Home Theatre *Winner of Best First Book Award (the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction) Ockhams 2023*

Welcome to the Repertory Apartments-where scenes of tenderness and trouble, music and magic, the uncanny and the macabre play out on intimate stages. A mother and her young son battle an infestation of ants. A bass player is beset by equine hallucinations. A widow seeks a new home with a spare room for guests. A radio factory foreman intercepts queer broadcasts from the future. And a time-traveller stranded in a distant corner of the multiverse tries to find his way home. Moving between the early 20th century and the modern day, this genre-bending collection, spanning the fantastical and the keenly real, introduces an ensemble of remarkable characters-and the fateful building that connects them all. 'Pensive, thoughtful and often melancholy as many of these stories are, Anthony Lapwood has created a whole world in this collection, with credible and believable characters even when presented in fantasy, with much room for thought, with close observation of human nature and with a fine sense of structure. An outstanding collection.' -Nicholas Reid, Reid's Reader 'Beautifully done.' -Airini Beautrais, Nine to Noon Cover: Jonathan King