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Can you sever a shadow? Can you outswim the rising tide?

A monitor lizard in Borneo tries to convince a boy not to kill a mafia boss. An American scam artist and an aspiring K-pop star fall in love - without ever seeing each other's faces. After Islam is banned, a man uses a time machine to visit 'The Japanese Goebbels'. A suicidal Australian boxer is given one more chance at humanity.

The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan is an explosive collection of award-winning, surreal short stories. Characters across the globe confront the most human of struggles - grief, doubt, addiction, lost love and friendships that shape or betray them. From Bosnia to Borneo, the United States to Australia to Mars, these are stories where lizards talk, cars fly and humans become birds, Sufi mysticism and AI technology collide. A world where nothing is ever what it appears to be.

'The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan is a masterful story collection by one of Australia's finest writers. To read Omar Musa is to be stirred and shaken - and loved.' Tony Birch

'Surreal, wry and arresting stories from an inventive imagination at full stretch.' Cate Kennedy",{"_812":828,"_814":841,"_788":842},{"_812":828,"_814":844,"_788":1010},"Penguin Canada",{"_812":828,"_814":819,"_788":847},{"_812":828,"_814":849,"_788":850},{"_812":828,"_814":852,"_788":1014},"2026-07-07",{"_812":828,"_814":855,"_788":1016},"256",{"_812":858,"_814":731,"_788":859},{"_812":858,"_814":861,"_788":830},{"_812":858,"_814":864,"_788":862},{"_812":858,"_814":866,"_788":1021},"15/09/2026",{"_812":858,"_814":869,"_788":1023},"38.0",{"_812":858,"_814":871,"_788":1025},"0",{"_812":874,"_814":875,"_788":876},{"_812":874,"_814":731,"_788":876},{"_812":874,"_814":879,"_788":747},{"_812":874,"_814":881,"_788":747},{"_812":874,"_814":883,"_788":884},{"_812":874,"_814":886,"_788":884},{"_812":874,"_814":888,"_788":889},{"_812":874,"_814":891,"_788":889},{"_812":874,"_814":893,"_788":889},{"_812":874,"_814":895,"_788":889},{"_812":874,"_814":897,"_788":898},{"_812":874,"_814":900,"_788":898},{"_765":1039},[1040],{"_768":116,"_769":-5,"_130":1041,"_209":1042,"_779":1045,"_785":1046,"_17":995,"_789":1048,"_791":1049},"gid://shopify/ProductVariant/50724046864581",{"_772":1043,"_774":775,"_130":1044,"_35":992,"_777":778},"The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan Cover Image","gid://shopify/ProductImage/44496077553861",{"_781":782,"_783":1023},[1047],{"_751":752,"_788":995},"9781761358135",{"_793":1050},[1051],{"_796":1052},{"_798":116,"_133":1053},{"_751":729},{"_130":1055,"_17":1056,"_742":1057,"_760":1058,"_809":1060,"_763":1113},"gid://shopify/Product/10340052631749","Topographia Hibernica","topographia-hibernica",{"_35":1059},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0625/6679/3413/files/978-1-5293-7165-9.jpg?v=1791151884",[1061,1062,1064,1066,-5,1068,1070,1071,1072,1074,1076,1078,1079,1081,1083,1084,-5,-5,1087,1089,1091,-5,1093,-5,1094,1095,-5,1096,-5,1098,-5,1100,1101,-5,1102,1103,-5,1104,1105,-5,1106,1107,-5,1108,1109,-5,1110,1111,-5,1112],{"_812":813,"_814":17,"_788":1056},{"_812":813,"_814":816,"_788":1063},"BLINDBOY BOATCLUB",{"_812":813,"_814":819,"_788":1065},"PB",{"_812":813,"_814":822,"_788":1067},"HODDER",{"_812":813,"_814":825,"_788":1069},"ADS",{"_812":828,"_814":829,"_788":830},{"_812":828,"_814":17,"_788":1056},{"_812":828,"_814":834,"_788":1073},"Acclaimed Stories from the Bestselling Irish Author, Podcaster, Satirist and Musician",{"_812":828,"_814":816,"_788":1075},"Blindboy Boatclub",{"_812":828,"_814":839,"_788":1077},"

'Memorable, unsettling and humane'
GUARDIAN

'One of the best books I have ever read ... I can't recommend him or it enough'
JOHNNY MARR

'One of the most gifted writers of his generation'
IRISH TIMES

Driving with a donkey stuffed in the back seat; jackdaws pecking brains out through the roof of a confessional box; cat piss and astronauts. This is not the world as you see it, but as it is, twisted from the maverick mind of Blindboy Boatclub. These are stories of the strange unsettlings in the souls of men caught in between the past and the possible; stories of heart-blinding rage and disquieting compassion.

Blindboy Boatclub is the essential voice for the Irish condition in the twenty-first century, and in Topographia Hibernica he unravels the knotted threads of humanity, nature and colonisation from a contemporary perspective.

* Topographia Hibernica was a bestseller in Ireland in November 2023 *

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A poor city worker keeps seeking pockets of nature in modern urban life, with comic and sometimes disastrous results.

Marcovaldo is poor, hopeful and unusually alert to the natural world. In the modern Italian city where he lives with his family, he searches for mushrooms, fresh air, moonlight, birds, fish, rest and small enchantments among streets, factories, neon and supermarkets.

Each attempt turns comic, tender or disastrous. A cure becomes a problem, a picnic becomes a misadventure, a glimpse of beauty becomes another collision with modern life. Across twenty seasonal stories, Italo Calvino turns one working man's hunger for nature into a series of sharp, playful fables about poverty, urban living and imagination.

Marcovaldo is a classic short story cycle for readers looking for translated Italian fiction, literary comedy, social satire and magical everyday strangeness. Funny, melancholy and ingenious, it shows Calvino at his most accessible and quietly subversive.

'Delightful and rewarding as always' Observer.

'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' The Times

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Stories

The Collected Short Fiction

by Helen Garner