Short Stories: and now for something completely different, as they once said in a famous film. Over more than 45 years Derryn Hinch has written 19 books from novels to autobiographies; Scrabble, Wordle, and several diet and health books. But he had never tried anything like this. A compendium of short stories.

It came about, almost by accident, because he was writing (again) about that fictional intrepid journo Jonathan Hunter, as a full-length novel -- The Big Hawaii Mystery. Hinch says, to be honest, he just ran out of words. The story was finished. A friend suggested a book of short stories. And here it is.

The stories range from a murder mystery to a man who never was. Obviously, they are fiction, but many are based on fact. Hinch likes to call it ‘faction’ because real experiences from his own life as a police reporter, TV host, federal senator, weave through the narratives. You may even recognise some of the characters.