Candia McWilliam

A woman sleeps rough on the step of a bank, eating soap to keep herself clean inside while the flowers on her blanket talk to each other; two children at a wake discover friendship over forbidden food; a husband and wife eat fish and chips in their car with the windscreen wipers on high speed just for the fun of it. Carrying the reader from the...

Set on a sailing boat as it travels from Tahiti to New Zealand, Debatable Land is a story of memory, childhood and longing. On board Ardent Spirit are the painter Alec Dundas, escaping a destructive, failed relationship; Logan Urquhart, the restless skipper; his troubled second wife Elspeth, who fears Logan is slipping away from her; Nick and...

Daisy needs to hire a new nanny for her son; the efficient and capable Margaret Pride appears to be the perfect candidate. But as Daisy becomes increasingly removed from family life and the nanny becomes more prominent, oddities in Margaret's behaviour soon surface. Masterfully constructed and crackling with tension, A Little Stranger reveals...

Lucas Salik is a heart surgeon, renowned for performing bold experiments on other people's hearts. Ostensibly chilly, he harbours a secret obsession for his reckless and charismatic friend Hal. When Hal announces his intention to find a wife, Lucas is forced to carry out his most complex operation yet: to engineer the marriage, setting it on a...