Extracts

“Would the young lady like to see something with a pearl?”

In the 329 years since my making, I'd come to appreciate the finer things in life.

A room, full of violence to come.

Jessica turns onto her side and blinks into the darkness.

Collum punched the other knight in the face with the pommel of his sword gripped in his gauntleted fist,

On most days of the year, Beacon Bay was a postcard-worthy little town.

Gia North’s lungs ached as she tore through the trees.

Jane Saville's gasp conveyed her shock as her mother's words landed like small blows.

Dead bodies are being found around town again.

Phoebe McFadden, seventeen and wise to her dad’s fondness for the horses, tilted her head to watch her only parent straighten the new sign on the front entrance of the racetrack.

God’s sake, why did everything have to be such a sodding . . . trial?

The wedding invitation came, and Shiloh said yes, of course she’d be there.

Woman is born free, and everywhere she is caged.

What is beauty?

‘To Brynn Wallace: the future managing editor of The Paris Review!’

Rachel Sherrill, thirty years old in a few days, master’s degree from Stanford in conservation biology, rising star in her world, still thought of herself as the smartest kid in the class.

I suppose I should start at the very beginning.

The one universal truth of childhood is that there is always hope.

She stood above him while the air left his body in a low, final exhale.

I park my father's old Camry in the last remaining disabled spot outside the Logan Shopping Centre.

Hannah stood in the wings, waiting for the actor on stage to finish his soliloquy.

American democracy has become so diseased because for most of the country’s history it has never been that healthy.

The first few times, the messages on Instagram gave no certainty of their numbers,

Angela Nu was the richest girl at my school.