Whatever Gets You Thru The Night

A collection of stories, set in an often surreal landscape of human conditions and preoccupations, about people living on the outside of society trying to survive deep-rooted fractures to get through the challenge of life.

A man stands in a vets’ surgery, sobbing and stroking the frozen head of his beloved cat. A god oversees an arbitration of fate, performing to an afterlife audience, holding a human to account for the sins of his life. A sister, living in a care home, kills her brother with a frying pan and then steers the police to help secure a conviction. A haunted painting brings a man face-to-face with his dead father, presenting him with a choice of survival or destruction.

STEPHEN A. BROTHERTON is an English writer who has used his three decades of working as a social worker to create these characters and, in particular, his interest in the psychology of survival. He now lives in Shropshire but grew up in the West Midlands. He currently works for the NHS and is a member of the Bridgnorth Writers’ Group and the Shrewsbury Writers’ Lab. His novel, Fractures, Dreams and Second Chances, was published in 2021, and his first collection of short stories, Watching the Wheels, was published in February 2023.