This is Issue Two of Volume Four of the Review of Australian Fiction. It contains new short fiction by Paddy O'Reilly and Laurence Steed.

A teenager on the tram meets an old man claiming to be Jesus Christ. Six young women band together on a night prowl. A Filipino immigrant clashes with his eldest sister, who has brought him to Australia for a better life. And in a future where dogs have risen up against their owners, a mother is alarmed by her adolescent daughter's behavior. Through such diverse characters, Paddy O'Reilly takes us into the fringes of human nature—our hidden thoughts, our darker impulses, and our unspoken tragedies. By turns elegiac and acerbic, but always acutely observed, Peripheral Vision confirms O'Reilly as one of our most inventive and insightful writers.

Set in the Australian bush, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things that matter. Loretta Boskovic never dreamed she would end up a single mother with two kids in a dusty Australian country town. She never imagined she'd have to campaign to save the local primary school. She certainly had no idea her best friend would turn out to be the crusty old junk man. All in all, she's starting to wonder if she took a wrong turn somewhere. If only she could drop the kids at the orphanage and start over . . . But now, thanks to her protest letters, the education minister is coming to Gunapan, and she has to convince him to change his mind about the school closure. And as if facing down the government isn't enough, it soon becomes clear that the school isn't the only local spot in trouble. In the drought-stricken bushland on the outskirts of town, a luxury resort development is about to siphon off a newly...

A sparkling collection of award-winning short stories. Stylistically varied and enlivened by a wry, dark humour, this collection shows Paddy O'Reilly living up to the promise shown in her debut novel, The Factory. With subtlety and assurance, O'Reilly creates narrative voices and situations spanning a broad range of experience - an alien visitor who communicates in the language of romance, a woman waiting for her death, a case of confused identity, and the sour taste of relationships lost or abandoned. O'Reilly's characters are at once defiant and accepting, curious and bewildered. From Japan to suburban Australia, and onto a place where larger, odder things are possible, The End of the World plays with our perceptions of reality.

Issue six of Volume Ten of the Review of Australian Fiction (reviewofaustralianfiction.com). This issue contains new short fiction by Paddy O'Reilly and Chloe Wilson.