Make-Believe And Artifice

Rose Biggin is a writer and performer based in London and lectures in Creative Writing at Birkbeck (University of London). Rose has long been delighting readers ‘in the know’ with beautifully crafted stories, tales that often play around with myth or classic literary concepts, using them as a springboard for her own unique imagination.

This, her debut collection, demonstrates why she is so highly regarded – as fine a mix of otherworldly fantasy and artful mysteries as any reader could wish for.

Featuring the author’s best stories to date, Make-Believe and Artifice showcases fifteen fictions drawn from the past decade, each of which is a diversion to savour.


Introduction by Jared Shurin
Chanticleer and the Peacock
The Gunman Who Came in from the Door
The Modjeska Waltz
A Map to Camelot
The Ghost of Cock Lane
The New Woman
Miss Scarlett
A Game Proposition
The Chandelier Bid (with Keir Cooper)
Golden Girl
The Tartest of Flavours
The Diamond Twenty Thousand Times Bigger than the Ritz
Mrs Pepper’s Ghost
Helen/Hermione
The Arousing Adventures of Gelato Parlour
About the Author

“Effervescent, artful and joyfully mischievous, Make Believe and Artifice dances with the reader at every page. Rose Biggin is a fabulous writer.” – E.J. Swift

“Rose is undeniably one of the most fascinating – most unabashedly creative – voices in literature today.” – Jared Shurin in his Introduction. View Less