Winner of the Portico Prize Winner of the Edge Hill University Short Story Prize Short-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award “Every one of the seven tales here delights and disturbs in equal measure. The Beautiful Indifference illustrates that short fiction is indeed a finely wrought art form, and Hall is an artist of considerable and concise skill. Each story is a gem, but together they from a collection of astonishingly sensuous power.”   — Sunday Times (London) Sarah Hall has been hailed as "one of the most significant and exciting of Britain's young novelists" ( The Guardian ). Now, in this remarkable collection of short fiction, she has created a work at once provocative and mesmerizing.  Something unexpected from Sarah Hall (The Electric Michelangelo, 2005; How to Paint a Dead Man, 2009): a collection of short, realistic (mostly), contemporary stories. Hall’s women are cheated on, broken up with, sick, bored, lonely; and her writing pulls the reader into subtly rendered but deeply felt worlds. From a young outcast taken in by a wild, local family to a housewife who secretly joins a sex club, the stories show off a mastery of a wide variety of tones and voices. All but two of the seven stories take place in England, and Hall stretches her chops as she goes further afield. An encounter with a stray dog on an African beach becomes a possibly-paranormal revenge story; a swim in a Finnish lake becomes an edgy nightmare. The strongest story in the collection, “The Nightlong River,” evokes a historical, rustic north of England and the loneliest act of friendship you’ll ever read. American readers who cut their teeth on Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? (1993) will want to give this collection a try. --Susan Maguire “Sarah Hall’s writing is breathtaking...I did actually stop breathing once or twice...I loved it.” - Sadie Jones, author of The Outcast, Small Wars, and The Uninvited Guests “Hall’s voice is strong and distinctive - even, in single, elevated passages, exquisite.” - Lionel Shriver, Financial Times “Hall’s stories are disturbing and delicate, surprising and sad, assured and sensual, with a deliciously dark tint to their edges. What better recommendation for a book of short stories than to be so enchanted that you want to flip them over and start all over again?” - Peggy Hughes, Scotland on Sunday “Luscious short stories from uber-talented Cumbrian writer Sarah Hall, all told in ravishing prose.” - Metro “The Beautiful Indifference illustrates that short fiction is indeed a finely wrought art form, and Hall is an artist of considerable and concise skill. Each story is a gem, but together they from a collection of astonishingly sensuous power.” - Sunday Times (London) “Incredible.” - Daily Beast “Hall’s prose can be intimate or elliptical but the effect is never less than striking...She expertly evokes unquiet thoughts, broken lives, and haunting encounters with nature, and the work that results never fails to be thrilling.” - Vol. 1 Brooklyn ‘With her first short-story collection, [Hall’s] writing takes another leap forward, into a landscape entirely her own ... But [each story’s] force is felt all the more powerfully through the measured precision of Hall’s prose, which is always grounded in the exact immediacy of everyday detail. It’s an expertly ‘managed tension’ ... The erotic charge of Hall’s writing, its fierce physical power, coexists with her characters’ sense of separation: each is a world entire, and they retain their depth, their mystery.” - The Guardian “Reaches a standard that makes award juries sit up and take note.” - Lionel Shriver, Financial Times “Shows her characteristic ability to cause disquiet ... Hall’s sharply perceptive observations strike like slaps ... These are stimulating, unsettling stories.” - The Independent on Sunday “Every one of the seven tales here delights and disturbs in equal measure. The Beautiful Indifference illustrates that short fiction is indeed a finely wrought art form, and Hall is an artist of considerable and concise skill. Each story is a gem, but together they from a collection of astonishingly sensuous power.” - Sunday Times (London) “These stories constantly thwart one’s dramatic expectations -- and are all the more dramatic for it ... This prose, particularly when used to convey the bleakness of the Cumbrian landscape, is wonderful ... She does darkness so very well.” - The Times (London) “Hall’s women are cheated on, broken up with, sick, bored, lonely; and her writing pulls the reader into subtly rendered but deeply felt worlds . . . American readers who cut their teeth on Joyce Carol Oates . . . will want to give this collection a try.” - Booklist “Balancing muscularity with achingly beautiful prose, these stories are dark, raw and heartbreaking. An immensely satisfying and haunting collection.” - Clare Wigfall “Individually stunning, together these stories compris