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 four volumes of her poetry, The Dream of Stairs: A Poem Cycle; Inside the Stretch of My Heart; Before and After the Darkness; and Collected Poems, as well as her novel, Drifting Between Empty Tramlines.

Many of the stories in A Flock of Blackbirds 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 her acute observations of domestic and office life in the city, intensely spiritual insights are being played out, sometimes delicately, sometimes shockingly, but always movingly.

Profits from the sales of all six 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 our 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. Susan's exceptional sensitivity was reflected not only in the intense outpouring of poems to be found in The Dream of Stairs, Inside the Stretch of My Heart, and Before and After the Darkness, but also in the short stories that make up this collection. In these haunting, poignant stories, she chronicles her personal response to the world around her, while vividly portraying the inner landscape of her own mental and emotional struggle. 'There was an intellectual and emotional intensity which burned within her and which predominantly found outward expression in her writing and when she expressed herself thus she did so with great imaginative power and also with an uncompromising honesty and integrity.' (Rabbi Dr David Goldstein)