Cirrus@Austlit

'Shirley Jackson Award-winning author J. Ashley-Smith’s first collection, The Measure of Sorrow, draws together ten new and previously acclaimed stories of dark speculative fiction. In these pages a black reef holds the secret to an interminable coastal limbo; a father struggles to relate to his estranged children in a post-bushfire wilderness; an artist records her last days in conversation with her unborn child; a brother and sister are abandoned to the manifestations of their uncle’s insanity; a suburban neighbourhood succumbs to an indescribable malaise; teenage ravers fall in with an eldritch crowd; a sensitive New Age guy commits a terminal act of passive-aggression; a plane crash opens the door to the Garden of Eden; the new boy in the village falls victim to a fatal ruse; and a husband's unexpressed grief is embodied in the shadows of a crumbling country barn. Intelligent and emotionally complex, the stories in The Measure of Sorrow elude easy classification, lifting the veil on the wonder and horror of a world just out of true.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An agency that sends social workers into the homes of grieving families to impersonate dead loved ones…

'The kind old woman who saved a teenager’s life but now finds herself haunted by the weight of a cheated suicide…

'And the daughter of a candlestick maker as she tries to survive a painful existence after her father’s execution for making human chandeliers of drunken cowboys…

'These stories and more-ranging from supernatural to the frighteningly domestic, Splatterpunk to the weird and cosmic-stain the pages of Cut to Care: A Collection of Little Hurts by Aaron Dries. They serve as a timely reminder of the cost of caring too much. Or not caring enough. Of how we mask cruelties behind kindness. And of our willingness to rip ourselves apart in the hope of satisfying a world that doesn’t always care for you back. ' (Publication summary) 

'Multi-award winning creators Ellen Datlow and Kaaron Warren teamed up on Facebook a few years ago when Ellen posted photos of antique tools and Kaaron wrote microfiction pieces to accompany them, without either of them knowing what the tools were for.

'This chapbook collects and preserves their playful interaction for readers to enjoy.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Multiple award-winning author Cat Sparks writes science fiction with a distinctly Australian flavour – stories steeped in the desperate anarchy of Mad Max futures, redolent with scorching sun and the harshness of desert sands, but her narratives reach deeper than that. In her tales of ordinary people adapting to post-apocalyptic futures, she casts a light on what it means to be human; the good and the bad, the noble and the shameful.

'Dark Harvest gathers together Cat’s best short fiction of recent years, as selected by the author herself: fourteen stories, two of them novelettes, including one brand new tale and two Ditmar Award winners.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A collection of twelve of J.S. Breukelaar's darkest, finest stories with four new works, including the uncanny new novella "Ripples on a Blank Shore." Introduction by award-winning author, Angela Slatter. Relish the Gothic strangeness of "Union Falls," the alien horror of "Rogues Bay 3013," the heartbreaking dystopia of "Glow," the weird mythos of "Ava Rune," and others.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.