AustLit

'My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing.

'On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.

'Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it.

'Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.

'Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.

'Five days later, Esther's buried body is discovered.

'What do we owe the girl who isn't there?

'Character-rich and propulsive, with a breathtakingly original use of voice and revolving points of view, Hayley Scrivenor delves under the surface, where no one can hide. With emotional depth and sensitivity, this stunning debut shows us how much each person matters in a community that is at once falling apart and coming together.

'Esther will always be a Dirt Town child, as we are its children, still.' (Publication summary)

'Bron and Ray are a queer couple who enjoy their role as the fun weirdo aunties to Ray’s niece, six-year-old Nessie. Their playdates are little oases of wildness, joy, and ease in all three of their lives, which ping-pong between familial tensions and deep-seated personal stumbling blocks. As their emotional intimacy erodes, Ray and Bron isolate from each other and attempt to repair their broken family ties — Ray with her overworked, resentful single-mother sister and Bron with her religious teenage sister who doesn’t fully grasp the complexities of gender identity. Taking a leap of faith, each opens up and learns they have more in common with their siblings than they ever knew.

'At turns joyful and heartbreaking, Stone Fruit reveals through intimately naturalistic dialog and blue-hued watercolor how painful it can be to truly become vulnerable to your loved ones — and how fulfilling it is to be finally understood for who you are. Lee Lai is one of the most exciting new voices to break into the comics medium and she has created one of the truly sophisticated graphic novel debuts in recent memory.' (Publication summary)

'After a chance encounter, two formerly close friends try to salvage whatever is left of their decaying relationship. They are in for an awkward, painful night that leaves them feeling lonelier, more uncertain, and more estranged than ever before. Parrish’s first graphic novel for Fantagraphics is a visual tour de force, always in the service of the author’s ever-prevalent themes: navigating queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-in-flux state of friendships.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.