The Thornbacks

Chloe Wilson

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Penguin Random House Australia
05 May 2026

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Deliciously unsettling and chillingly funny, this singular debut novel from prize-winner Chloe Wilson delves into the worlds we would prefer to keep hidden.

'We didn't do anything at first. It was just an idea that grew in the dark, like a mushroom. Some pale, round spore of a thought finding form in the darkness. In your mind. And yours.'

It's Friday night, date night, and two women are getting ready to head out. But it isn't them who Luka - lawyer, thirty-three - is coming to meet. It's Poppy, an angelic blonde who has been dead for more than a year. Behind her profile are two morticians, Gertie and Tabitha. By day they pump the blood out of bodies, replacing it with formaldehyde, water, alcohol, and raspberry-coloured dye. They sculpt, sew, and paint on shades of Light Natural Tan and Warm Rose Bisque makeup until a face that is almost too perfect looks out of an open casket. They take their work very seriously, and treat their targets on the dating apps with the same scrupulous care. But as they swipe their way through Luka, Zeke, Joshua and Angus, their carefully constructed routine begins to fray. In The Thornbacks, bodies are objects of care and of violence, tools to coerce and control. As the two women work on bodies laid on the slab, and perched at the bar, we are left to ask- to what extent can we really shape our own lives? What does justice look like in a world of flesh, deception and desire? And how can humanity's bycatch - its most overlooked, undervalued specimens - find a means to rebel?

Told with a blistering wit, The Thornbacks is an exhilarating, acutely observed story of appearances and their subversion.

By: Chloe Wilson
Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 1mm, Width: 1mm,
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9781761357244
ISBN 10: 1761357247
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 05 May 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Chloe Wilson is the author of the short story collection Hold Your Fire, winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Award's UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. She is also the author of two poetry collections, The Mermaid Problem and Not Fox Nor Axe, which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Iowa Review, Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, ELLE Australia, The Big Issue, and Australian Book Review, among others. Her stories have won the Iowa Review Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Chloe is a former Voiceworks Poetry Editor and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne.