Borderstream Books

News. OUT NOW

The new novel The Girls and the Ghosts of The Old Manse Revisited: An Australian Fugue Novel by Ruth Skilbeck was first published in paperback on 28 August 2025 and is for sale on this website, and in online and can be ordered into bricks and mortar bookshops. It was published in ebook-pdf in August, and published in hardcover on September 10, 2025.

The historical fiction novel telling the story of Roxanne and her family, her new friend Margy, and past inhabitants, after they move into a 19th century manse is set in Northern Ireland, and on family road trips. The adventures, perils and challenges facing almost-13-year-old Roxanne, a budding writer, include, over three and a half years, negotiating the conflict of the early 1970s Troubles, a ghostly mystery, and a terrifying van crash in a Swedish blizzard and her subsequent PTSD. It is the third novel in Ruth Skilbeck’s Australian Fugue series of standalone novels which can be read individually or as a set. Their form is recursive, going back in time whilst also moving forward.

The publisher is Borderstream Books.

Borderstream Books is an independent small publisher based in a suburb of Geelong, in the state of Victoria, Australia. We publish novels, literary studies, and an international anthology journal, Arts Features International. We have two imprints: Borderstream Books and Postmistress Press.

Borderstream Books has published works by about 70 authors and artists in five issues of Arts Features International anthology journal, and Escape Artists Anthology. Several individual works (essays, short stories, poems-and-photographs) were published in the form of pamphlets and short book. Our books can be ordered here with Australia-wide delivery; internationally with custom postage (please send an email with your address for the country-specific mail charge); and our books can be purchased from Borderstream Books via the shop on this website. They are also in various online bookshops and brick and mortar bookshops and libraries around the world can order them in.

We are not accepting submissions at present.

For enquiries about book purchase and postage please email: info@borderstreambooks.com.au