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FIONA MCFARLANE'S OVERNIGHT SUCCESS Fiona McFarlane on the themes of old age and isolation that inspired her debut novel The Night Guest  “The comments I get from people finishing the book is, firstly, that they hate [protagonist Ruth’s] sons... and secondly, that they had to call their mother,” McFarlane says. Provoking the former is an achievement considering the reader only encounters Ruth’s sons in person in the novel’s closing pages: they both live outside of New South Wales (and outside of Australia, too), their mother’s isolated base. “I am interested in the ways in which older people are suffering from different forms of isolation, as families are becoming more geographically spread out,” McFarlane, who lived outside of Australia for 11 years, says. “There is an incredible burden of guilt, and new arrangements of love and responsibility take place when you live tens of thousands of kilometres away from your family.” MORE >

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SEASON TO TASTE by Natalie Young After 30 years of marriage, both Jacob and Lizzie are unhappy, trying to leave but pulled back to their home of unspoken needs and dreams. They’re both guilty of drifting apart from one another – and one morning Lizzie puts some trousers on under her nightdress, walks down to the garden and beats her husband to death with a shovel. She then continues to the next stage of her plan: dismembering the body and placing it piece by piece in the freezer. She’s decided the only safe and respectful way to get rid of her husband’s body is to eat it. This story of a stale marriage and a sudden violent impulse is strangely uplifting, as murder stories go. Darkly touching with the occasional stomach-churning moment, this novel really gets under your skin, making it hard to put down. MORE >