The Wheeler Centre

A darkly comic small-town mystery. An historical epic of women and war. A corporate gothic novel. A satire about the cult of beauty. A gritty queer thriller set in Melbourne’s underbelly. Are you ready for your next great read?

Fresh voices, unique perspectives and underrepresented stories come to the fore in the latest edition of The Next Big Thing.

Samantha Byres’s darkly funny debut Dead Ends sees protagonist Nell Jenkins return to her small hometown for the first time since making her escape as a teen. Meanwhile, Emma Pei Yin’s When Sleeping Women Wake tells the story of three interconnected women and their journeys of sacrifice, resilience and survival, set against the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II.

In Sinéad Stubbins’s Stinkbug, a corporate wellness retreat turns into a manic team-building nightmare for employees at an advertising agency on a brink of restructuring. Chloe Elisabeth Wilson’s Rytual is about a cult beauty brand with sinister secrets. And Patricia Highsmith meets Christos Tsiolkas in Thomas Vowles’ Our New Gods, a twisty psychological thriller set in Melbourne’s queer scene.

Join us to hear from some of the most exciting new voices working in fiction today.