> Skip to content

Extracts

Extract
Farewell to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

Sunny sat wedged between Halajan and the back door of the old Mercedes convertible, the large pink elephant slumped on her lap as if it were a petulant child.

Extract
The Spider and Her Demons

Zhi’s entire life is handmade dumplings.

Extract
Bloodwood Creek

Deeply disappointed, I stood before the reception desk at the police station wondering what to do next.

Extract
Rekha's Kitchen Garden

The first time I successfully harvested my own carrots, I thought I'd moved up into some new echelon of the gardening world - not least because had taken me five years.

Extract
Irena's Gift

Magpies warbled in the gum trees as we walked up the path to Nana Alicja’s ground-floor flat in the upper-crust Melbourne suburb of Toorak.

Extract
Fire Strike

The vintage Soviet-era snowcat crested the final rise on the steep climb.

Extract
Wifedom

How did I get here?

Extract
Why We Are Here

Nine months after He died, I opened the door and smelled summer.

Extract
The Final Gambit

“We need to talk about your eighteenth birthday.”

Extract
The Hawthorne Legacy

Tell me again about the first time the two of you played chess in the park.” Jameson’s face was candlelit, but even in the scant light, I could see the gleam in his dark green eyes.

Extract
The Inheritance Games

When I was a kid, my mom constantly invented games.

Extract
Chain-Gang All-Stars

She felt their eyes, all those executioners.

Extract
Broken Bay

Arctic wind lashed the boat.

Extract
But the Girl

It was an undecided and hazy spring, the spring that MAS370 disappeared, and I didn’t know what I was doing in London.

Extract
Perfect-ish

It’s Saturday afternoon, not yet 2 pm, and the humidity is relentless.

Extract
The Secrets of Huon Wren

It wasn’t Nora she’d wanted to meet that day.

Extract
Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves

We were sitting in a cafe with three friends and excitedly telling them about our book Raising Girls Who Like Themselves, when, to our surprise, tears started to well in the eyes of one of our friends.

Extract
Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer

Before I say anything, I’d just like to make one thing perfectly clear: I didn’t stab anyone.

Extract
A Real Piece of Work

When I was shortlisted for the fellowship that turned into the book you are reading now, I texted my mum.

Extract
Ink Blood Sister Scribe

On her seventh birthday, as a gift, her father had let her read a spell

Extract
Notes on Her Colour

My mother could change the color of her skin.

Extract
Hello Beautiful

For the first six days of William Waters’s life, he was not an only child.

Extract
On a Bright Hillside in Paradise

Starlight spilled down the flanks of the mountain.

Load more