The Sydney Morning Herald
· collected 2026-10-09 · by Thuy On, Fiona Capp
This week’s fiction features murder and mystery aplenty, relationship dynamics and vintage horror, while our non-fiction reviews range across everything from nature, the war in Gaza and waste management.
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reviews → feature → Gaza
These 13 tales were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during, as editor Kirsty Logan points out in the foreword, a period of great upheaval with the advent of industrialisation and medical advancements.
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Logan → write → industrialisation
But before we put distance between these stories and our own, Logan reminds us that the “same vast expansions and rapid progress that thrilled them also terrified them – just as our technologies do now.”
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technologies → put → them
Whatever the case, a good story is not bound by time, and the majority of these tales are indeed scary.
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majority → bind → tales
There are submissions from big names – Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft and Ambrose Bierce, who you’d expect to excel in all matters dark and creepy, but there’s also a surprise or two: who’d wager Edith Wharton would make the cut?
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Wharton → be → cut
There are a number of ghost and haunted house stories in the mix, as well as superstitions and folklore, but equally effective are tales that draw on psychological terror, of being beholden to “the claws of peril and dread” of one’s own conscience after wrongdoing.
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that → be → wrongdoing
High Land by Sarah Hawthorn (Transit Lounge, $35)
Annie survives a tandem skydive when her parachute fails, while her unlucky instructor dies by taking the brunt of her fall on impact.
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instructor → survive → impact
The accident sets off a chain reaction of remarkable events.
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accident → set → events
Not surprisingly, Annie is discombobulated upon regaining consciousness, with strange and inexplicable flashes of memory disturbing her recovery.
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flashes → regain → recovery
To aid her convalescence, her parents keep her in a heavily fortified remote property in the Southern Highlands, ostensibly to avoid further media attention.
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parents → aid → attention
Sarah Hawthorn’s latest book has all the requisite ingredients of a thriller: a couple of suspicious deaths and a European hunt to find the truth, as well as a narrative that includes kidnapping, blackmail, extortion, and an elaborate revenge plot.
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that → have → kidnapping
No one seems to be who they claim; no one should be trusted, and the narrator is not reliable either.
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narrator → seem → who
It’s a fun, wild ride, and you forgive some of the outlandish, unbelievable happenings because just when you think you have High Land figured out in terms of whodunnit and whydunnit, the novel suddenly changes direction again.
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novel → ’ → direction
No One’s Looking by Brooke Davis (Hachette, $35)
No One’s Looking is Brooke Davis’ second novel, after her highly acclaimed debut Lost & Found, and explores the ennui, expectations and comfort of long-term marriages, sibling relationships, and gender dynamics.
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Looking → look → marriages
Set over a month in the blistering summer, the book surveys the lives of two 40-something sisters as they navigate various stressful flashpoints.
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they → Set → flashpoints
Both are uncertain of what to do when their hard-won equilibrium is disrupted: Susan’s husband wants an open marriage, and Vicki’s teenage daughter, Gretel, is testing boundaries with her boyfriend.
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daughter → win → boyfriend
These are all well-trodden topics, but still worth another appraisal.
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These → tread → ?
There’s a metaphorical poignancy when Susan admits that she’s never been able to ride a merry-go-round because she feels the horses “were trapped on this spinning wheel for nothing but the pleasure of others”.
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horses → ’ → others
This novel is Lucy Foley’s tribute to her favourite Agatha Christie character, Miss Marple, “the very picture of a slightly dithery village spinster”, as those who don’t know her very well tend to dismiss her.
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who → know → her
But as detective fans know, her harmless little old lady persona acts as a foil for her keen intellect and intuition.
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persona → know → intellect
Foley sets her drama in 1950 in a luxurious hotel in the Swiss Alps, and populates it with a motley crew of guests, including an oily and pompous politician and his elegant wife, a Hollywood starlet, a paid companion to an elderly widow, and, of course, Miss Marple.
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Foley → set → course
Like many Christie stories, Foley keeps her suspects in one place.
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Foley → keep → place
A convenient snowstorm and a blocked train tunnel prevent anyone from escaping, giving just enough time for Miss Marple to puzzle together the mystery.
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Marple → block → mystery
The snowy setting, the post-war intrigue, the fast-paced narrative, and the points of view of various suspects make this novel an enjoyable romp.
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novel → pace → suspects
A Midsummer Party by Antoni Jach (Transit Lounge, $35)
This is not so much a novel that trades on a plot; rather, it’s a book about ideas and debate.
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it → trade → ideas
Most of the action – if you can call it that – takes place at a party in Rome, where the unnamed narrator, a freelance journalist, artist, and micro-press publisher (not dissimilar to the author), interacts with a number of other guests much like, as he puts it, “one of those bush dances where you are in a large circle and you continually swap one partner for another.
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you → call → another
The company is full of creatives and sophisticates, the type of people who quote Shakespeare and Wittgenstein earnestly and unironically.
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who → quote → Shakespeare
Apart from a heated discussion and engaging in “verbal pugilism” with a pompous art historian, the narrator mostly remains passive; he prefers to listen to the tales of others.
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he → engage → others
A Midsummer Party is a talking heads book, full of mini-stories about travel, culture, and ambition.
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Party → talk → travel
As in any party, there are some tiresome characters who divulge too much and whose self-obsession and rambling monologues feel as though they are orating to a spellbound audience.
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they → be → audience
Somewhere Here the Future’s Hid by Jeff Sparrow (Monash University Press, $35)
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Future → hide → Sparrow
“My mission in the world/ Is to prolong/ Rapture by turning it/ Into a song./ A song of liberty,” wrote the Australian poet and activist Lesbia Harford in 1915.
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poet → prolong/ → 1915
In this superb biography, she blazes from the page through her words and deeds, finally given her full due as a writer, radical, lover and visitor from “future’s door”.
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she → blaze → door
One of the first women to qualify as a lawyer, she chose instead to labour in a factory and advocate for the seamstresses she worked alongside.
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she → qualify → seamstresses
While she died at 36 of a congenital heart condition, she lived with an intensity, passion and commitment to love, art, sexual freedom and working people that could have fuelled many lifetimes.
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that → die → lifetimes
She didn’t want to lecture her readers, Harford said in one poem; she wanted to tear them apart.
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she → want → them
Her work languished in obscurity for decades until scholars finally brought it to light.
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scholars → languish → light
As Jeff Sparrow observes, her concerns and her lyrics speak to our turbulent times with a yearning, freshness and immediacy that makes her more relevant than ever.
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her → observe → yearning
This slim volume has all the hallmarks of a cult classic.
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volume → have → classic
Its wry, streetwise voice draws us into a world widely disdained even though civilisation couldn’t function without it: that of the garbage collector, “the Sisyphus of our consumer society”.
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civilisation → draw → society
…and 27 more, not listed.
The Aporia
