The Sandpit (publication July 2020) When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn’t expect to find them both in danger. Every day is the same. He drops Leandro at his smart prep school and walks to the library to research his new [...]

Oddfellows On 1 January 1915, ramifications from the First World War, raging half a world away, were felt in Broken Hill, Australia, when in a guerrilla-style military operation, four citizens were killed and seven wounded.It was the annual picnic day in Broken Hill and a thousand citizens were [...]

Stories From Other Places Nicholas Shakespeare’s collected stories take us across oceans and continents into the intimate lives of his characters and the dilemmas and temptations they face. The opening novella, Oddfellows, tells the little-known history of horrifying events that occurred on 1st January 1915 in the Australian [...]

Inheritance, 2010 (Longlisted Dublin IMPAC Award) What would you do if you suddenly and unexpectedly inherited £17 million? This is what happens to Andy Larkham, recently jilted lover, and resentfully underpaid publishing minion. Arriving late to the funeral of his favourite schoolteacher, he ends up in the wrong [...]

Secrets of the Sea, 2008 (Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writer’s Prize; longlisted for Miles Franklin Award) Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns [...]

Snowleg, 2004 (Longlisted for Booker Prize) A young Englishman visits Cold War Leipzig with a group of students and falls for an East German girl who is only just beginning to wake up to the way her society is governed. Her situation touches him, but he is too [...]