THE STRANGER

An uncompromising and compelling feminist Western for readers of The Natural Way of Things.

In Darkwater, being female doesn't amount to much. But Chelsea's luckier than most. She's the young lover of the town's feared leader, which she keeps telling herself is a good thing, what with food getting scarce and the wells drying up. She's secure and safe and can almost believe she's happy.

But when a stranger rides into town, gun on one hip, whip on the other, Chelsea can't look away. Especially when it turns out this stranger is a woman.

Nobody can say what the stranger is there for. But she brings talk of an outside perhaps no longer so chaotic, no longer something to hide away from - and she knows far too much about dark choices made in the town when the world outside was falling apart.

As the rumours fly about Darkwater's bloodied past and the murder of a woman twenty years earlier, Chelsea finds herself being drawn into someone else's terrifying quest for justice. Or is it merely deadly revenge?

In a place ruled by fear, Chelsea's going to have to decide whose side she's really on, and how far she's prepared to go to uncover the town's dirty secrets before more blood soaks the ground of Darkwater - this time, perhaps her own.

Original, unflinching, gritty and visionary, The Stranger is a stunning feminist Western for our times.

Kathryn is an Australian writer of dark, thrilling and speculative fiction. She has over a dozen short stories published in anthologies and magazines, including in Aurealis and Midnight Echo magazines, and the Australasian Horror Writers Association “best of” compilation, Dead of Night. When not writing, she works in libraries, records and archives in the higher education sector.