AustLit

'Unpicking the stitches of gender and genre, the stories in this searing, funny, haunting debut explore how our ideas of womanhood shape us, and what they cost us.

'‘My God darling – the women I know.’

'A young woman tries to cheat her algorithm, creating a wholesome online persona while her ‘real’ life dissipates. A grandmother speaks to her granddaughter through the fog of generations. Two lovers divide over alternative meat options. A factory worker fits eyes in companion dolls until she is called on to install her own.

'The women I know are sharp, absurd, sly, wrong, wry, repressed, hungry, horny, bold, envious, dominating, uncertain, overdetermined, underpaid, bored, smart, crystalizing, themselves.

'A burning talent with growing international recognition, Katerina Gibson’s work has appeared in Granta, Kill Your Darlings, Overland and elsewhere. She is the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and recipient of the Felix Meyer Scholarship.' (Publication summary)

'Dark as Last Night confirms, once again, that Tony Birch is a master of the short story. These exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood. In this collection we witness a young girl struggling to protect her mother from her father’s violence, two teenagers clumsily getting to know one another by way of a shared love of music, and a man mourning the death of his younger brother, while beset by memories and regrets from their shared past. Throughout this powerful collection, Birch’s concern for the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked shines bright.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In 1895 Alfred Nobel rewrote his will and left his fortune made in dynamite and munitions to generations of thinkers. Since 1901 women have been honoured with Nobel Prizes for their scientific research twenty times, including Marie Curie twice.

'Spanning more than a century and ranging across the world, this inventive story collection is inspired by these women whose work has altered history and saved millions of lives. From a transformative visit to the Grand Canyon to a baby washing up on a Queensland beach, a climate protest during a Paris heatwave to Stockholm on the eve of the 1977 Nobel Prize ceremony, these stories interrogate the nature of inspiration and discovery, motherhood and sacrifice, illness and legacy. Sometimes the extraordinary pivots on the ordinary.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'IN the comic-tragic story ‘Lucky Ticket’, the narrator, a genial disabled old man, sells lottery tickets on a street corner in bustling Saigon. In ‘Mekong Love’, two young people in a restrictive society find a way to consummate their relationship—in an extraordinary tropical landscape.

'In ‘Abu Dhabi Gently’, a story of dreams and disappointment, of camaraderie and disillusionment, a migrant worker leaves Vietnam to earn money in the UAE in order to be able to marry his fiancée. ‘White Washed’ depicts a strained friendship between two students in Melbourne, the Vietnamese narrator and a white girl.

'What does it mean to be Asian? What does it mean to be white? And what makes up identity? In Lucky Ticket, Joey Bui introduces a diverse range of characters, all with distinctive voices, and makes us think differently about mixed-race relationships, difficulties between family generations, war, dislocation and identity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A body buried in a suburban backyard.

'A suicide pact worthy of Chekhov.

'A love affair born in a bookshop.

'The last days of Bennelong.

'And a very strange gift for a most unusual Prime Minister...

'Tantalising, poignant, wry, and just a little fantastical, this subversive collection of short fiction - and one singular novella - from bestselling author Debra Adelaide reminds us what twists of fate may be lurking just beneath the surface of the everyday.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.