Spineless Wonders: 40 books

ESCAPE has unexpected tales of contemporary life, comedy, tragedy, mystery, romance, sci fi, dystopian fantasy, a homage to David Foster Wallace and lots more. All served with a good dose of quirky and a fine turn of phrase. If you like your genres with a bit of edge, you'll love this diverse collection...

Temper trantrums, doomed relationships, failed businesses, Magellan's crew and house-hunting... This is, at first glance, a quite disparate collection of stories. The settings range from New York, Texas and San Francisco to Sydney, Lismore and Malaysia. The characters vary in age from three years...

This entertaining collection includes a romp of a novella called The Rattler, as well as short stories and micro fictions all set in and around contemporary Melbourne. Sometimes serious, sometimes seriously playful - always written in breathtakingly beautiful prose - these stories uncover the heartbreaking...

After his brother Erik is left brain damaged from a car crash, Kevin finds himself a reluctant carer; the only clear-headed person in a world of invalids and mindless shoppers. ‘Disenfranchised is what some people would call me, though I still eat plenty of McDonald’s.’ Mark Vender’s...

Is there really such a thing as an innocent person? Teachers, cops, mothers, wives ─ everyone has a moment of crisis; when things could go either way. From the prostitute with no way out, to the bitter author and the cop who just wants his leave, the characters in this collection all reach...

‘Flying Foxes’ is a witty and bittersweet story exploring a gay man’s relationship with his mentally ill brother. The story follows the narrator’s attempts to deal with the numerous responsibilities that he has, all the while admiring the flying foxes that seem to have followed them...

Panther and the Museum of Fire is a novella about walking, memory and writing. The narrator walks from Glebe to a central Sydney café to return a manuscript by a recently-dead writer. While she walks, the reader enters the narrator's entire world: life with family and neighbours, narrow misses with...

In Permission to Lie, Julie Chavalier casts a curious eye into many different worlds. Her characters ride the citybound bus route, spend the night in a nudist colony and wait tables. Quirky and beautifully-written, these stories provide insights that ring with integrity and compassion. 'A new voice in Australian fiction, wry, gritty, knowing and true.' - Fiona McGregor

Eric has been thinking about his life and why he has always lived it on the safe side and with such quiet containment. While on holidays with his elderly but seemingly more life-embracing mother, he begins to explore these thoughts further – of how his extensive travels have given him the chance...

What does it take to make a man? The short stories of Pierz Newton John move through the full range of masculine experience, with an openness, not afraid to show men at their most lonely, sexual, loving, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes abusive. Tender moments between father and son, first sexual...

In White Light, a single mother seeks refuge in a religious cult, a young girl hijacks road machinery while her family dresses for church, another family down on their luck finds a gold ingot and the stability of a marriage is threatened by the arrival of a well-travelled ex-lover. O'Flynn takes us...

An author down on his luck is mistaken for a famous poet. He is asked to write a poem so moving that it will win a woman her ex-husband back. Does he reveal his true identity or play along? What happens when the real poet turns up? ‘A Tintoretto of the Soul’ is a sardonic tale of...

Written in a confident, simple, straightforward language, and with an unsentimental view of things, these nine stories are all examples of clarity, and of careful, engaging construction. They are traditional in style and subject matter, examining as they do many facets of human relationships. The...

Partner away and home alone but for the sleeping children, our protagonist joins online chat.  As a newbie, she battles with the language and protocols of cyberspace and wonders if anyone will ever speak to her online. Then online life becomes more technicoloured than the real thing. ...