10 Journeys - The Short Story Reinvented

$20.00 AUD

Category: SHORT STORIES

  The latest in the acclaimed Short Story Reinvented Series, 10 Journeys offers a unique array of poignant journeys both literal and psychological. Evocative and highly engaging, the stories transform everyday accounts into the most accessible yet powerful collection possible. Presenting a host of tale nted writers, each story compares and contrasts to encapsulate the individuality of short fiction. Sometimes dark and stimulating, other times charming and simply beautiful, these stories illustrate a portrait of unexpected wealth in ten bite-size chunks. ...Show more

Australia's Best Unknown Stories: And Tales You Thought You Knew... by Jim Haynes

$22.99 AUD

Category: SHORT STORIES

'Not only are there many things we don't know, we should never be too sure about the things we are sure we do know.'..From Jim Haynes, one of our most successful and prolific tellers of yarns and bush tales, comes this collection of classic Australian stories.the unknown, the forgotten, the surprising.. .Jim reminds us that things are not always as they seem, or as we've been told. Was the Ghan really named after the Afghan cameleers? Does that urn that represents that greatest of all sporting clashes between Australia and England really contain the ashes of a burnt cricket bail? And who really is the most important Australian who ever lived?..Jim introduces us to the forgotten nation builders, artists, poets and great unknown characters of Australian history and tells the funniest, the most amazing and the quirkiest stories that capture the heart and soul of the Australian spirit... ...Show more

A Journey to Glory by Mark Cornell

$20.00 AUD

$27.00 (25% off)

Category: SHORT STORIES

Spanning five stages of life, A Journey to Glory features stories from childhood up to middle age. The book is full of love and awe for the beauty of the landscape, and at times aware of its ability to destroy. All the characters are aware that they are a part of nature and that she tends to intrude if you dare ignore her. One character thinks he is a fish, one talks to magpies, another finds himself dancing with the fairies of Ireland. These are Celtic-Australian stories full of families, lovers, enchantment, humour and the perspective of the outsider. The stories are mainly about outer suburban life, where nature is never far away. However, some of them fly off to strange realms outside the city - places where the author had no idea he'd end up. ...Show more

Gerald Murnane: Collected Short Fiction by Gerald Murnane

$34.95 AUD

Category: SHORT STORIES

Definitive collection of the short fiction of an Australian master-storyteller who is in a league of his own. Released simultaneously with Farrar Straus Giroux's editions of Border Districts and Collected Short Fiction in New York, an event which is likely to get international media attention. This volu me brings together Gerald Murnane's shorter works of fiction, most of which have been out of print for the past twenty five years. They include such masterpieces as 'When the Mice Failed to Arrive', 'Stream System', 'First Love', 'Emerald Blue', and 'The Interior of Gaaldine', a story which holds the key to the long break in Murnane's career, and points the way towards his later works, from Barley Patch to Border Districts. Much is made of Murnane's distinctive and elaborate style as a writer, but there is no one to match him in his sensitive portraits of family members - parents, uncles and aunts, and particularly children - and in his probing of situations which contain anxiety and embarrassment, shame or delight. ...Show more

Sudden Traveller by Sarah Hall

$29.99 AUD

Category: SHORT STORIES

"Sarah Hall is one of those rare writers whose short fiction has the same luminosity as her novels. But the short form allows her more room to probe and roam, to experiment with form, to sink her fingers into the earth."--The Observer (London) Featuring her signature themes of identity, eroticism, and e xistential quest, the stories in Sarah Hall's third collection travel far afield in location and ambition--from Turkish forest and coastline to the rain-drenched villages of Cumbria. The characters in Sudden Traveler walk, drive, dream, and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journeys through life, death, and love. Science fiction meets folktale and philosophy meets mortality.  A woman with a new generation of pacemaker chooses to shut it down in the Lakeland, the site of her strongest memories. A man repatriated in the near east hears the name of an old love called and must unpack history's dark suitcase. From the new world-waves of female anger and resistance, a mythical creature evolves. And in the woods on the border between warring countries, an old well facilitates a dictator's downfall, before he gains power.  A master of short fiction, Sarah Hall opens channels in the human mind and spirit and takes us to the very edge of our possible selves. ...Show more

Ninety-nine Stories of God by Joy Williams

$24.99 AUD

Category: CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind's most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being. This series of short, fictional vign ettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass-a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams' characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for him when he's standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he's in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists. ...Show more

Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

$19.99 AUD

Category: SHORT STORIES | Reading Level: General Adult

A brilliant - and rather transgressive - collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of 'Wolf Hall' and 'Bring Up the Bodies'. Hilary Mantel is one of Britain's most accomplished and acclaimed writers. In these ten bracingly subversive tales, all her gifts of characterisa tion and observation are fully engaged, summoning forth the horrors so often concealed behind everyday facades. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in 'Comma'; nurses clash in 'Harley Street' over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game. Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road in Greece, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel's unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers. ...Show more

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

$32.99 AUD

Category: CONTEMPORARY FICTION

From White Review Short Story Prize winner Julia Armfield, a brilliant, provocative debut story collection for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link. In her electrifying debut, Julia Armfield explores women's experiences in contemporary society, mapped through their bodies. As urban dwellers' sle eps become disassociated from them, like Peter Pan's shadow, a city turns insomniac. A teenager entering puberty finds her body transforming in ways very different than her classmates'. As a popular band gathers momentum, the fangirls following their tour turn into something monstrous. After their parents remarry, two step-sisters, one a girl and one a wolf, develop a dangerously close bond. And in an apocalyptic landscape, a pregnant woman begins to realize that the creature in her belly is not what she expected. Blending elements of horror, science fiction, mythology, and feminism, salt slow is an utterly original collection of short stories that are sure to dazzle and shock, heralding the arrival of a daring new voice. ...Show more

The Big Book of Australia's War Stories by Jim Haynes

$32.99 AUD

Category: SHORT STORIES

Here are the stories of Australia's iconic battles and campaigns from the time of federation to the Vietnam War. Some are still household names, although their historical significance may be a mystery to most Aussies. Others are barely remembered now, but are part in our history and deserve to be retold . Most importantly, this collection demonstrates the extraordinary courage, resilience, stoic humour, personal heroism and sacrifice that created the legend of the Aussie digger, soldiers, sailors and airmen who did things their own way and earned the undying respect of both their allies and their enemies. These are the stories that explain Australia's wartime reputation. Fifteen years before Gallipoli, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing of stoic Australian courage, would say, 'When the ballad makers of Australia seek for a subject, let them turn to Elands River'. Of Gallipoli, a British officer called the cheerful, insubordinate Aussies 'the bravest thing God ever made'. And before the Normandy invasion, Field Marshall Montgomery's chief of staff remarked, before the Normandy invasion, 'I only wish we had the Australian 9th Division with us this morning'. ...Show more

Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers by Natalie Garrett (Editor, Compiled by)

$34.99 AUD

Category: FOOD/DRINK

"Food binds this book together, and each beautifully told story circles life's truths in ways that are surprising, often revelatory, and always moving. It's impossible not to love Eat Joy, and equally impossible not to want to bake and eat these dishes while reading. It's an extraordinary collection." - -Dorie Greenspan, James Beard Award-winning author of Everyday Dorie This collection of intimate, illustrated essays by some of America's most well-regarded literary writers explores how comfort food can help us cope with dark times--be it the loss of a parent, the loneliness of a move, or the pain of heartache. Lev Grossman explains how he survived on "sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey" General Tso's tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes her growing pains as she learned to feed and care for herself during her twenties. Claire Messud tries to understand how her mother gave up dreams of being a lawyer to make "a dressed salad of tiny shrimp and avocado, followed by prune-stuffed pork tenderloin." What makes each tale so moving is not only the deeply personal revelations from celebrated writers, but also the compassion and healing behind the story: the taste of hope. ...Show more

The Awakening and Selected Stories (Penguin Black Classics) by Kate Chopin

$14.99 AUD

Category: CLASSICS | Series: Penguin Classics Ser.

"The Awakening and Selected Stories" is Kate Chopin's groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire, edited with an introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert in "Penguin Classics". When "The Awakening" was first published in 1899, charges of sordi dness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin's great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who - with tragic consequences - refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom. In her introduction, Sandra M. Gilbert considers the issues explored in the novel and the stories collected here (including "Emancipation", "At the cadian Ball", and "Desiree's baby") from their growth out of the feminist literary tradition of the nineteenth century, to their place among other concerns of fin de siecle writers in America and Europe, to their impact on contemporary feminist writing. Katherine O'Flaherty (1850-1904), known by her married name Kate Chopin, was an American author of short stories and novels. Her works appeared in literary magazines and popular American periodicals of the day, including "Vogue and The Atlantic". In 1899, her second novel, "The Awakening", was published to much outrage and harsh criticism based upon moral, rather than literary, standards. If you enjoyed "The Awakening and Selected Stories", you might enjoy Jean Rhys's "Good Morning Midnight", also available in "Penguin Classics". ...Show more

The Travellers and Other Stories by Carys Davies

$29.99 AUD

Category: CONTEMPORARY FICTION

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