Shaniqua Okwok

It's the Athens 2024 Olympics and Zeke and Olivia are there to win.

Zeke Moyo is the star athlete of Team GB. He's in Athens to claim the title of fastest man in the world.

Olivia Nkomo has landed a career-making internship, finally earning her seat at the table.

Then Zeke and Olivia collide - literally - on the first day of the games, and something unexpected begins.

But the competition is stirring up uncomfortable memories from Zeke's past. And Olivia's dream job is turning into a nightmare.

Will love become a hurdle? Or could running beside the right person change the whole game?

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West, and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.