Bold, furious, unapologetic and deeply insightful.'Sofie Laguna, author of Infinite Splendours'A stunning, immersive novel that will change the conversation about class and about what possessions mean. It's important and funny and sad and beautiful and I absolutely adored it.'Kathryn Heyman, author of Storm and Grace and Fury'One of the most big-hearted novels I've ever read. Each person fully formed, each scene and new catastrophe rooted in truth.'Bri Lee, author of Eggshell SkullNic is a forty-five-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice.The person she's closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up....

When 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a media storm descends.Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm is Bella's beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, whose apparent easygoing nature conceals hard-won wisdom and the kind of street-smarts only experience can bring.As Chris is plunged into despair and searches for answers, reasons, explanation - anything - that could make even the smallest sense of Bella's death, her ex-husband, friends and neighbours do their best to support her. But as the days tick by with no arrest, Chris's suspicion of those around her grows.An Isolated Incident is a psychological thriller about everyday violence, the media's obsession with pretty dead girls, the grip of grief and the myth of closure, and the difficulties of knowing the difference between a ghost and a memory, between a monster and a man.

From the internationally-acclaimed author of Taming the Beast, The Gospel According to Luke and Fishing for Tigers.Summer, Sydney, and holed up in a tiny flat off Broadway are idealistic American Adam, weary activist Graeme, and wild, misunderstood Katie. Each is searching for answers to life's biggest questions - why are we here; what is love; what constitutes betrayal - and thrust together, over an intense two-week period, they begin to form answers. In doing so, they must first confront their darkest demons, both within and without...Provocative, honest, brimming with sexual tension and crackling with intelligence, this sensational novel cements Maguire's place as one of Australia's best young writers.PRAISE FOR EMILY MAGUIRE"At the heart of ... Emily Maguire's work lies an urgent need to pull away at the interconnecting threads of morality, society and human relationships." Sydney Morning...

Sarah Clark's life is irrevocably changed at the age of 14 when her English teacher, Mr Carr, seduces her after class. Their affair is illegal, erotic, passionate and dangerous – a vicious meeting of minds and bodies. But when Mr Carr's wife discovers the affair, he has to choose between them and moves to another city with his family.Sarah is devastated and from that day on her life is defined by a series of meaningless, self-abasing sexual encounters, hoping with each man that she will experience the same delicious feelings she had with Mr Carr.Seven years later Daniel Carr walks back into Sarah's life and she is drawn once again into the destructive relationship. Is Sarah strong enough to "tame the beast"?First published by Brandl & Schlesinger in 2004, now re-released in Picador, this dazzling debut from one of Australia's most gifted young writers is destined to become a cult classic.From Publishers WeeklyShortly after 14-year-old Sarah Clark meets Daniel Carr, her 38-year-old English teacher, in Australian Maguire's debut, boundaries are eliminated and academics take a back seat to a different kind of education. Their increasingly sadistic trysts end when Daniel takes a job in Brisbane, leaving emotionally hobbled and sexually insatiable Sarah to search for Daniel's replacement. And search she does, bedding, by her estimate, hundreds of men before trying her hand at a relationship with childhood friend Jamie. But when Daniel reappears years later, Sarah is as helpless as a child and encourages him to indulge in all of his violent fantasies. Sections of the book pulse with sexual energy, though Maguire turns ethereally cerebral during moments of animal carnality ("In the expression of physicality, in the tearing of flesh and the intermingling of fluids, there is honesty"). Though some readers may have trouble reading passages involving sexual violence, Maguire keeps the prose crackling and the dialogue lively ("[Y]ou look like the six week old corpse of a crack addict who died from syphilis") from the first page to the last. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review“Emily Maguire [is] the new bad girl of erotic fiction...” (Esquire (UK))“Emily Maguire embodies the great romantic myth of the writer who emerges from nowhere, fully formed.” (Sydney Morning Herald)“A thought-provoking and often searing first novel.” (The Age (Australia))“...powerful and compelling...” (Kirkus Reviews)

Winner of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD Best Young Australian Novelist of the Year 2013 Six years ago, Mischa Reese left her abusive husband and suffocating life in California and reinvented herself in steamy, chaotic Hanoi. In Vietnam, she finds satisfying work and enjoys a life of relative luxury and personal freedom. Thirty-five and single, Mischa believes that romance and passion are for teenagers; a view with which her cynical, promiscuous expat friends agree. But then a friend introduces Mischa to his visiting eighteen-year-old son. Cal is a strikingly attractive Vietnamese-Australian boy, but he's resentful of his father, and of the nation which has stolen him away. His beauty and righteous idealism awaken something in Mischa and the two launch into an affair that threatens Mischa's friendships and reputation and challenges her sense of herself as unselfish and good. Set among the louche world of Hanoi's expatriate community, Fishing for...

This is the second issue of Volume Three of the Review of Australian Fiction. It contains new pieces of fiction from Emily Maguire and Krissy Kneen.