While the nineteen stories are diverse in style and content, this shared focus on the strange gives the anthology a pleasing coherence that many collections of short fiction lack. Some themes are explored by several writers, most notably those relating to technology and reality television, just as evocations of the eeriness of the Australian bush recur in several stories. As with all anthologies, some stories are stronger than others and lead the reader to ponder the ideas and images they contain. I found myself revisited by the figure of a giant hare in the bush from Carmel Bird’s ‘Hare’ and by the invisible hand over the protagonist’s face in Krissy Kneen’s ‘Sleepwalk’.

A stand-out story is Alexander Cothren’s ‘A Cure’, which leads us to a time in the future and plays with the idea of compassion fatigue. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if technology could counter the way that over-exposure to trauma drains us of genuine emotional responses? Or would it? This story takes us on a journey with Alice, who is disturbed by her numb response to other people’s tragedies, to explore a new upgrade to the technology that would help her to feel once again. Without overt commentary or any sense of manipulation, the story also reflects on Australian society today and the way other people’s suffering is commodified for our consumption.

Paddy O’Reilly’s ‘Reality TV’ also resonates with the preoccupations of mainstream Australia. Carly is persuaded to appear on a reality television show about her famous sister, but when she enters the studio she is surprised to see her husband on set. I thought the mounting horror in this story would be resolved at the end, but the author adds one more delicious twist.

Not all the stories here are macabre. ‘Navigating’, by Helen Richardson, is a light-hearted piece about a satnav that takes a mother of two teenagers to a grave site with her own name on a headstone. The dynamic between long-suffering mother and spiky teenagers creates an amusing tone in this story. Susan Yardley’s ‘Significance’ also features a middle-aged woman who is taken for granted by her husband and children. Can you become so invisible to others that you actually disappear? And how would your loved ones react?

In Chris Somerville’s ‘The Rift’, a discharged soldier returns to a small country town. A childhood mistake comes back to haunt him, and he finds himself ostracised. Like many stories in this anthology, the ending can be interpreted in several different ways.

One of the most moving stories is Marion Halligan’s ‘Her Dress Was a Pale Glimmer’, in which a father and his daughters go out for dinner and an unexpected ghost appears at the table. In addition to the highly visual and atmospheric writing, a real strength of the story is its characterisation. The longest pieces in this collection run to ten pages; many are shorter than that, so, necessarily, detailed character development is difficult. But Halligan manages to depict the young narrator of this story, her sister, and their father with great skill and nuance.

Another highly evocative story is Damon Young’s ‘Art’. Ben, an artist and art teacher, goes to an exhibition of new work and discovers an extraordinary painting in one corner of the gallery. He also meets an attractive young woman and goes to her studio. What occurs there provides this surreal story with its gripping conclusion.

There are other pleasures here: time travel at the beach; a child witnessing a father’s desperate act; country pub stories of strange creatures and lost people in the bush; the morphing of memory and reality; a depressed but rather intellectual bird; a lovelorn chef. The final story, by Ryan O’Neill, creates a lighter moment, albeit with a warning to readers.

One of the aspects of this collection I most enjoyed was the way the stories cross genre: some are realist stories with a strange edge, others could be described as speculative or supernatural fiction. This works well, as the contrasts between stories and the mix of scary and odd add spice to the reading experience. After finishing the collection, I was left with a strangely optimistic sense of the possibilities of the weird and macabre. The combined effect of the pieces, even including the less successful ones, reminded me of the pleasures of those puzzling and troubling moments in life, and in fiction, when logic is defied and imagery and association are required instead. Meyer, a well-known blogger and literary commentator, has curated a collection of works that will inspire, confuse, surprise, and amuse.