LONG LISTED FOR WELSH BOOK OF THE YEAR

Jo Mazelis' new collection is dark, disconcerting and full of surprises.
Mavis Cheek

Jo Mazelis' first short fiction collection, Diving Girls was shortlisted for the Book of the Year Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Award.

Nick is heavily pregnant and should be looking to a new home-life. But her mother-in-law has other plans. Ethan's plans do not involve his mother - until he's expecting his second child and things come full circle. Alec is playing at hating his neighbour's extreme Christmas decorations, up to the moment love strikes and changes all the rules. A young dad's impatient care transforms to grace once he allows himself into his small daughter's game.

The instinct to make rivals; the urge to reach out to others. These competing claims - and flawed, elusive love - are the territory of these nineteen rich stories. Circle Game probes our darker fantasies of power, control and revenge, in a world not far removed from Grimm's menacing forests, where games are seldom innocent.

Jo Mazelis' first book, Diving Girls, was shortlisted for Welsh Book of the Year and Commonwealth Best First Book. She has been a prizewinner in the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition three times. Her stories and poetry have appeared in New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Big Issue, Citizen 32, and nth position, as well as being broadcast on Radio Four. A short story appeared most recently in a collection Urban Welsh published by Parthian.