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Extracts

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Agency

Very recent hiredness was its own liminal state, Verity reminded herself, on the crowded Montgomery BART platform, waiting for a train to Sixteenth and Mission.

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Actress

People ask me, ‘What was she like?’ and I try to figure out if they mean as a normal person: what was she like in her slippers, eating toast and marmalade, or what was she like as a mother, or what she was like as an actress – we did not use the word star

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The Memory Wood

When they file back into the room, I’m no longer in the chair. Instead, I’m sitting on the table, bare legs swinging.

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Jane in Love

As Jane climbed over a hedge and landed in a pool of mud, some of which flew upwards and came to rest on her boots, gown and face, she paused for a moment, pondering whether behaviour like this might be the reason she struggled to find a husband.

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The Other People

She sleeps. A pale girl in a white room. Machines surround her. Mechanical guardians, they tether the sleeping girl to the land of the living, stopping her from drifting away on an eternal, dark tide.

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Grown Ups

Johnny Casey launched into a fit of energetic coughing – a bit of bread down the wrong way.

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Riptides

I wake when Abby shouts. She reaches across me and grabs the steering wheel.

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The Bass Rock

I was six and just the two of us, my mother and I, took Booey for a walk along the beach where she and Dad grew up, the shore a mix of black rock and pale cold sand.

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Riding With Giants

Our destination was four kilometres from the village of Hommes, 210 kilometres south-west of Paris, and half a planet away from Sydney, Australia.

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Let It Go

Welcome to an experience that could be one of the most rewarding times of your life.

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Mix Tape

There they go, at the beginning of it all, their younger selves, walking through the dark, winter streets of Sheffield: Daniel Lawrence and Alison Connor.

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Last Stop Auschwitz

In 1943, Jewish doctor Eddy de Wind volunteered to work in Westerbork, a transit camp for the deportation of Jews in the east of the Netherlands.

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Miss Austen

‘Let us take that path.’ He closed the garden door behind her, and gestured towards the Elm Walk.

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Braised Pork

The orange scarf slid from Jia Jia’s shoulder and dropped into the bath.

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Three Hours

A moment of stillness; as if time itself is waiting, can no longer be measured.

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Long Bright River

There’s a body on the Gurney Street tracks. Female, age unclear, probable overdose, says the dispatcher.

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Maggie's Going Nowhere

Wedding dresses have a special kind of perfume.

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Who Did You Tell?

Just because you imagine yourself doing something and enjoy the way it makes you feel, doesn’t mean you actually want to do it.

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Lost

Miami International Airport isn’t exactly a tranquil space on a normal day—if there’s such a thing as a normal day at MIA.

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Blindside

I did everything I could to distract Lucille Evans from noticing the bloody footprint.

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Dear Edward

“Since death is certain, but the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?” — PEMA CHÖDRÖN

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Inner Worlds Outer Spaces

Dana Cordell recently told me an anecdote about an eco-village in Sweden with urine-diverting composting toilets.

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The Drover's Wife

I love the snow gum.

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Tom Clancy's Code of Honour

Had the young woman at the bar been slightly more attractive, Geoff Noonan might have smelled a trap.

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