Extracts

‘Imagine falling asleep for a hundred years. Would it not be awful?’ Georgie Macdonald whispered to her sister.

The letter arrived in my absence. Rose’s birthday was coming up; that’s Rose Buchan, my friend, landlady, surrogate mother and grandmother rolled into one.

In 1867, a journalist named Frederick Wilson published an account of his visit to Sydney’s Central Police Court, on George Street.

The land was thick with aged trees and prickly pear.

Good evening! Good evening! Good evening to the majestic city of Caesariyaaaaaah!’

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

Margot closes the door of the bedroom softly.

She lived in the graveyard like a tree.

For a long while Joan has managed to balance on the balls of her bare feet, knees bent, skirt skimming the dirt.

SO YOU want to be a serial killer . . .

Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

The spear hit Diego Alvarado in the chest.

Bettina Ortiz y Meña was not accustomed to waiting.

There were a heat. Air hotter’n blud. Baked her skin as she moved.

Dubai is many things – interesting, enthralling, unusual – but it’s not a genuine glimpse of the Arab world.

Amber cracked an eyelid and sunlight hit her optic nerve like a tetanus shot.

The cornerstone of my approach to dog training is that dog training is not about dogs: it’s about people.