Stealing Smokes

Some Surprising Short Stories (Revised and Expanded)

A delightful collection of short stories designed to engage and entertain.

Extraordinary tales about ordinary people told with empathy, whimsy, magic and imagination. You will be led up blind alleys and along familiar paths and more often than not the destination will be completely unexpected.

Told with cheeky irreverence and an antipodean tone of voice, these stories, while pure fiction, will often be so close to your own truths they are bound to resonate.

And in the tradition of writers like O. Henry and Dahl, Hanlon takes great delight in putting a twist in every tale.

Prepare to enjoy yourself.

Praise for Stealing Smokes

John Hanlon, prince of polymaths, has been producing his clever, tasty stories for many years now, delighting those fortunate to have come across them in their various media. They are what Roald Dahl might have written if Dahl hadn’t bent his stories to nasty ends. Hanlon has the same knack for a twist but without the underlying malevolence. The stories do have one unsettling quality, though – for all their surprising twist and turns, they also seem all too plausible.
— Paul Little

Stealing Smokes is a book of quirky dramas, each with a point to make about the moral universe … These are deft and sprightly and the characters in these stories resonate and the prose is highly readable.

— Gary Steel

It isn’t often that I come across such an entertaining book … A few little interesting stories, some rather surreal, drawing a little from that kind of angels looking down upon us, Mitch Albanesque type vibe going on. … I give it five stars.
— Peter Curran

What a fun adventure it was to read this book of short stories!
— Donna Shelton

Read a sample story

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