Highway Thirtee n is a novel that explores the impact of a brutal murder on a small Australian town and the families of the victims, as well as the public fascination with true crime stories. It has received critical acclaim for its imaginative and tonal range, dialogue, setting, comic timing, and masterful storytelling.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 25 July 2024
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

McFarlane s imaginative and tonal range is astonishing . . . a superb writer . . . McFarlane is a master at just about everything: dialogue, setting, comic timing . . . 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. From the killer's childhood town to Texas, Rome and beyond, from the mid-twentieth century to the near-future, Highway Thirteen asks, 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 centring the killers?

Stylish and lyrical in its prose and deeply sensitive in its characterisation

GUARDIAN

Clever and engrossing

MAIL ON SUNDAY

McFarlane's imaginative and tonal range is astonishing . . . a superb writer

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Books of the Year

A masterclass

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

McFarlane is a master at just about everything: dialogue, setting, comic timing

LOS ANGELES TIMES

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.

From the killer's childhood town to Texas, Rome and beyond, from the mid-twentieth century to the near-future, Highway Thirteen asks, 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 centring the killers?

PRAISE FOR FIONA MCFARLANE'S

THE SUN WALKS DOWN

Steinbeckian Majesty

SUNDAY TIMES

Moving and masterful

DAILY MAIL

Brilliant, fresh and compulsively readable

ANN PATCHETT

McFarlane's imaginative and tonal range is astonishing . . . a superb writer . . . McFarlane is a master at just about everything: dialogue, setting, comic timing . . .

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.

From the killer's childhood town to Texas, Rome and beyond, from the mid-twentieth century to the near-future, Highway Thirteen asks, 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 centring the killers?

Weight: 516g
Dimension: 242 x 164 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529389876