DEAD ENDS

All-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins has returned to her small hometown to fulfil family duties for the mother and brother she's barely seen since she escaped as a teen. But her homecoming isn't the triumph it should be. She has nothing to show for her time in Sydney but a string of failed relationships and an ongoing HR complaint against her ex-girlfriend, now former boss.

Settling right back into old habits, Nell finds herself sparking a relationship with her dead best friend's brother Mick, as well as the newly arrived (and equally unreliable) Katya, who's working for the once-famous TV psychic Petronella Bush. Driven by her lust for Katya, an empty bank account and the need to come to terms with two life-defining deaths from her past, Nell is drawn deep into Petronella's charismatic web.

Dead Ends is a beguiling, big-hearted portrait of love and loss, and the bad decisions we make in their wake.

SAMANTHA BYRES a writer from Whanganui, Aotearoa. She attended the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington and her work appears in Turbine, JAAM, Sport and Out Here: An anthology of Takat?pui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.