HOSTILITIES: Nine Bizarre Stories
By
A delicately macabre ambience infuses these tales from the Australian author of Speaking To Miranda (1992): a fugitive finds the story of her own life in an old book; a boy visiting his aunt's dying farm is haunted by dreams centering around ""The Dam"" and its fetid lake; ""The Thief in the Rocks"" and another malevolent spirit infecting ""The Greenhouse"" behave with chilling malice. The theme of anger also pervades tales of an abused shoplifter who finds someone to cling to ""At the Old Roxy,"" a bed-wetter who finally stops believing his father's ""Lies,"" and the title story, about two warring step-siblings, one of whom gleefully rescues the other from being buried in cement. Hostile indeed, and bizarre, though milder than Paul Jennings' Uncanny! and Unreal! (both 1991).