From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots.

In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices, and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour.

In 'Laminex and Mirrors', a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor's orders. In 'Cross - Country', a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex's new life. And in 'Ashes', a son accompanies his mother on a journey to scatter his father's remains, while lifelong resentments simmer in the background. Cate Kennedy's poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and mortality, life and love.

Cate Kennedy is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2010. It was also shortlisted for The Age fiction prize 2010 and the ASA Barbara Jefferis Award 2010, among others. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has been published widely.

Her collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Cate is also the author of the travel memoirs Sing, and Don't Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight and Signs of Other Fires. Her book The Taste of River Water: New and Selected Poems by Cate Kennedy was published in 2011.