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A Flock of Blackbirds is a selection of short stories and novellas written by Susan Noble, who died in 1974 at the age of 31. Susan’s output of fiction and poetry in the final ten years of her life was prolific and to mark the fortieth anniversary of her death, the stories in this volume are being published in hardback, paperback and Kindle for the first time, along with two volumes of her poetry, The Dream of Stairs and Inside the Stretch of My Heart, and her novel, Between Empty Tramlines. Susan’s exceptional sensitivity was reflected not only in the prolific outpouring of poems that make up The Dream of Stairs and Inside the Stretch of My Heart, but in the short stories that make up this collection. In these intense, haunting stories, she chronicles her personal response to the world around her, while vividly portraying the inner landscape of her mental and emotional struggle. Many of the stories are triggered by the quotidian experience of living and working in central London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, yet beneath the fragile surface of acute observations of city life, intensely spiritual insights are played out, sometimes delicately, sometimes shockingly. but always movingly. Profits from the sales of all four volumes are being donated to three charities: Mind, the Samaritans and Sane. Facsimiles of the original typescripts and manuscripts are available online at: www.aesopbooks.com/susannoble About the author Brought up in South London, Susan Noble was the second of three children. Her childhood was enriched by being part of a large and closely-knit Jewish family. Unfortunately stricken by polio (then known as infantile paralysis) in her early years, Susan went through life with a degree of physical handicap which she was to overcome with courage and determination. Educated at Croydon High School, Susan studied English at Somerville College, Oxford. After graduating, Susan worked in London, first at the Royal National Institute for the Blind, dictating books for transcription into Braille, and later at the National Central Library in London, where she qualified as a Chartered Librarian.
