The Lantern Club

In a quiet town somewhere in the north of England, a group of like-minded people – fed up with the dull talk of cricket scores in the local social club – decide to set up their own society: the Lantern Club. Applicants to the club are carefully vetted, under the benign and watchful eye of the chairman, Warwick Edwards, and the highest goal of membership is one of the club’s coveted ‘lantern’ ties – awarded only to those who undergo a secret and often hell-raising trial called The Detail.

In seven stories we meet seven Lantern Club members. Derek Greene, for instance, who knows himself to be both selfish and neurotic and who wants to rediscover himself by posing as a workman in a down-at-heel town. Or Harold Stone, who, to overcome his fecklessness, travels to China and finds himself caught up in the nightmare of Tiananmen Square. Or Wendy Lowe, whose love of animals promises to open up a new life for her family…

By turns poignant and witty, surreal and gripping, these sparkling stories will inspire as well as entertain.