UQP Short Fiction

A brilliant short story collection by awarded novelist and former Vogel winner Bernard Cohen. Parked in by furious rich people, mid-divorce, a man misses his lunchtime gambling session. All the girls named Ella form a diagonal across the teacher's new classroom. Diseased cattle burn in fields around the country – it is a cameraman's role to frame the images for TV. A swagman jumps into a billabong, or was he pushed? Bernard Cohen's stories are filled with incisive perspectives, captivating wit and dark, sharp humour.

The balance of power in a marriage shifts, with shocking consequences. An elderly woman recounts a chilling childhood memory on the family farm. A taxi driver with a missing wife reveals unexpected skills. An inherited painting brings an eerily troubling legacy. Subtle, compelling and unsettling, Amanda O'Callaghan's stories work at the edges of the sayable, through secrets, erasures and glimpsed moments of disclosure. They shimmer with unspoken histories and characters who have a 'taste for silence'.