The Doubles

A fast-paced, genre-bending debut from the winner of the 2023 black&write Fellowship. For lovers of thriller, crime and fantasy, The Doubles combines First Nations culture with compelling speculative fiction to create a mesmerising mystery.

'I remembered a dream I had been having: a mountain, covered in trees, swelling up out of a plain like a tidal wave. But peering out from the underbrush was a row of eyeless faces looking past me out into the endless expanse I knew was at my back.'

On the Liverpool Plains, near the town of Werris Creek, the Veil that separates the mortal realm from the Outside is wearing thin. Children have been disappearing and turning up dead. Someone - or something - is responsible; taking them from their beds in the middle of the night and sending a message no one can understand.

That's all Kring knows when she gets the case. That's all she needs to know.

Kring is no stranger to magic and monsters - her job as an Envoy for the Higher Powers is to banish Trespassers from our world. But this mission will push her capabilities to the limit, and bring back memories of a past she'd rather leave forgotten. Together with Dries, a local officer of magical law enforcement, she finds herself in a race against time to stop a demon from killing again. And once the demon finds what it's looking for, things will get a whole lot worse ...

About the Author

Jacob K. Gallagher is a Kamilaroi man who was born in Gunnedah, raised in Dubbo, and has lived in Canberra working a 9-5 desk job for a decade now. He was brought up on Power Rangers, Animorphs, Dinotopia and The X Files, before discovering Jurassic Park, a novel that managed to contain most of his favourite things at once, and which set in stone his dream to be a novelist. While not working or writing, he somehow still finds the time to do medieval re-enactment and to paint funny little miniatures.

Jacob writes novels, short stories, poetry, and the occasional essay, usually exploring the themes of family, self-perception, intergenerational trauma, colonialism and futurism. He has had work published by the University of Canberra in its FIRST anthologies, and online by the Griffith Review. One day he hopes to write something like Lord of the Rings, but with dinosaurs, and probably only half as long.