Wasteland Girls is a collection of lyrical, incisive and luminous stories by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Tall Bones and Our Last Wild Days.

These stunningly powerful stories explore the wildness and beauty of the American heartlands, a place where lives are lived on the margins, but also where there is dignity, hope, revenge and restitution.

In 'Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water', which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, Texan man Ready drives through a divided US to see his dying brother. Wasteland Girls, the title story, is a powerful tale of a family of hoarders, of magic and revenge. In Yukon 1940, a woman sits beside the body of her husband in a remote cabin, trapped by the frozen sea. The Girl in the Ground follows a woman who suddenly reappears after twenty years of absence, but for whom the past is a void. A widower meets a man who should died many times.

Deeply atmospheric and soulful, the stories in Wasteland Girls are inspired by the author's experience of living amid the beautiful but often ferocious remote landscapes of the US, and among the wild and secretive people who inhabit them. In the vastness of the wilds, anything can happen...

'A collection of stories that feel like worlds in their own right, masterworks in miniature. This book is the short story form in the hands of a master. Anna Bailey is a once-in-a-generation talent’ C J Cooke

© Anna Bailey 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026