This series of linked short stories offers exquisite writing about the natural world. Images: Supplied.
Inge Simpson’s Once We Were Wildlife (Hachette, Australia, 2026; cover design Alex Ross Creative; cover art Alamy/Steve-x-art; Alamy/The Natural History Museum; Shutterstock/Maomi Marcin), is a linked collection of 12 stories held together by themes of fragility – of the environment, our relationships with one another and as human beings with and in nature.
Her characters struggle with their own mortality and the destruction of the planet on a macro and micro scale. We travel deep into the wilderness and the oceans with their capacity to heal us and/or envelop us, to provide an answer to the dilemmas of human existence, to provide escape and revelation.
This sounds a little lofty, but the stories themselves are earthy, awash with human anguish, love, loss, separation, dislocation and conflict, moral and other.
Here we have the endless search for a lost beloved, environmental activism (grief for the land), prickly unsatisfying relationships, the artist’s quest for the perfect image paralleled with the surfer’s quest for the perfect wave, the relative value of human and animal life, the ever increasing gap between humankind and the natural world and yet the insistent evidence that we are still wildlife, or at least vestiges of it.
This is an intense, spectacularly beautifully written work, exhaling the restless energy of the writer to understand the voices of the natural world and to be one with it, rather than a mere consuming visitor. Her characters are at best uncertain in their place, struggling to do their best in flawed situations, sacrificing themselves to inconclusive causes and relationships.
A dark history set in the Southern Highlands of NSW.
In Joan Sauers’ Murder at Thornwood Park (Allen & Unwin, Australia 2026; cover design Christabella Designs; cover images Silas Manhood/Trevillion; iStock; Shutterstock), the brooding presence of the now overgrown and dilapidated manor at Thornwood Park is the setting and a stark metaphor for decay and decline, for the buried past.
The doughty Rose McHugh is left a bequest as director of the Southern Highlands Historical Museum by the last owner of Thornwood, the reclusive Judith Longworth. Having always been fascinated by the house and the stories swirling around it, Rose is delighted to be able to rummage about looking for items of historical significance.
What she finds, however, is something oddly out of place for such a once wealthy family and this sparks her wonderfully curious mind to ask what such things could be doing there and why they were kept.
A vestige of evidence points her to a group of young women from the Australian Air Force’s Women’s Auxiliary who went missing during World War II and whose absences have gone uninvestigated, unrecorded and unexplained.
Parallels with famous serial killers immediately suggest themselves and Rose plunges into the darkness of the past’s secrets, as we have come to expect – with little caution or concern for her own safety. It is this that we especially love about Rose – she is a woman who values the past and its stories, who is a curious thinker and a determined justice warrior. She is motivated by such goodness.
Themes of the wielding of power, the perpetually lower status of women, the blindness of the law (and hence injustice) when applied to the rich and powerful and the human tendency to judgementalism are woven through the plot strands both major and minor.
Our increasing capacity to trace our lineage also gets a nod here as it has done in previous Rose McHugh investigations.
Rose is fighting on several fronts as she tries to unearth the mysteries of Thornwood and to help her friend George, who is being abused by his grasping daughter Madeleine.
People in high places are doing their utmost to stop Rose from prying into the Longworth story, leading to her dismissal from the Museum. She’s struggling and briefly falls prey to a sense of despair.
However, being at her lowest ebb soon works in Rose’s favour with allies in unexpected places coming to the fore when most needed.
With the historian’s determination to speak for the forgotten, Rose boldly peels back the layers of “civilisation” and gentility and hacks her way metaphorically and in reality through the wild brush, steadfastly seeking long overdue justice for the disappeared and the wronged.
Barbie Robinson is co-founder and a content creator for Living Arts Canberra, a not for profit media outfit supporting arts and community in the Canberra region and books worldwide through its website, podcast interviews and a 24/7 internet radio station.
