Open misère -- Big buffalo -- Mainstream -- Forget about the prices -- I remember a time when once you used to love me -- The greatest showbag on earth -- The fields of early sorrow -- When there's nowhere else to run -- The last trout that Richard bought for Alice -- Queen Adelaide Restaurant -- Burnt Hill Farm -- Jubilee mile -- Hinterland -- The gift of life.

A survivor of Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires takes asylum with old friends in the Dandenong Ranges. An editor-in-chief drives his sister halfway around the country to an east-coast rehabilitation clinic. A single mother flies to Perth with her autistic son for one last holiday. A father at the end of his tether tries to survive the chaos of the Sydney Royal Easter Show. A group of young friends hire a luxury beach house in the final weeks of one of their lives. A postman hits a pedestrian and drives off into the night. When There's Nowhere Else to Run is a collection of stories about people who find their lives unravelling. They are teachers, lawyers, nurses, firemen, chefs, gamblers, war veterans, hard drinkers, adulterers, widows and romantics. Seeking refuge all across the country, from the wheat belt of Western Australia, the limestone desert of South Australia, the sugarcane towns of Queensland, the hinterland of New South Wales to the coastline of Victoria, they discover that no matter how many thousands of kilometres they put between themselves and their transgressions, sometimes there's nowhere else to run.

Winner of The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award.