Books & Stories by Kevan Eveleigh

Immerse yourself in ten delightful stories of hope, dreams, love, despair and triumph as you enter this world of lords, ladies, lovers, teachers, students, losers and winners.

From Ireland, through Wales and England to Montana and New York City you will laugh, smile and maybe shed the occasional tear as you champion the cause of the main character in each story.

The must read book of short stories that you have been waiting for is being published on 1st March 2024 but you can get a FREE STORY from the book by clicking the link below.

"A Masterpiece of Entertainment" Charlotte W

NB: SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE LIST OF STORIES - All stories will be available individually on Amazon Kindle. 

Fate had brought him to this wild, inhospitable place.
His survival rested on one decision, to jump or not to jump.

This was a critical moment, for he could live, or he could die.  

Jump and he might survive, but to do nothing and remain here, meant certain death.

Across the valley floor, moving away from him in the distance, he noticed an irregular column of ant-like orange figures, slowly ascending the spine of a steep, rocky outcrop.

Recognition was instant.

They stared at each other, but neither flinched, as bygone memories of romance stirred.

Two squirming seconds of uninvited, unexpected, emotional trauma elapsed. Both were fascinated by the vision that greeted them, and so they held their gaze.

Thirty-three years had passed since the age of puppy love, when their desperate, love-starved, teenaged lips, had entwined for the first time.

Rachel’s husband and her two grown-up children walked by her side, oblivious to the dramatic love scene being played out in front of them.

Secretly, she asked herself that burning, unanswered question, which eats at the soul, and had haunted her for a lifetime.

“Does first love ever die?”

New-born babies are God’s ultimate blank canvas, for we all arrive in this world physically and mentally naked.

Two such infant princes were on a collision course that would be thirty-six years in the making, but only one would emerge as king.

The contrasting paths of a poor Irish labourer, and a rich, titled Englishman, were set.

It was the duty of their parents to prepare them for the conflict.

Fathers and mothers have much to answer for, but of men and women, we know this.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

Next, I made my way barefoot across the carpet and stubbed my toe on a bedroom chair, cursed loudly, and then walked past the full-length mirror on the landing.

I was as naked as the day I was born.

Beckoned by the bright, golden light of a clear Somerset morning, I reluctantly removed my unshaven, unsteady body, from the unbearably hot bed.

One half had not been slept in, whilst my side was strewn with cast-off, crumpled and creased bedsheets.

If my wife had seen the state that the bed and I were in, I had no doubt she would hit the roof. We were both a complete mess.

Next, I made my way barefoot across the carpet and stubbed my toe on a bedroom chair, cursed loudly, and then walked past the full-length mirror on the landing.

The beautiful teenage goddess smiled a perfect goodbye.

Now resigned to failure, they stared at each other through fixated teary eyes, and both lamented an opportunity missed.

In a gesture of surrender to the inevitability of fate, she leaned towards the window and waved goodbye to her unnamed, unknown suitor.

This vision of loveliness would affect him for the rest of his life, but now it vanished into a Mid-West sunset, like a beautiful princess disappearing into a children’s fairy tale castle.

Standing alone, heartbroken because of his lack of confidence, all caused by a faint heart, he vowed that never again would he let shyness prevent him from taking a chance.

Chastising himself, he whispered out loud.

“The faint heart will win the fair maiden!”

Olivier Cartier, never saw Juliet again.

“The King is dead, long live the King!”

Quentin Prendergast spoke the words out loud and clear to his reflection in the mirror.

His death was imminent, and if he was lucky, his end on this earth could be counted in months.

Death and taxes were the two certainties. He had paid his taxes up to date, but soon he must complete the contract.

“To be or not to be?” was not the question. His impending demise had taken that phrase out of his hands.

“To act or not to act? that was the question!”

The physically fading Broadway and Hollywood star, slowly and carefully stretched himself up to his commanding height of six feet tall, before gazing at the heavily rouged reflection in the mirror.

He stared boldly ahead, drawing on all his thespian experience, and then addressed the haunted image that stared back at him with perfect elocution, timing, and emotion.

“Should I play the part the crowd expect, portraying the image they crave, or do I announce to them the uncomfortable, uncompromising, unbending truth!”

The paper chariot was boldly decorated at its edges with unmistakeable red and blue diagonal stripes which immediately confirmed its origin.

The physically fading, yet mentally sharp old lady summoned up the courage to open the uninvited, unexpected envelope that had just landed unceremoniously on her doormat.

She gripped the paper knife with the Scarborough insignia and then used her least painful arthritic hand to carefully slice open the international messenger.

A trio of passengers fell out.

Two cheques and a letter bounced onto the table.

She panicked.

The first cheque was for £300 and the second for £50,000.

Both were made payable to the personal account of Clementine Hobson.

“It doesn’t make any sense; it was all so long ago!”

The retired headmistress nervously adjusted her varifocal-lensed spectacles and examined the letter more closely; the handwriting was unmistakeable.

She panicked again.

“He’s leaving tomorrow, my baby boy is leaving home! Where did all the years go? Do you think we did enough?”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough for him to survive in the big wide world? I mean, he’s only eighteen, is he grown up enough to go to university?”

“All baby boys must grow up in the end. He’s our son, isn’t he? Anyway, Rhodri Davies is a six-foot tall, fifteen stone Welsh rugby player so I think he’ll be ok, and if he’s lucky, he’ll end up just like his father!”

“I knew you would say that! You mean just like you, just like Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up!”

“You married me, didn’t you?”

Where is that white knight in shining armour when you need him most?

She arrived at Reading University as a bright, promising, wholesome first-year student, and for the first time in her life, every vice was suddenly within her grasp.

Her parents had taught her right from wrong, but her new friends had no respect for older people, or themselves for that matter, and none for the shy, innocent girl they would drag down to their low standards and beyond.  

It would be a traumatic journey from success to excess, to despair, self-isolation, and dark thoughts.

Only she could halt the fall into oblivion.

That was the problem.

She couldn’t stop herself.

For salvation, she needed a guardian angel, but the horizon was empty.

She was big alright, just like they said, the largest of ladies calmly lying there naked and beautiful in all her glory and magnificence, beckoning the next customer, available and receptive to all who wanted her, but at a price.

This lady was both mistress and master; imposing, in charge, in waiting, as if daring someone to challenge her authority, but no such challenge would come, for she was the last of her kind, the Queen of all she surveyed.