Wayne Macauley

Bram and his fellow residents are drawn by a dream: the promise of a freeway leading to a new suburb north of the city. The houses are built, but the freeway never comes. One by one, the dreamers leave, until only a small, hardcore group is left — including Bram, One-eyed Michael, and Michael's self-possessed daughter Jodie. As the disused...

The absorbing new novel from the critically-acclaimed author of The Cook (Quercus, 2013). It is the middle of winter. Seven friends travel to a remote coastal beach house for the weekend. Without phones, internet or television, they sit around the fireplace, telling stories—each exposing the foibles of humankind. But as a storm rolls in and torrential rain cuts the party...

Simpson Returns by Wayne Macauley offers a satirical and surreal twist on the Anzac legend of Simpson and his donkey. Ninety years after they were thought to have died heroically in the Great War, the stretcher-bearer Simpson and his donkey journey through country Victoria, performing minor miracles and surviving on offerings left at war memorials. They are making their twenty-ninth,...

It begins with the normally healthy Beth—aged-care worker, wife of David, and mother of Lettie and Gem—feeling vaguely off-colour. A locum sends her to Dr Yi for some tests. "There are a few things here that aren't quite right," says Dr Yi, "and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that can lead us to the bigger wrongs that matter." Beth...

Power through service, says Head Chef. It's one of the first lessons taught at Cook School, where troubled youths learn to be master chefs by bowing to decadence and whim, by offering up a part of themselves on every plate. It's a motto Zac takes to heart. A teenage boy with a difficult past, he throws himself into the world...