Common Places

by Gillian Hagenus

The Australian suburbs are stranger than they seem – sun-bleached streets haunted by memory, cul‑de‑sacs edged with bushland that watches back, and homes where dangers lurk behind familiar fences. Between neighbours who know too much, houses that hum with memories best forgotten and bushfire smoke seeping into backyards, this collection of short fiction reveals the hidden anxieties that shape our domestic lives. Subversive, intimate and darkly imaginative, Common Places drags these quiet streets into the light, revealing a gothic noir landscape where the familiar turns unsettling – reminding us that the most terrifying things are often the ones that feel closest to home.

Genres: Short Stories, Gothic, Australia

190 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2026

Reviews

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The eclectic, strange, beguiling collection of short stories COMMON PLACES (UQP 2026) won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer at the 2025 Queensland Literary Awards. Author Gillian Hagenus has a history of involvement with short story festivals, editing, and publication in various literary journals but this is her debut collection.

COMMON PLACES is exactly what it says on the tin: stories about common places (usually small towns, backyards, houses or other living spaces) but all with disturbing or unusual twists: dangerous bushland always watching, neighbours who know too much, mysterious bushfire smoke, intimate memories, close calls, a touch of magical realism, dream fantasies.

As with most short story collections, readers will have their favourites. Mine are the enigmatic PROJECT MERCURY, the creepy BETWEEN HERE AND ANTARCTICA, the haunting and haunted OH, the unforgettable liminal nuance of IMPERMANENCE, the dark mystery of THE MAN UPSTAIRS, THE YEAR OF THE BIRDS, and the wry and humorous and unnerving A SERIOUS FENCE.

The stories are marked by great dialogue, a keen eye for detail, black humour, creative imagination and a remarkably gothic noir take on familiar landscapes that become unknown and unsettling. Every story begins in a familiar or common place, but diverts either subtly or in some instances, quite abruptly, to a different space altogether.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Each story in this collection is a vignette study of the Australian suburbs, deeply observational, not only about physical characteristics of suburban landscapes, but the ways in which we as humans inhabit them, looking hard at the behaviours of people. The stories are a little surreal, like tricks played on the mind, bordering on dream state. Each story grows progressively stranger and further from reality, some are perhaps merely the amplification of anxieties, while others are outright ghost stories, the suburban backdrop a haunted landscape. I found the writing almost textured with its descriptions, as if you could feel everything, see everything, inhale everything. The stories themselves were a bit hit or miss for me, I loved a couple of them and then felt really ambivalent towards others.

[Leah · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Love me some hot, dry, dusty suburban gothic with salty sea breezes and endless bus journeys. Even though I don’t know Adelaide, I recognised these places spiritually. There’s some memorable atmospheric stuff going on here.

[Karen Mason · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hugely disappointing