Coming 2027 · A novel
Broken Things
A collision on Coast Road shatters Alec Wightman’s family. The official account leaves questions no one will answer. In a coastal town beneath the flight path of a military airbase, a gifted repairman and a fighter pilot live by very different rules. A dark, intimate thriller about love, control and the things we cannot put right.
- Author
- Ricky Eastwell
- Publication
- 2027
- Setting
- Marlow, a fictional Australian coastal town beside a military airbase.
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For adult readers. Contains strong language, violence and distressing themes.
The story
Alec Wightman can usually find the fault. A dead amplifier, a failed circuit, a machine everyone else has given up on: bring it to his shop on Marlow’s main street and he will take it apart, patiently, until it makes sense. Business is getting harder. At home there is Sarah, their six-year-old son Quinn, and a toaster he really ought to have fixed by now.
Then a collision on Coast Road shatters his family, and the official account leaves questions no one seems willing to answer.
Above the town, fighter jets cross the sky. Beth McDonald is at home in the cockpit, where a decision has a consequence and nobody can pretend it was something else. On the ground, certainty is harder to come by. The people closest to her have their own ideas about the life she should lead.
Marlow is small enough for people to know your name, and practiced at leaving certain questions alone. Against its salt air, familiar shopfronts and daily thunder of aircraft, Broken Things asks how far care can go before it becomes control — and what remains of us when putting things right becomes all we can see.
At the heart of the novel
-
01
The instinct to repair
-
02
Love and control
-
03
Who gets to choose
-
04
The cost of putting things right
Read the opening
A short passage from Chapter One.
The toaster had been broken for eleven months.
Not broken enough to throw away, according to Sarah — just broken enough that the lever had to be held down with the handle of a butter knife until the element decided to cooperate. Alec stood over it in his socks, pressing the knife down with one hand and drinking coffee with the other, the way he had most mornings since the previous winter.
Sarah watched him from the kitchen table with the particular patience of a woman who had watched this exact thing happen three hundred times.
“You fix electronics for a living,” she said.
“I know.”
“You have an entire shop full of tools.”
“I know.”
“You rebuilt the television after Quinn threw a Tonka truck through it.”
“That was worth fixing.”
“But the toaster—”
“Has character.”
The toast sprang up hard enough to clear the slots entirely. One piece landed on the bench. The other hit the floor and skated to a stop under the fridge, and their six-year-old son detonated into laughter, the full-body kind that folded him over the table.
Alec looked down at the toast between his feet.
“See?”
Sarah smiled over the rim of her coffee. “Character.”
From Broken Things by Ricky Eastwell. © Ricky Eastwell. Text from the copyedited manuscript; subject to final edits.
The coast around Marlow
Weathered timber, saltbush and the sea. Atmospheric artwork inspired by the landscape of Broken Things.
Atmospheric concept art inspired by the novel’s coastal setting.
Book facts
Broken Things
- Status
- Coming 2027
- Publisher
- Eastwell Productions
- Form
- Novel
- Genre
- Psychological thriller
- Structure
- Twenty chapters
- Extent
- To be announced
- ISBN
- To be announced
- Rights
- Enquiries welcome
Format, extent and ISBN are confirmed closer to publication.
Release news
Know when the book is available
Broken Things is coming in 2027. Email the studio to request a note when the book is available.
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