{"title":"Short Stories","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"a-couple-of-things-before-the-end-storiespaperback","title":"A Couple of Things Before the End by Sean O'Beirne","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia.  \u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s and his time as a member of Australia’s least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible, isolated mum.\u003c\/p\u003e \n\n\u003cp\u003eThen, in the near future, a racist demagogue addresses the press the day after his electoral triumph. As the cities heat up and lose their water, a lady from one of the ‘better suburbs’ makes every effort to get her family into an exclusive gated community.\u003c\/p\u003e \n\n\u003cp\u003eOutstandingly original, bitingly satirical and written in a remarkable range of voices,  A Couple of Things Before the End  is a powerful vision of where we are – and where we may be headed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619585376391,"sku":"9781760641283","price":32.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/A_20Couple_20of_20Things_20Before_20the_20End_20_28online_29_0_f9faeeb7-d197-45c8-ab2a-421af27d8ffa.jpg?v=1636354822"},{"product_id":"here-until-augustpaperback","title":"Here Until August by Josephine Rowe","description":"\u003cp\u003eA masterful collection of heartbreak, travel and seduction from an internationally acclaimed Australian author.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese superbly crafted stories follow the fates of characters who, by choice or by force, are travelling beyond the boundaries of their known worlds. We meet them negotiating reluctant departures, navigating uncertain returns or biding the disquieting calm that often precedes decisive action.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAn agoraphobic French émigré watches disturbing terrorist footage as she minds a dog named Chavez. A young couple weather the interiority of a Montreal winter, more attuned to the illicit goings-on of their neighbours than to their own hazy, unfolding futures. A Melbourne writer of real-estate listings reflects on the stifling power of shared history as she wonders what life might be like over the fence. Other stories play out in places just beyond the brink of familiarity: flooded townships and distant lakes, sunlit woodlands or paths bright with ice, places of unpredictable access and spaces scrubbed from maps.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the Catskill Mountains to New South Wales, the abandoned island outports of Newfoundland to the sprawl of an Australian metropolis, this scintillating collection from one of Australia’s most gifted writers shows us how the places we inhabit shape us in ways both remote and intimate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePraise for Josephine Rowe\u003cbr\u003e\n‘Her gorgeous, precise language encourages inner storms.’  The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619589636231,"sku":"9781863959933","price":32.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/Here_20Until_20August_20_28online_29_0.jpg?v=1636455378"},{"product_id":"reading-madame-bovarytrade-paperback","title":"Reading Madame Bovary by Amanda Lohrey","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom one of Australia's leading short-fiction writers comes a thrilling collection of stories that deal with transition and transformation.\u003cbr\u003e\n A woman finds her everyday world engulfed by vivid fantasies, a businessman finds a new way to deal with his rage, a couple contemplate the best way to educate their children, a young woman finds herself on a boat with a bunch of delinquent schoolkids, a diary is dicovered, a commune goes wrong.\u003cbr\u003e\n In these riveting stories, characters deal with crises of body and spirit. They find themselves ccaught between order and chaos, and must face the need to change or be trapped. Shot through with serene intelligence and a keen eye for character, these tales enlighten and entertain in equal measure.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619594485895,"sku":"9781863954907-POD","price":42.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/9781921825637_FC.jpg?v=1636454954"},{"product_id":"saltpaperback","title":"Salt by Bruce Pascoe","description":"\u003cp\u003eA collection of stories and essays by the award-winning author of Dark Emu, showcasing his shimmering genius across a lifetime of work.\u003c\/p\u003e \n\n\u003cp\u003eThis volume of Bruce Pascoe’s best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, traverses his long career and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture and history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFeaturing new fiction alongside Pascoe’s most revered and thought-provoking nonfiction – including from his modern classic Dark Emu – Salt distils the intellect, passion and virtuosity of his work. It’s time all Australians know the range and depth of this most marvellous of our writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619594879111,"sku":"9781760641580","price":36.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/cover-2021-11-10T211903.086_88e858c8-a45b-42b7-a083-87e13f13f2a5.jpg?v=1636539630"},{"product_id":"something-special-something-rare-outstanding-short-stories-by-australian-womenpaperback","title":"Something Special, Something Rare by Black Inc.","description":"\u003cp\u003eSomething Special, Something Rare  presents outstanding short fiction by Australia's finest female writers. These are tales of love, secrets, doubt and torment, the everyday and the extraordinary.\u003cbr\u003e\n A sleepy town is gripped by delusory grief after the movie being filmed there wraps and leaves. A lingering heartbreak is replayed on Facebook. An ordinary family walks a shaky line between hopelessness and redemption.\u003cbr\u003e\n Brilliant, shocking and profound, these tales will leave you reeling in ways that only a great short story can. \u003cbr\u003e\n Kate Grenville * Mandy Sayer * Penni Russon * Favel Parrett * Tegan Bennett Daylight * Sonya Hartnett * Isabelle Li * Gillian Essex * Brenda Walker * Gillian Mears * Fiona MacFarlane * Joan London * Karen Hitchcock * Charlotte Wood * Tara June Winch * Cate Kennedy * Alice Pung * Anna Krien * Delia Falconer * Rebekah Clarkson\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619595534471,"sku":"9781863957298","price":32.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/cover-2021-11-10T213951.632_7a26479c-0008-4504-a70e-de1d15ecc18a.jpg?v=1636540822"},{"product_id":"the-best-australian-stories-a-ten-year-collectiontrade-paperback","title":"The Best Australian Stories: A Ten-Year Collection","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe best of the best . . . \u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\nThis essential book takes a decade of  Best Australian Stories  and selects the most outstanding short fiction by the country's finest writers.  These stories range widely in style and subject: there is drama and comedy, subtlety and extravagance, tales of suspense, love, fantasy, grief and revenge.  Together they showcase the strength and diversity of Australian fiction at its very best.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eContributors include KATE GRENVILLE, TIM WINTON, NAM LE, MURRAY BAIL, JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL, ROBERT DREWE AND CATE KENNEDY.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619596681351,"sku":"9781863955225","price":36.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/cover_91_27377185-ad3c-4b03-9e30-a95d60ae57a5.jpg?v=1636538234"},{"product_id":"the-weight-of-a-human-heartpaperback","title":"The Weight of a Human Heart by Ryan O'Neill","description":"\u003cp\u003eStories full of wit, irony, wild invention, love and pain – and sometimes shocking power' Paddy O'Reilly\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'By turns acerbic, playful and serious, O'Neill is equally at home with satire and pathos' CATE KENNEDY\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSometimes comic, sometimes tragic, this collection turns the rules of storytelling on their head.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA series of graphs illustrates the disintegration of a marriage, step by excruciating step.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA literary stoush – and an affair – play out in the book review section of a national newspaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe heartbreaking story of a Rwandan boy is hidden in the pages of his English exam paper. \u003cbr\u003e\nA young girl learns her mother's disturbing secrets through the broken key on a typewriter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRanging from Australia to Africa to China and back again,  The Weight of a Human Heart  heralds a fresh new voice in Australian literature.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619600482439,"sku":"9781863955577-POD","price":37.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/cover_82.jpg?v=1636511780"},{"product_id":"their-brilliant-careers-the-fantastic-lives-of-sixteen-extraordinary-australian-writerspaperback","title":"Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill","description":"\u003cp\u003eAbsurd, original and highly addictive . . .\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn  Their Brilliant Careers , Ryan O'Neill has written a hilarious novel in the guise of sixteen biographies of (invented) Australian writers. Meet Rachel Deverall, who unearthed the secret source of the great literature of our time – and paid a terrible price for her discovery. Meet Rand Washington, hugely popular sci-fi author (of  Whiteman of Cor ) and inveterate racist. Meet Addison Tiller, master of the bush yarn, \"The Chekhov of Coolabah\", who never travelled outside Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eTheir Brilliant Careers  is a playful set of stories, linked in many ways, which together form a memorable whole. A wonderful comic tapestry of the writing life, this unpredictable and intriguing work takes Australian writing in a whole new direction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‘You have to admire O’Neill’s delicious bravura. He’s been one of the few short fiction writers of recent years willing to play around with the form’s possibilities … Apart from the fact there are more funny lines in O’Neill’s 288 pages than there are likely to be in the entirety of Australian literature elsewhere this year, the profiles are woven smartly together, as the characters’ fates and careers intertwine.’— Saturday Paper \u003cbr\u003e\n   \u003cbr\u003e\n‘[Ryan O'Neill] offers a book that is a piss-take, a celebration, a revisionist history and, perhaps most impressively, exceedingly good fun.’—Dominic Amerena, the  Australian \u003cbr\u003e\n   \u003cbr\u003e\n‘Ryan O’Neill combines conventions of biography and short story in an exhaustively brazen blend of Australian literary history and plausible yet gloriously bonkers invention.’—Elke Power,  Readings Monthly \u003cbr\u003e\n   \u003cbr\u003e\n ‘Their Brilliant Careers  … brims with crackerjack wit. Pressure is subtly built; punchlines are explosive.’— Australian Book Review\u003c\/p\u003e \n\n\u003cp\u003e‘Ryan O’Neill has embarked on the task of creating a satirical, funny alternative history to Australian literature, an exercise he has achieved admirably and with brilliance.’—Writers Bloc\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‘O'Neill has arranged a beautiful board of slain waxwings, no less funny or moving for being, in the final estimate of things, no more than shadows of the never living and the forever dead.’—Adam Rivett,  Sydney Morning Herald\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619600810119,"sku":"9781863958639","price":32.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/cover_72.jpg?v=1636511341"},{"product_id":"underdog-loveozya-short-storiespaperback","title":"Underdog: #LoveOZYA Short Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e#LoveOzYA celebrates the best of new Australian writing for teenage readers. It has grown from a humble hashtag into a movement, reflecting the important role young-adult fiction plays in shaping our current generation of readers. This anthology collects, for the first time, some of the tremendous work from the #LoveOzYA community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFeaturing a foreword by award-winning Australian novelist Fleur Ferris ( Risk ,  Wreck ,  Black  and  Found ),  Underdog  celebrates the diverse, dynamic and ever-changing nature of our nation's culture. From queer teen romance to dystopian comedy, from hard-hitting realism to gritty allegory, this brilliant, engrossing and inspiring collection of short stories will resonate with any teen reader, proving, yet again, why there is just so much to love about #LoveOzYA.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619601432711,"sku":"9781760641344","price":19.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/cover_56.jpg?v=1636510720"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.schwartzbooks.com.au\/collections\/short-stories.oembed","provider":"Schwartz Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}