The Fancies

Port Kingerton: the insular cray-fishing town at the butt-end of South Australia, where everyone knows everyone. And everyone knows too that when Abigail Fancy left town at seventeen, she hung out the window of her boyfriend's Corolla, middle fingers held high, swearing she'd never come back. And she hasn't, until now.

At her parents' house Abigail finds a party (read town meeting) in full swing over something iffy found on the beach - a thighbone. And although iffy things aren't uncommon in Port Kingerton, Abigail's surprise arrival forces a family - and an entire town - to unpack a twenty-four-year-old secret that rocked this tiny place to its core: that time they found something much iffier ...

Through Abigail, her grandfather Old Dick Fancy's unreliable memories and the collective voices of the town itself, Port Kingerton unravels as old wounds are picked open, skeletons fall from closets and unlikely bonds are forged. But will Abigail finally change the past ... ?

Fresh, punchy, expertly crafted and deliciously wry – the author of The Other Side of Beautiful returns with a tour de force of a small-town mystery where a homecoming lifts the veil on a time when a town failed to stand up for its girls.