A COUNTRY PRACTICE CHRISTMAS BY VARIOUS

This collection of festive stories from four Australian authors delves into the practices at the heart of small country towns. In Stella Quinn's The Christmas Cake War, Jodie teams with an old flame to settle a dispute over Christmas cake at her great-aunt's aged care home...

- BY VARIOUS

Where the front of the house had some old and new to it, the kitchen was just as Jodie remembered: straight out of a 1950s Women's Weekly photo shoot. Sage green Laminex, a central table, also Laminex, but gussied up with a studded strip of aluminium around the rim. Steel-legged chairs with orange vinyl upholstery, one of those toasters where the sides flopped down to put your home-cut bread in, a standalone oven with floral tin covers adorning the four electric hobs.

And on every available surface was a cake tin, browned-off parchment paper rising up above the sides and deep-coloured fruit cake within, with a page of handwritten notes beside each cake.