Highway Thirteen

Stories

De: Fiona McFarlane

Narrado por: Emma Jones

Long-listed, Minneapolis Star Tribune Holiday Book Recommendations, 2024

Long-listed, Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2024

"McFarlane’s skill in evoking individual inner lives and Jones’s deftness in capturing their spirit make every character distinct."—The Washington Post on The Sun Walks Down, one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Audiobooks of 2023

A gripping, enigmatic collection of linked short stories about the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged for a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even further: into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway Thirteen, Fiona McFarlane’s newest collection, takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s childhood town to Texas, Rome, and tropical northern Australia, McFarlane presents an oblique, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without centering the killers? From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The High Places comes a captivating account of loss and its extended echoes in individual lives.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Fiona McFarlane (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Each story . . . stands alone beautifully. Woven together, they illustrate the long-reaching, often unexpected ripple effects evil has on every life it touches.”—Jane Harper, Booklist

“However entertaining, McFarlane’s stories continually remind readers that behind true-crime stories’ escapist pleasure exist real death and human pain. Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Eerie and insightful . . . McFarlane beautifully renders the ways in which news of the crimes warps some of her cast’s relationships and causes other characters to slip into obsession. It’s a standout meditation on a community’s legacy of violence.”—Publisher’s Weekly

well written and interesting

compelling and well written, and very descriptive. storyline don't come together cohesive. I was looking forward that coming together, but feel like I need to listen again and take notes to get it.