Here are 100 books that A Primer to Jeffrey Ford fans have personally recommended if you like
A Primer to Jeffrey Ford.
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I am an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections, and a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. I was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. I have a master's degree with distinction in distributed computer systems, a master's degree in creative writing, and a PhD in creative writing. The short story is my sweetest spot. I have a deep passion for the literary speculative, and I write across genres and forms, with award-winning genre-bending works. I am especially curious about stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.
Andrew Hook is a European slipstream author proficient in the literary weird. He certainly does not disappoint in his new collection of Hollywood’s living dead. Candescent Bloomsrouses legends of the silver screen right there in your living room, and they are broken, unbroken, full of many secrets. And you know, you know—because history says so—that the actors and actresses are dead, yet living, right there on your page. Imbued with levity wrapped in anguish. Thimble-sized, you will not find a literary collection this superb in a long time.
Candescent Blooms is a collection of twelve short stories which form fictionalised biographies of mostly Golden Era Hollywood actors who suffered untimely deaths. From Olive Thomas in 1920 through to Grace Kelly in 1982, these pieces utilise facts, fiction, gossip, movies and unreliable memories to examine the life of each individual character set against a Hollywood background of hope and corruption, opportunity and reality.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I am an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections, and a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. I was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. I have a master's degree with distinction in distributed computer systems, a master's degree in creative writing, and a PhD in creative writing. The short story is my sweetest spot. I have a deep passion for the literary speculative, and I write across genres and forms, with award-winning genre-bending works. I am especially curious about stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.
Sometimes uncanny stories are the best place to start in discovering your new author. Lisa Hannett’s Songs for Dark Seasonsis a literary degustation that gives more than a hint of what to expect from this author. Her stories are clever and full of twists, wretched with longing yet swathed in hope. Fast-paced, tense, and transforming—all the reasons to familiarise yourself with South Australian Lisa Hannett’s magic.
With a twang in its heart and a song for luck on its tongue, Songs for Dark Seasons takes readers back to the lonesome dream counties introduced in the World Fantasy Award-nominated collection, Bluegrass Symphony.
Trailer parks and graves are only temporary homes for souls in these tales, where gods dwell in churches and parking lot groves. Friday night football stars mingle with sirens; hunters’ wives help their kids not to shoot, but to fly; Chanticleers spar their way into local government; and rash-afflicted men take dryads for lovers. In backwater towns, some witches have the know-how to pin pageant…
I am an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections, and a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. I was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. I have a master's degree with distinction in distributed computer systems, a master's degree in creative writing, and a PhD in creative writing. The short story is my sweetest spot. I have a deep passion for the literary speculative, and I write across genres and forms, with award-winning genre-bending works. I am especially curious about stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.
Margo Lanagan’s mini-collection Stray Bats is an exceptional showcase of refined writing—less is always more. Powerful bite-size vignettes in this dark illustrated miscellany of micro fiction and prose poetry encompass rhyme, beauty, and something most sinister. Offering up constellations, maidens in flight, familiars, hag hunters, vixen wives, and spirit girls, this kind of dark, fantastical writing and the ghosts of its graphics haunt you for a super long time…
Dachshund droids, mad crones, shapeshifting children, a plethora of witches, dragonstalkers, familiars, slithering eels and, of course, bats, flit and fly through these pages, aided and abetted by Kathleen Jennings’s deft and inspired pencil drawings. Stray Bats is a glorious miscellany of vignettes based on poems by Australian women. While some of the pieces hie close to the originals in form and theme, some stray far, far from them even as Lanagan delights in playing with language, rhyme, and rhythm.
This could be the perfect gift for that slightly otherworldly person in your life—or for yourself, when you need a…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I am an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections, and a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. I was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. I have a master's degree with distinction in distributed computer systems, a master's degree in creative writing, and a PhD in creative writing. The short story is my sweetest spot. I have a deep passion for the literary speculative, and I write across genres and forms, with award-winning genre-bending works. I am especially curious about stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.
It’s rare that you’ll find someone who’s mastered the craft of short story writing with such precision as Susan Midalia. Miniatures is exactly that: a collection of short short stories. Midalia is an expert in capturing with bladelike sharpness profound awkwardness in the everyday. Herein: ordinary people, you and me, in the mundanity of suburbia—then she yanks the ground off your feet with the most perverse ending that leaves you brooding. Miniatures is an intelligent and relatable book with its whisper of simple language that roars the biggest ideas. It’s a book that’s as coyly subversive as it’s fulsomely entertaining.
I am an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections, and a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. I was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. I have a master's degree with distinction in distributed computer systems, a master's degree in creative writing, and a PhD in creative writing. The short story is my sweetest spot. I have a deep passion for the literary speculative, and I write across genres and forms, with award-winning genre-bending works. I am especially curious about stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other and betwixt.
No easy way describes Kaaron Warren’s darkest mind full of mischief and intensity. She’s a global legend, no worries, with her distinctive Australian tongue. Find wicked excitement in Warren’s horror, disturbing in its nature, leaving nothing untouched. Even babies are not safe. This primer is a quick introduction to ominous storytelling, that may pave way to curiosity into award-winning works, including Tide of Stone orInto Bones Like Oil. Starting here, with illustrations and an exegetical analysis by Michael Arnzen, is perhaps the soundest way to dip a toe into the humour, surreally, and darkness of this author’s alluring text.
Australian author Kaaron Warren is widely recognized as one of the leading writers today of speculative and dark short fiction. She’s published four novels, multiple novellas, and well over one hundred heart-rending tales of horror, science fiction, and beautiful fantasy, and is the first author ever to simultaneously win all three of Australia’s top speculative fiction writing awards (Ditmar, Shadows, and Aurealis awards for The Grief Hole).
Dark Moon Books and editor Eric J. Guignard bring you this introduction to her work, the second in a series of primers exploring modern masters of literary dark short fiction. Herein is a…
When I began compiling stories for my collection, I noted the theme of disappearance throughout. I’m not sure why that’s the case. Perhaps because I’ve dealt with disappearance on a personal level. Perhaps almost all stories deal with the theme. I have also always been fascinated by people who disappear (such as Agatha Christie), especially into the wild. As a former book editor, my reading standards are very high. The books I’ve recommended are superb and still resonate with me years after I’ve read them. I hope you explore this list and that the characters in these unique and well-crafted stories linger on, even after you’ve finished the last page.
This brief novel in stories was a pleasant surprise. I was completely drawn into the dry, unfamiliar landscape of the Australian Blue Mountains and loved that while the narrator is a young man coming to terms with his personal history, the theme of the book is the impact that the disappearance of both his grandmother and mother have on him as a boy and as a man trying to find himself in a relationship. Pierce deftly weaves in found memoirs and retrieved memories to create a bigger picture of life: how we both develop and lose ourselves, how place affects us, and how our actions can have a major impact on others.
Haunted by the deaths of his mother and grandmother, both of whom perished while hiking through Australia’s Blue Mountains, Sam Browne returns to the country of his mother’s birth in search of his family’s history and a way to make a place for himself within it. By reading his grandmother’s memoirs, Sam begins to connect to his family’s ancestral home and understand the reasons that she and her daughter after her were so drawn to the Australian landscape and the mystery found there.
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
I came from a country town in Australia and I love the sense of community that’s still so woven into the fabric of society in country towns. That enjoyment drove me to write the award-winning Hope Creek Series, which has all the elements of small town romance I admire. The importance of a strong sense of identity within the community, support from townspeople in keeping each other’s secrets or in rallying around to try to help each other in times of crisis. The willingness to stand by a mate despite the mate being flawed.
I’m Australian, and I really enjoyed this series that was based in a fictitious coastal town in Australia because the setting was so similar to a coastal setting close to where I grew up.
I thought that Joanne Speirs did very well navigating the difficult relationships some of her characters had, and believe that most readers will really connect with the characters and the obstacles they must overcome. Themes of healing and community were central to this series, and this is obvious from the very first book, Second Chance Love in Point Perry, where Erin comes to Point Perry for a fresh start.
I found Joanne Speirs has an engaging writing style that was very easy to read. Each story in the series is interesting and well-crafted.
After a devastating tragedy shakes Erin's world, she returns to her hometown of Point Perry seeking solace and a fresh start. But just as she begins to find her footing, an unexpected visitor and an old enemy threaten to upend her life once again. Tom, a devoted single father and beloved teacher, is no stranger to turmoil. His ex-wife, now a Hollywood starlet, has descended upon Point Perry for her movie premiere, stirring up trouble and putting Tom's priorities to the test. As the town buzzes with excitement over the event, Tom must also navigate a strained relationship with his…
As a full-time travel writer for 30 years, I’ve travelled all over Australia and am still constantly surprised and thrilled by new places. Ask me what my favourite place is, and it’s impossible to choose! From the grandeur of Western Australia’s Kimberley and the red ochre colours of the Outback to the deep blue of the oceans and lush rainforests...I love it all and I love sharing my discoveries – both in cities and on the long and winding roads – with readers. When I’m not travelling or writing about it, I’m usually planning the next trip!
Australians love a road-trip – the longer, the better. This book, by one of Australia’s top driving holiday experts, is jam-packed with information and advice to make yours as easy as possible. Driving is definitely the best way to see our vast continent, and the route maps and distance lists are hugely useful. It’s a great resource on where to stay – everything from swank hotels to camping spots – and what to do. Want to know the best time of year to visit a certain place? That’s covered too.
In Ultimate Road Trips: Australia,author Lee Atkinson highlights 40 of the best driving holidays around Australia.
Each chapter includes information on things to see and do, detailed route maps and a handy list of distances to help you plan your trip, as well as lots of useful advice on family-friendly attractions, where to eat and the best hotels, guesthouses, caravan parks and camping spots. You'll also find details on the best time of year to visit, driving tips and a guide to surviving a road trip with a back seat full of kids.
I have always tried to find books that explain and explore my life stage. When I was a young mother of little babies, I read many books about early motherhood. When I was studying and travelling and working as a waitress, those topics were represented in my reading too. Now that I’m a woman writer in midlife, with growing children and an art practice, I’m keen to read books by and about women writers who evoke the joys and struggles of this period: aging, the tensions between freedom and responsibility, marriage and separation, ambition and desire.
This is the diary Australian writer Helen Garner kept during a difficult period of her life: the period when she was married to (and eventually separated from) her third husband.
The writing is exquisite, which is why I love this book. Garner records the intricacies and intimacies of the marriage in such exacting terms. Her observations about marriage and the world leave me breathless.
Finally, Helen Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of her everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.
Yellow Notebook, Diaries Volume I, in this new paperback edition, spans about a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip. It will delight Garner fans and those new to her work alike.
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I want to write about the magic of the everyday and often this is seen in the slippages between worlds like the worlds of the living and the dead. Ghosts and spirits feature heavily in my work and fascinate me as a reader too. This is not in the realm of fantasy to me, ghosts are real and actual.
This amazing book is about Oblivia a girl who survives gang rape living in a swamp with thousands of black swans who is promised to Warren Finch the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia an indigenous man.
In her journey we meet many out there characters told in mythic style in a future Australia devastated by climate change. This book is a potent mix of speculative fiction and magic realism featuring indigenous communities and characters. I admire it for the breadth of its vision and the intimacy of Oblivia and of course the swans.
A hypnotic and “astonishingly inventive” (O, The Oprah Magazine) novel about an Aboriginal girl living in a future world turned upside down—where ancient myths exist side-by-side with present-day realities.
Oblivia Ethelyne was given her name by an old woman who found her deep in the bowels of a gum tree, tattered and fragile, the victim of a brutal assault by wayward local youths. These are the years leading up to Australia’s third centenary, and the woman who finds her, Bella Donna of the Champions, is a refugee from climate change wars that devastated her country in the northern hemisphere.
