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Extracts

Extract
French Braid

This happened back in March of 2010, when the Philadelphia train station still had the kind of information board that clickety-clacked as the various gate assignments rolled up.

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Death of the Black Widow

Could a building sweat? If someone were to ask him, Walter O’Brien would say no.

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Prometheus High 1: How to Make a Monster

Lightning flashed, and Athena Strange began counting.

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This is the Night They Come For You

It is the middle of a hot and clammy afternoon at Police Headquarters in Algiers.

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Elizabeth Finch

She stood before us, without notes, books or nerves. The lectern was occupied by her handbag.

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Lessons in Chemistry

The thirty-year-old mother of Madeline Zott rose before dawn every morning and felt certain of just one thing: her life was over.

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The Mallee Girl

Pippa Black stared out the kitchen window at the dusty sun-beaten paddocks beyond.

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Mothertongues

Christmas Eve. I’m sitting in Cafe Flore in San Francisco.

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Till Death, or a Little Light Maiming, Do Us Part

Why is it that just when you think you have all the answers, life starts asking all the wrong questions?

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Harbouring

Word came to me at the foundry.

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So Far, For Now

How this new condition changes language, not we or us or ours but I and me and mine, mine alone the hollow hours.

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Grand

On the crest of Hopetoun Bridge, I stop and take a selfie.

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Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

I’m sitting in my therapy room across from a young woman.

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Glucose Revolution

What was the last thing you ate?

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The Match

At the age of somewhere between forty and forty-two — he didn’t know exactly how old he was — Wilde finally found his father.

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Reckoning

For us the voyage was a marvel. We were seeing the world: the Rock of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, elephants in the main street of Colombo.

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Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.

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The PM's Daughter

This is a story about me.

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Brotherband 9: The Stern Chase

Hal smiled to himself as the Heron cut smoothly through the water, rising and falling gracefully; swooping over the small, even waves and sending showers of spray high into the air on either side of her bows as she sliced down into the troughs.

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Skin Deep

‘Hello, Vogue! ¡Buenos días! This is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I am here to walk you through my skincare and red lip routine.’

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Breathless

In a cramped hotel room high above the prayer-flag-strewn streets of Thamel, the main tourist district of Kathmandu, Nepal, Cecily snapped her laptop shut.

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Bob Hawke

In February 2019, Bob Hawke sat on the balcony of his sprawling multi-level home at 3 Minimbah Road, Northbridge, overlooking a gleaming Sydney Harbour.

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The Last Station

Benjamin Dalhunty twitched the curtain in the study.

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Run Rose Run

AnnieLee had been standing on the side of the road for an hour, thumbing a ride, when the rain started falling in earnest.

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