From an automaton of Nick Cave, to a man who can’t keep his blood out of the food he is preparing; from a vengeful Uber driver to a spinner of souls; and from a boy caught up in a robbery to a girl desperate to save a failing greyhound, the characters who populate this short story anthology could have dropped straight from a Nick Cave song book. These 21 stories, from some of Australia’s favourite creators, respond to Cave’s visionary genius with their own original and unsettling tales of death, faith, violence and love.