Gil’d kill for some coffee right now. Grains of sleep linger in his lashes. That trail of gross leaves is still there. He stares. Fuck fresh air, he has just decided. Not fresh air as a thing. Not fuck photosynthesis. Not fuck that. Fuck no. But as a judgment. A kind of putdown. That greener
I. Even now, Zoë can remember all the prices in the Melbourne milk bar that her parents owned. Paddle Pops were seven cents. Sunny Boys were three. Violet Crumbles and Smith’s Crinkle Cut chips both sold for five, the same price as the bus fare to her high school. In those days, two dollars a
Grenth Enterprise Academy Mr. Jackson’s Classroom (2nd floor) Tutor Time—14:45-15:05 Tuesday: Quiet Reading -a thin girl, some would call her pale, but people don’t tend to say that about students so well-endowed in PE even if it’s true. It’s not just that is the thing. Endowed, well, in just about every scholastic or athletic endeavour
As the tales of Ruby progress, one thing soon becomes apparent – this world is not as it first appears. Author Nina Allan pulls us down a rabbit hotel of intense possibilities, warping the narratives into bizarre, absorbing, stories in this beautifully written collection. Allan takes us a journey through opposing times, places, and genres,
Ruminating vows and resolutions, Ludo packs his rucksack. He is going to lie. Even to himself. Whether the latter is possible, and not delusional, is, he decides, a fascinating philosophical question, and in his case the answer is, or will be, ‘yes’. But until the initiation of this trip, he had seemed genetically incapable of
Michael felt like a cliché as he sat alone at the counter of a 24-hour diner. The time of night could best be described with the military designation, “oh-dark.” The only other people in the place were a waitress and two late-middle-aged women huddled close together in a corner booth. Michael didn’t usually drink coffee
Of Foster Homes and Flies is a Pandora’s Box of emotions; love, loss, despair, fear, abuse, hope, desire and transformation. Once you lift that lid (or cover in this situation) you can’t put those feelings back, however hard you try! It’s a book that explores the darkness of growing up in a house devoid of
I’m ushered out with the last of them, the stragglers at the FreshNet Local. There’s me, two men in long, tailored jackets carrying cardboard caddies full of corked bottles, and a tall, burly woman with a dog food sack under each arm. The blokes look like the sort who made fun of my car at
Lot by Bryan Washington was my book of the year in 2019 and you can read that review here and I have been eagerly awaiting his novel Memorial for some time, staring wide eyed with delight at the announcements as they etched closer to a release date – and then the day was finally here,
Alan Baxter has created a stunning collection of small town horror that perfectly blends tones and themes of The Twilight Zone, Stranger Things, Castle Rock, The X-Files and Twin Peaks – in an Irresistible concoction of the weird and macabre, small town horror has never had it so good. What I loved about this collection
