Short Story Collections

A man treads water in the Swan River, hoping to bring his friend back to shore. Three siblings gaze skyward seeking a comet among the stars. A mother and daughter grapple with their fraught relationship and an inappropriate birthday cake. Bushfires sweep a Perth suburb while a woman, still burnt ...

In each of the twelve stories in After the Funeral, small events have huge consequences. Heloise's father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her forties, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy. Two estranged sisters cross paths at a posh hotel and p...

A secret one-night tryst in the city. A sister's revenge. A love-struck doctor. A missing girl. In Antarctica, an astonishing sequence of stories, one of our most gifted writers illuminates human longing and fallibility in all its variety.

In twelve distinct but spiritually interwoven stories, we meet women at the crossroads of change. A woman's desire to nurture takes a surprising twist. A new mother learns about love in a pandemic. A visit to the tropics sparks questions of inheritance and legacy. These stories take the pulse of ...

A plane in the distance, artillery, his father waiting, and the boy wonders what to do. As with every story in this collection, the child born into a world he can't comprehend, but stands waiting for answers, overcome with possibilities. The Boy in Time charts this child's progress from the Outer...

A wayward, wanton selection of stories grounded in displacement, desire, and the wish coursing through us to accede to the state of love. There is torment and illness, crude reality and distant fragrant places, peopled by characters that reside close to our bones, our psyches, our flesh. A Japane...

"Cat Brushing, the provocative first book of stories by Jane Campbell, vigorously explores the sensual worlds of thirteen older women, unearthing their passions, libidinal appetites, integrity, and sense of self as they fight against prevalent misconceptions and stereotypes of the aging. Written ...

Three years ago, Emily was a struggling literary author when she met Scott, a struggling screenwriter. Combining her elegant writing with his gripping story, the pair crafted a novel that became an international bestseller and fell in love along the way. Now her latest manuscript is stuck, his so...

'How do you know this is all real and happening? How can you be sure you haven't already died in the earthquake and are just living in the afterlife?' In her English-language debut, Yan Ge explores isolation in nine iridescent, witty and wondrous tales. Both contemporary and ancient, real and sur...

Emergence brings us thirty of the best short stories chosen from the thousands of entries in the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition. Now in its third year, the anthology features stories by thirty emerging writers, each speaking to the theme of 'Emergence' and each offering a unique snapshot of co...

A stunning collection of stories that weaves Hawaiian mythology with a vivid fabulism and rich sense of place. In Hawaii, a cast of women reckon with physical and emotional alienation, and the toll it takes on their psyches. A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (boar) on the haunted Pali highw...

A collection of ten haunting short stories linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love.

From swimming on Hampstead Heath to house-sitting with troublesome dogs, or illicit afternoon trysts in Soho to pedicures in Florence with recalcitrant teenagers, this collection of short stories includes some previously unpublished in book form, and covers the gamut of human nature - our foibles...

A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, featuring new and original stories.

A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, featuring new and original stories.

The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us eleven glittering stories of love -- friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts -- in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime. The games and rituals performed ...

Against the backdrop of changing seasons in Japan, we meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose playful nature and simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a popular holiday island show a young boy not to stand in nature's way...

A family of cat farmers gets the chance to set the felines free. A group of chickens tells it like it is. A female-crewed ship ploughs through the patriarchy. A support group finds solace in a world without men. With her trademark humour, energy, and flair, McKay offers hallucinogenic glimpses of...

In Williams' stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life.

A new collection of short fiction from Kill Your Darlings. An opera singer loses her voice. Sex releases memories. A lake monster captures a town's attention. Two young men take their vapes and big ambitions and go On The Road. New Australian Fiction showcases the strength and diversity of Austra...