Highway Thirteen

In these eerie and insightful linked stories, McFarlane (The Sun Walks Down) explores a serial killer’s rampage and its impact on an Australian community. The volume opens with “Tourists,” which takes place in 2005, nearly a decade after the killings that have since made Barrow a tourist destination for true crime fanatics. There, a local woman tells a coworker she can sense the presence of a victim whose body is yet to be discovered. McFarlane then rewinds to 1996 with “Hunter on the Highway,” when hitchhikers are turning up dead and the killer is at large, prompting a young woman to wonder if her boyfriend is the culprit. In “Democracy Sausage,” set in 1998, a political candidate’s chances for victory are dashed because he shares the surname of the man recently charged with the killings, taxi driver Paul Biga. Media coverage of the case gets further explored in “Fat Suit,” about an actor made up to look like the corpulent Biga for a salacious 2024 biopic. 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. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Aug.)