Too much partying and sleeping on the beach to finish a novel? Try one of these 15 fab short stories for size …

1. ‘Letter to George Clooney’’ by Debra Adelaide – this movingly clever story shows why refugees seek refuge in Australia and how disorienting and surreal it can be when they get here.

2. ‘Cake Mistake’ by Jude Bridges – this hilarious, smart and satirical take on Australia as seen through the eyes of some feisty members of the Country Women’s Association was read this year by the actor Lauren Neill at Little Fictions at Knox Street Bar. It brought the house down. (So, listen to the audio version of it now.)

3. ‘Miracle Polish’ Steven Millhauser – pity prompts a man to buy Miracle Polish from a travelling salesman. The ‘miracle’ is that, after he uses it on his mirrors, the man’s image is refreshed—and so is his girlfriend’s. Then tension ensues. Millhauser’s a new discovery for me and, on the basis of this intriguing story, I’ll definitely be reading more.

4. ‘My Beloved is Mine and I am His’ by Carmel Bird – you’ll probably need to read this story at least twice to absorb the shock of it. It’s a complex and powerful tale about a young girl’s entanglement with a married priest and how the narrative of ‘love’ he spins affects her life. Amazing.

5. ‘The Lodger’ by Juan Gabriel Vásquez – old friends and hunting companions go shooting and a tragedy occurs. This leads a woman to question the life choices she’s made. This story adds to the shimmering beauty of The All Saints’ Day Lovers collection.

6. ‘Valle de Grace’ by Marion Halligan – I’ve binged on Marion Halligan this year but this story is still my favourite. Fanny and Gerard are deeply in love but finding it hard to conceive. ‘Hmm,’ says their Parisian doctor, ‘Is there a problem with frequency of intercourse? Maybe missing the fertile period?’ ‘No,’ says Fanny, ‘Not a chance.’ Every cherub, chocolate and risqué romp in this delicious tale is perfectly placed. (Valley of Grace extends the story into a novel and I’m enjoying this now.)

7. ‘Merciless Gods’ by Christos Tsiolkas – ‘I once thought our group unshakeable but that was the delusion of youth. We were far more ordinary than we believed ourselves to be.’ Nine university students play a party game and the word plucked out of the bowl is ‘Revenge’. This story lingers like the bruise from a punch in the solar plexus.

8. ‘Flying Foxes’ by Jane Skelton – As Skelton says of the squabbling colonies that pepper her narrative, ‘The foxes are wild and unpredictable, creatures of the night, living on a different plane to “normal” life. Without wild nature, without human differences, I think the world would be a sterile place.’ The story shifted me smoothly into its complex, sad and evocative exploration of mental illness and brotherly love and by the end I was completely hooked.

9. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – this eerie classic helped me as I tried to create an old man’s house and a very strange character that felt at liberty in it. A story with great detail and psychological insight.

10. ‘Backing Vocals’ by Catherine Moffat – ‘That first summer we arrived in the Berlin clubs, black-clad and emaciated like winter crows.’ This is one great line among many in this beautifully observed story about old rockers. Note: Catherine’s my writing buddy and she really nails the voice in this piece.

11. ‘The Surgical Mask’ by Terrence Holt – there’s pathos and gravitas in this story about a woman with squamous cancer and most of Holt’s collection, Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories. When the woman brushes her fingers across the doctor’s lips I barely breathed. This man can write.

12. ‘The Salesman’ by Paddy O’Reilly – I’m still working my way through Peripheral Vision, O’Reilly’s collection released earlier this year and that this crack-a-jack story appears in. Take an Indian migrant salesman and a household of bogans who feel superior to him and see what happens. There’s a light touch here but also a serious thread woven through this memorable narrative.

13. ‘What the World will Look Like when the Water Leaves Us’ by Laura van Den Berg – this is an unusual mother-daughter story set in Madagascar. Strange species, burgeoning sexuality and the dream of long-distance swimming swirl together in a heady mix.

14. ‘The Neighbour Herd’ by Patrick Lenton – images from this quirky story plagued me (in a good way) for quite a few months. I thought it was inspired by a crazy beer ad where moose surge down a street but Lenton said it was set in a house in Maianbar in the Royal National Park. ‘I distinctly remember sitting on the deck with my mum and dad, talking about my sister doing something, while a whole herd of deer walked past nonchalantly.’

15. ‘The Bridge’ by Tegan Bennett Daylight – ‘The den had lounges of brown corduroy, and two of the walls had the brick exposed, rough and vari-coloured, like brawn … The room was like a den, the den of a family of pipe-smoking bears. Who lived in the woods.’ For this great description of a den I’m sure I partied in when I was a teenager, and because the girls in the den pass around a bowl of Cheezels and the narrator puts one on the finger and thumb of each hand in order to eat them, I relished this story.