Liars' League

Cold Snap by Kate Cording

Read by Ben Crystal

Vassily was not accustomed to leaving Moscow for his assignments. This was because his boss Misha had the circumspection of the true paranoid, and liked to have his best assassin-cum-bodyguard on hand at all times: but this was a special mission. The heroin from Afghanistan hadn’t been getting through. It had been entering Boris Lukovich’s Ukrainian territory and simply vanishing, despite what Boris and Misha had agreed at the summit six years ago. And the heroin must get through. Misha had made that very clear.

The Notting Hill Punisher by Quintin Forrest

Read by Stephen Butterton

How is all this going to end? It's difficult to say. It's an eerie business, watching the cops start blocking your road off, live on News 24, when there's all this talk about a crazy, lone gunman.

As situations go, it isn't like a meeting with senior management, or the other side in a business deal. Because while those can feel tense, and often quite threatening, and you might well think you'd like to start shooting, there's no real chance of that actually happening. I  mean, you try taking a gun into work these days. Not that you should, of course, but when I first started out it used to be doable. So if it looked like there might be problems with a client, or I was due to discuss my appraisal or something, I used to pack my old 9mm with my lunch in my briefcase. Not to use it as such, so much as just have it there for moral support, or as a confidence-booster, in the same sort of way you'd wear a lucky tie, perhaps, or a pair of Arsenal boxer shorts.

Hunger by Martin Cummins

Read by Clareine Cronin

I am patient.

I have been here since the beginning, I have experienced many things, many different states of being, I know many secrets. I exist while life whirls about and through me. I have been liquid fire, sterile crust, shallow ocean. Now I am a gentle hill, part of a sea of tall prairie grass where wind-blown waves of movement in the stalks chase each other towards a featureless horizon. A landscape of tranquil tedium.

Stanley by Jessica Lott

Read by Al Woodhall

We bought the bird with his big dusty plumage, looking much older than the one-year estimate the pet store owner gave.  “A brilliant animal!” he said, which won my wife over.  It was a massive white cockatoo, big as a lap dog, and it liked to fly around the house, swiping by your head and landing unexpectedly on the back of your chair or on your shoulder with that heavy death grip of its talons. It sat up in the trapezoid windows, clawing the molding and shitting, until I insisted it get its wings clipped.  The bird watched me resentfully as I joked to my wife we could do it ourselves with a falconer’s hood and a pair of shears. It was Marta who took him—his name was “Stanley”—to the vet.

The Workers on the Cross by Brindley Hallam Dennis

Read by Steve Wedd

Clay Pit Cottage crouched at the foot of a broad old sycamore whose branches reached out above the clay-tiled roof like grasping arms. In the autumn, clumps of brown leaves fell like dead birds, and in the summer plates of bark flaked from the trunk, leathery and dry. At the bottom of Clay Pit Lane the tall hedges leaned in together like old men telling tales by firelight. I never liked it, but she fell in love at first sight; said it would be like coming home again.

The Crunch by Michael Spring

Read by Max Berendt

I appear to be growing a tail.

It started a few weeks back, not long after I’d been passed over for promotion at work. I told myself then that I’d have to be tougher, more competitive. Get into the office earlier. Be brutal if necessary.