AustLit

'Brimming with anticipation, humour, desire and strangeness, these stories will quicken your senses and make your spine tingle.

'In Thrill Me, 31 award-winning and emerging Australian storytellers write to thrill and move you. Read on if you dare. These stories will leave an unshakeable imprint on you.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Flight of Birds by Joshua Lobb, a novel in twelve stories, is accompanied by an exegetical work. As the title indicates, the stories feature birds and their interactions with people. The reader is asked, at least initially, to consider the stories purely as fictional enterprises, isolated from the ‘Field Notes’ which follow at the end of the novel component. Rightly so, as first and foremost the role of a story is to engage the reader; it needs to function as a story before any other purpose, such as exegetical insight, can be attained.' (Introduction)

'Jennifer lives shrouded in secrets on Plane Tree Drive, stuck in regret that is destroying her marriage. Alice watches on as her husband finally gives up his addictions – and his family in the process. Faraj, haunted by memories from Afghanistan, slips into homelessness yet again. Meanwhile, Maurice rediscovers his mojo and brings the whole of the Drive together at his backyard gigs. 

'Peer through the windows and doors on Plane Tree Drive to find a streetscape that is diverse, heartbreaking, funny and strange, where the loneliness of domestic isolation and the joy of connection weave together to form an interlaced map of suburban life.'  (Publication summary)

'Twenty-seven short story writers unpack the idea of beauty and discover that there is no light without darkness. Cracking the core of all things lovely to reveal their innards, these writers ask: What is beauty anyway?' (Publication summary)