100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Overnight NZ-wide delivery on in-stock orders 🚀

The Mushroom Tapes

Conversations about a Triple Murder Trial
Brief Description
The Mushroom Tapes brings together three renowned writers of true crime: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3199
Elsewhere:
$4500
OVERNIGHT NZ-WIDE DELIVERY

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The Mushroom Tapes brings together three renowned writers of true crime: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein.

For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.

The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other, an unputdownable record of the writers’ private conversations about their impressions from inside the courtroom. They explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains unknowable about Erin Patterson.

If you read one book about how Erin Patterson was convicted of triple murder make it The Mushroom Tapes.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781923058750

Publisher: Text Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 04 November 2025

Country: Australia

Imprint: The Text Publishing Company

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 1.0mm

Width: 1.0mm

Height: 1.0mm

Weight: 1g

Pages: 224

Also by Chloe Hooper

View all
  • A Child's Book of True Crime
    In a small town near Port Arthur in Tasmania in the mid-nineties, Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted student. As the young teacher's sexual life is awakened by the father in scenes of escalating eroticism, the guilt she feels towards the son is compounded. Meanwhile, Veronica, her lover's wife, has just published Murder...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3299
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Bedtime Story
    Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction Longlisted for the 2023 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award From the best-selling author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, a personal tale about death, life, and the enchantment of stories. With illustrations by Anna Walker. Let me tell you a story… When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with...
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $2899
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Arsonist
    On the day that became known as Black Saturday, one man deliberately lit two fires near the small town of Churchill, Gippsland, then sat on the roof of his house and watched the flames. The Arsonist, by the acclaimed author of The Tall Man, is the story of that man, the fire he lit, and the people who were killed....
    Paperback
    $3000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Tall Man
    The Tall Man is the story of Palm Island, the tropical paradise where one morning Cameron Doomadgee swore at a policeman and forty minutes later lay dead in a watch-house cell. It is the story of that policeman, the tall, enigmatic Christopher Hurley, who chose to work in some of the toughest and wildest places in Australia, and of the...
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3000
    Backorder
    Ships mid August
  • The Engagement
    Two people. How many lies? A woman and a man drive at dusk to a rural mansion for a final weekend together. It's all been a game. Both players understood the rules. Or so the woman thinks. At the house, a new game begins. A trap has been set. But how and why? And for whom? This gripping, provocative new...
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Bedtime Story
    Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction Longlisted for the 2023 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award From the best-selling author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, a personal tale about death, life and the enchantment of stories. With illustrations by Anna Walker. Let me tell you a story… When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

Also by Helen Garner

View all
  • The Children’s Bach
    A captivating and deeply personal novel from one of Australia's most respected authors. Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world to their...
    Paperback
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Stories
    This stylish paperback edition of Helen Garner’s collected short fiction celebrates the work of one of Australia’s most loved authors. These stories— that delve into the complexities of love and longing, of the pain, darkness and joy of life— are all told with her characteristic sharpness of observation, honesty and humour. Each one a perfect piece, together they showcase Garner’s...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • How to End a Story
    The third instalment of diaries from the inimitable Helen Garner covers four eventful years in the life of one of Australia's most treasured writers. How to End a Story, Helen Garner's third volume of diaries, is an account of a woman fighting to hold on to a marriage that is disintegrating around her. Living with a powerfully ambitious writer who...
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3000
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • How to End a Story
    How to End a Story, Helen Garner’s third volume of diaries, is an account of a woman fighting to hold on to a marriage that is disintegrating around her. Living with a powerfully ambitious writer who is consumed by his work, and trying to find a place for her own spirit to thrive, she rails against the confines. At the...
    Hardback
    $3400
    Elsewhere:
    $3700
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • One Day I'll Remember This
    In this second volume of diaries from one of Australia's greatest writers, we see Garner in love; asking herself questions about relationships, individuality, morality, and contentment. For readers of Lisa Taddeo's Three Women, and avid Garner fans, this volume illuminates the inner life of a writer with all its turmoil and joy. One Day I'll Remember This presents the question:...
    Paperback
    $3400
    Elsewhere:
    $3700
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • One Day I'll Remember This
    In this second volume of diaries from one of Australia's greatest writers, we see Garner in love; asking herself questions about relationships, individuality, morality and contentment. This volume illuminates the inner life of a writer with all its turmoil and joy. Why should it be any different from any other love affair? Why shouldn't it run through its phases, wither,...
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3000
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Season
    It’s footy season in Melbourne, and Helen Garner is following her grandson’s under-16s team. She not only goes to every game (give or take), but to every training session too, shivering on the sidelines at dusk, fascinated by the spectacle. She’s a passionate Western Bulldogs fan (with an imperfect grasp of the rules) who loves the epic theatre of AFL...
    Paperback
    $3600
    Elsewhere:
    $4000
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Yellow Notebook
    The first volume of private diaries from the fearless, fierce, and much-loved Helen Garner, is now available in paperback. 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...
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • True Stories
    An extraordinary book of collected short non-fiction, spanning fifty years of work, by one of Australia's great writers. Helen Garner visits the morgue, and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, and gets the sack for teaching her students about sex. She attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about dreaming, about turning...
    Hardback
    $4400
    Elsewhere:
    $4800
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • True Stories: The Collected Short Non-Fiction
    Spanning forty years of work, True Stories is the collected essays, stories, and diary entries of one of Australia's greatest writers. Helen Garner visits the morgue and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth and gets the sack for teaching her students about sex. She attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about...
    Paperback
    $3600
    Elsewhere:
    $4000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Monkey Grip
    Helen Garner’s gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics on its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece—the novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs, and sex. When Nora falls in love with Javo,...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Monkey Grip
    Helen Garner's gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics upon its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece—a novel that shines a light on a time, a place, and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs, and sex. When Nora falls in love with Javo, she...
    Hardback
    $3400
    Elsewhere:
    $3700
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks

Also by Sarah Krasnostein

View all
  • The Trauma Cleaner
    The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein is an extraordinary and deeply moving narrative that delves into the life of Sandra Pankhurst, a woman whose journey is as diverse and complex as the people she helps. At its heart, this book tells the story of a trauma cleaner—someone who steps into the lives of individuals often at their most desperate and...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Believer
    This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge. From award-winning author Sarah Krasnostein comes an exploration of the power of belief. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is, and...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Not Waving, Drowning
    How can we mend Australia's broken mental health system? Mental illness is the great isolator - and the great unifier. Almost half of us will suffer from it at some point in our lives; it affects everybody in one way or another. Yet today, Australia's mental health system is under stress and not fit for purpose, and the pandemic is...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3500
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • On Peter Carey
    Exploring dislocation and longing, Sarah Krasnostein dives into Peter Carey's literary tour de force, True History of the Kelly Gang, in this latest offering from the stunning Writers on Writers essay series. Award-winning writer Sarah Krasnostein shines new light on the impossibly vulnerable Ned Kelly of Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. Carey, who moved from Australia to...
    Hardback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Believer
    This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge. From award-winning author Sarah Krasnostein comes an exploration of the power of belief. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is, and...
    Paperback
    $3600
    Elsewhere:
    $4000
    In Stock
    Ships today

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    Every Lake
    Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...
    Paperback
    $3299
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    It Could Have Been Her
    PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    26 Beauties
    The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    The Secrets We Hide
    The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    The Parkwood Murders
    They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Hope Rises
    'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    Slash
    A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    A River Red With Blood
    The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Shadow Step
    The new Detective Miller thriller from bestselling author Mark Billingham, full of tension, wit and incredible twists. The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ('in the shadow') Typically, such a step perfectly demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    Backorder
    Ships mid August
  • Blue Lightning
    New Release
    Blue Lightning
    Blue Lightning The fourth Shetland novel A remote island on lockdown. A killer on the loose . . . Shetland detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to Fair Isle to introduce his fiancée to his parents. With the autumn storms raging, the island is cut off from the rest of the world. Then...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Red Bones
    New Release
    Red Bones
    Red Bones is the third Shetland novel featuring detective Jimmy Perez. Sometimes the dead won't stay buried... When a young archaeologist uncovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find—or a more contemporary mystery? Then an elderly woman is shot in what appears to be a tragic accident in the middle of the...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Last to Drown
    New Release
    The Last to Drown
    Praise for Noelle W. Ihli: 'Hands down one of my favourite reads of the year' - FREIDA MCFADDEN 'A true classic in the genre' - LISA JEWELL 'A propulsive story that haunts and mesmerizes' - KARIN SLAUGHTER FIVE DAYS. TWENTY STRANGERS. NO PHONE SIGNAL. The rafting trip was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. But now that Kaia's...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.