Twenty-one short stories from award-winning writer Wendy James, ranging from the vignette to the compact epic, the suburban kitchen to the outback and the world, an instant to a lifetime and beyond.
A stay-at-home father is consumed by his frustrations. In Salzburg, a fortepiano maker struggles to preserve his family. Generations of women recall the family matriarch-was she really a witch? And in a kaleidoscopic tour de force, a young mother finds herself on the run with a desperate criminal.
These are stories about memory and perspective, patterns and deviations, longing and escape: a glittering collection from a master of the form.
About the Author :
Wendy James is the celebrated author of eight novels, including the bestselling The Mistake and the compelling The Golden Child, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Ned Kelly Award for crime. Her debut novel, Out of the Silence, won the 2006 Ned Kelly Award for first crime novel, and was shortlisted for the Nita May Dobbie award for women's writing. Wendy has a PhD from the University of New England and works as an editor at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. She lives in Newcastle with her husband and the youngest of her four children, and writes some of the sharpest and most topical domestic noir novels in the country.
Review :
'Absolutely amazing... There is something for everyone in this fantastic book.' -Bookseller and Publisher
'Emotionally astute, vivid and eloquent, underpinned by eroticism, James's fiction traces the contours of her characters' lives as they grapple with responsibility, freedom, and love, propelled by multifarious desires. These fresh, sensuous stories are by turns witty, perceptive and coruscating, many with a delicious wry twist.' -Felicity Plunkett
'A penetrating picture of our life and times ... a knockout.' - Sara Dowse, Canberra Times
'What quiet confidence, what an honest setting down of things as they are, nothing extenuating ... This is a gifted story-teller and these are unusually arresting stories.' - Robert Lumsden, Adelaide Review
'From single-page tales to the long sequence that ends the book, James's sure hand leads us through sometimes harrowing, sometimes redemptive moments in her beautifully rounded characters' lives.' -Who magazine
'James ... has already attracted accolades for her two novels ... The calibre of her short stories will enhance her reputation further.' - Dianne Dempsey, The Age
