks on a journey into California´s underworld; an artist finds peace in exile after the disintegration of an affair; and itinerant Brits discuss love and acting in downtown LA. Written with an outsider´s keen eye, this collection paints an intimate portrait of diverse lives, in a work of remarkable beauty and poignancy.

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Superbly written ... The stories range in tone from the intimate and modern, to a raw and pulverising slice of classic noir. O´Riordan has the gift of being able to distil whole lives into telling scenes and moments Mail on Sunday

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Adam O´Riordan was born in Manchester in 1982 and read English at Oxford University. In 2008 O´Riordan became the youngest Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, the Centre for British Romanticism. His first collection of poetry, In the Flesh, won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011. He is Academic Director of the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. The Burning Ground is his first collection of short stories.

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