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Extracts

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Wild Dark Shore

I have hated my mother for most of my life but it is her face I see as I drown.

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Three Days in June

People don’t tap their watches anymore; have you noticed?

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When The Deep, Dark Bush Swallows You Whole

New Zealand was greener than Emilia could ever have imagined.

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Our Infinite Fates

The dining table was set for a feast, but all the carving knives had been hidden.

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Cruel is the Light

God created man and demon.

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All In

Why are there no relationship classes in high school?

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Blood Pact

As Lou widened her eyes with mischievous pleasure and blew him a kiss over the heads of other customers in the gelato bar, Jack smiled at her delight.

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The Bookshop Detectives 1: Dead Girl Gone

When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders.

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We All Live Here

There is a framed photograph on Lila’s bedside table that she hasn’t yet had the energy, or perhaps the inclination, to get rid of.

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Fire

When I was twelve years old, I was buried alive within the grounds of a construction site.

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The Favourites

Today is the tenth anniversary of the worst day of my life.

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Sonny Boy

I was performing since I was just a little boy.

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Unreel

The idiot box: my first hazy television-related memory, bathed in the blue-tinged glow of a cathode-ray tube, hails from when I was about three and therefore a complete idiot myself.

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All Out

If I close my eyes, I can still experience it through the mind of the 26-year-old I was on my third tour with the Black Caps, when I felt hopelessly lost off the field and was not yet wanted on it.

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New Stories

No matter what your talent, or how hard you work, there’s an element of chance in everything that happens.

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Tell Me Everything

This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him.

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The Blue Hour

In the chastening chill of a dazzling October morning, James Becker stands on the footbridge, hip hitched against the handrail, rolling a cigarette.

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Marigold Mind Laundry

Somewhere on Earth was a village where spring faded into autumn, and after autumn, spring returned once more.

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