Following on from her Aurealis and Australian Shadow Award-winning debut collection, Joanne Anderton's Inanimates finds the terrifying in the everyday, bringing together seven stories where ordinary objects become the source of nightmares and extraordinary threat.

In "Thread Embrace," a well-dressed killer finds himself at the mercy of an unexpectedly sartorial attack. "Simulation Theory" sees a wounded soldier bond with the bomb disposal robot he worked with in the field. In the heartbreaking last story, "High Density", the comfortable suburban ideal of a retired couple becomes a war against a dark and dangerous form of urban renewal.

In turns wicked, delightful, horrifying, and fantastic, Inanimates: Tales of Everyday Fear showcases a hidden gem of the Australian genre scene, and highlights Anderton's ability to see the dark, supernatural threats inherent in ordinary things.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanne Anderton is an Australia author of speculative fiction, creative non-fiction, and children's books, who until recently was living and working in rural Japan. Her speculative fiction includes the novels in the Veiled Worlds series – Debris, Suited and Guardian – and the short story collection The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories. She has won multiple awards for her speculative fiction, including the Australian Shadows Award, Ditmar and Aurealis Awards. Her short fiction has been reprinted in several Year's Best anthologies, and she's received international review coverage in The New York Journal of Books, The Guardian, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.