Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the veranda of the Stubbs place, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. And nothing will be quite the same again.

Tim Winton’s gothic and grisly glimpse into the fear and anxiety beneath the surface of the sunny, confident exterior of Australians at home on ‘their’ wide, brown land.