AustLit

'In early 1997, Anu Singh, a beautiful law student at the Australian National University, began to tell people she planned to kill herself. With doctors unable to help, Anu’s engineer boyfriend, Joe Cinque, attempts to get to the bottom of her condition. But as Anu’s mental and emotional state disintegrates, her plans grow more macabre and more public as she convinces fellow student Madhavi to help her. With Joe beginning to understand the true nature of their relationship, Anu starts talking of killing him as revenge for having made her ill. After an elaborate farewell dinner party attended by friends, Anu attempts to kill Joe but fails. She tries again and this time she succeeds, injecting Joe with a lethal dose of heroin. Nobody tried to stop her. ' (Production summary)

'Fortinbrasse is the tragedy of Hamlet’s mirror and foil, the Prince of Norway. It supplements the handful of references Shakespeare gives us in Hamlet with further details from his, sources together with my own speculation about the circumstances that eventually lead to Fortinbrasse’s bittersweet arrival at Elsinore at the end of Hamlet.

'The action is roughly contemporaneous with Hamlet’s, beginning a short time before news of King Hamlet’s death reaches Norway and ultimately merging into Hamlet’s final scene. It explores the psychological, personal and political factors that drive and complicate Fortinbrasse’s desire to redress his father’s death at King Hamlet’s hands and the consequent loss of his country.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the 1990s, the genre of serial killer fiction is emerging into a serious literary occupation. The world's pulpiest authors converge on a sleepy southern city once described by Salman Rushdie as "the ideal setting for a Stephen King novel or horror film" for the inaugural Festival of Multiple Homicide Fiction--only to be killed, in gruesome homage to their most famous works, by a shadowy figure quickly dubbed The Reader.

'Rachel Stern is a local multiple homicide writer who is researching a new book with the local police when the first of her colleagues is killed. Her knowledge of the genre soon proves invaluable to the investigation, but as more bodies appear it seems that the killer may be targeting her. Her ex-husband has reappeared and is making a nuisance of himself. The conveners of the festival are trying to play down the rumours of a serial killer preying on their authors. As the murders close around Rachel she is forced to question her own part in the gathering darkness, and to confront the very nature of fiction, of characters and authors.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.