In the 1930s in Adelaide, four young women are learning to be witches. This subtle magic, known only to spinsters, has been passed from aunt to niece for generations. Now this group of young women is using it to power their own small revolution, undermining a system that wants them married, uneducated and at home.

When, in 1859, George Hills is pulled from the wreck of the steamship Admella, he carries with him the uneasy memory of a fellow survivor. Someone else – or something else – kept him warm as he lay dying, half-submerged in the freezing Southern Ocean, kept him bound to life.

As George adapts to his life back on land, he can’t quite escape the feeling that he wasn’t alone when he emerged from the ocean that day, that a familiar presence has been watching him ever since. What the creature might want from him – his life? His first-born? Simply to return to its home? – will pursue him, and call him back to the water, where it all began.

It is 1997 in San Francisco and Simon and Sarah have been sent on a quest to see America: they must stand at least once in every 25-foot square of the country. Decades later, in an Australian city that has fallen on hard times, Caddy is camped by the Maribyrnong River, living on small change from odd jobs, ersatz vodka and memories. She’s sick of being hot, dirty, broke and alone.

Caddy’s future changes shape when her friend, Ray, stumbles across some well-worn maps, including one of San Francisco, and Caddy’s imaginary world starts seeping into her real one.

Learn how to establish your risk and face your fears; where to live and with whom; and how to survive diasters. Provide your own food, power and water, make sure you can still get around, and get rid of your waste and sewage. Discover new ways to think about home and possessions, the sadness of living through climate change, and how, for both individual and common good, we might positively change the way we live.

Lives are turned upside down by a bureaucratic error in this Kafkaesque work of neo-absurdism.

‘Immerse yourself in Jane Rawson’s Formaldehyde if you like the seriously weird or the creepily wonderful. This story has small but persistent claws; under cover of its smooth, conversational narration you will be clasped and dragged into some tough, strange places. Let it take you there. Let it blow your tiny mind.’ Margo Lanagan (Sea Hearts)