Cirrus@Austlit

'In The Best Australian Stories 2010, Cate Kennedy presents a seductive line-up of the year's most exciting short fiction, featuring the best work from publications around the country alongside pieces published here for the first time. ...

By turns playful, heart-wrenching, intimate and exuberant, these twenty-nine stories reveal the strength and variety of Australian fiction today. The authors include first-timers as well as established masters, and the result is a stimulatingly diverse collection. ' (From the Publisher's website)

'In the Shade of the Shady Tree is a collection of stories set in the Western Australian wheatbelt, a vast grain-growing area that ranges across the southwestern end of the immense Australian interior. Kinsella's stories offer glimpses into the lives of the people who call this area home.

Cast against a backdrop of indigenous dispossession, settler migration, and the destructive impact of land-clearing and monocultural farming methods, the stories offer moments of connection with the inhabitants, ranging from the matter-of-fact to the bizarre and inexplicable. Something about the nature of the place wrestles with all human interactions and affects their outcomes. The land itself is a dominant character, with dust, gnarled scrubland, and the need for rain underpinning human endeavour.

Inflected with both contemporary ideas of short fiction and the "everyman" tradition of Australian storytelling, this collection will introduce many readers to a new landscape and unforgettable characters' (Publisher's blurb).