Hold Your Fire

Author: Wilson, Chloe

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 18 July 2024 by Simon & Schuster Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 256 pages
198 x 128 x 20 | 232g

From award-winning Australian author Chloe Wilson comes Hold Your Fire, a debut short story collection that will haunt you long after you turn the page.

A steely mother doubts her husband’s guts and her son's capability, until a playground incident dramatically escalates. A young couple move into a house in which there’s been a recent murder, and fall under the spell of their peculiar, commanding neighbours. Two sisters are determined to detoxify themselves into perfection. A diver pushes herself and those around her to dangerous heights. Interspersed with these stories are lightning strikes of flash fiction: we glimpse a leopard in the apartment next door; plants grown out of a strange and miraculous soil; the spirit of a girl who’s been thrown down a well.

Needle-sharp, effortlessly surprising and beautifully controlled, Hold Your Fire is a debut collection that introduces a fierce new talent. At each turn, Chloe Wilson offers a unique insight, a tear in the veil of our moral certainties. Her stories strip away the varnish of our decency to reveal the raw, fascinating truth beneath.