Maugham teases out buried secrets as mesmerising as the heat and as menacing as the surrounding jungle

If all else perish, there will remain a storyteller's world...that is exclusively and forever Maugham, a world of verandah and prahu which we enter as well as we do that of Conan Doyle's Baker Street, and with a happy and eternal homecoming

Ideally you should listen to these stories lying in a long cane chair on the veranda of a dark bungalow sipping a gin and bitters - not that Maugham's writing needs any further atmospheric embellishment

Masterclasses in the form, full of the sidelong wit and intelligence that make the writer one of our most consistently deft short-form stylists

Barnes' stylish prose, eye for emotional detail and sense of absurdity never let him down... He suits the short story very well

The prose is crisp and elegant, light on its feet but resonant with pathos, and flecked with acute observations that never fail to strike a vivid chord with the reader.... It all makes for a diverse, entertaining collection, alternating between plangency and playfulness

Constitutional is Helen Simpson fourth collection of short stories and shows some fine developments in one of the Short Story forms more accomplished practitioners

A writer of dizzying ambition and variety, each of his stories is a fresh adventure into the possibilities of fiction

Rose Tremain is a prolific and much lauded writer but here she is at her best

Painful moments of self-revelation are expertly drawn

Striking collection of stories

As you would expect, the stories in this collection involve a certain amount of cultural tourism to the lower depths, undertaken with black humour... Welsh's relish for degradation covers up a strong sentimental streak

Welsh's transcription of Scots dialect is brilliant... Welsh also has a fabulous sense of the absurd... The overall vibe of these stories is dark and grim. And fierily, fiercely funny