Twenty-seven award-winning short stories from the Stringybark Short Story Awards will delight and intrigue you in this anthology of clever tales from Australian and international short story writers.
"As he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a grubby rag, Paddy caught a movement from the corner of his eye. Squinting into the bush, he could see two huge brown eyes peering at him. One of the local Aboriginal kids, he guessed. They were always hanging about the diggings looking for something to pinch.
“Be off with ye!” shouted Paddy and chucked a rock or two into the bush for good measure. But his heart wasn’t really in it. It was too hot to be angry and any wasted movement just made him hotter."
— From 'Karikurla' by Alene Ivey
"Honest Abe they called me. When my friends were stealing sweets from the newsagent I was the stooge, the one buying ten cents of milk bottles as a cover for my friends spurious activities. I was the one who paid to get into the music festival while all my friends jumped the fence. And then I started writing crime fiction.
I am, Abigail Readstone, the girl who blushes when telling a lie and avoids anything spurious. And now I am here, in the lock up, sharing a cell with Celia and Minnie, two ‘working girls’."
— From 'Honest Abe' by Kathy Childs
"I found him on the road from Portsea, cold, wet and shivering. All he had on was a tattered wetsuit with short legs and a hunted look that he tried to hide behind his eyes. You can’t know these people that live this shadowed life beside the highways. You see them hunkered, lost and alone, by the side of the road or hunched into foetal curls in the dark corners of truck stops and roadhouses. I wondered then, when he spoke with that soft, private school accent, what he was doing out here in the rain and the road that misted into the fog and the distance; he was wet and smelled of the sea and storm-tossed weed."
— From 'The Passenger' by C.R. (Ray) Penny
Twenty-seven award-winning short stories from the Stringybark Short Story Awards will delight and intrigue you in this anthology of clever tales from Australian and international short story writers.
