2025 PROGRAM
The Murder Next Door
DATE:
Saturday 21 March, 2026
LOCATION:
Henry G's
COST:
$25.00
Suburban streets, domestic routines and familiar relationships are the setting for some of today’s most unsettling crime fiction. In The Murder Next Door, five thriller writers explore psychological suspense, domestic noir and the menace that lurks in ordinary lives — the neighbours you wave to, the houses you pass every day, the secrets hidden in plain sight. Kate Horan, Troy Hunter, Ali Lowe, and Nikki-Lee Taylor discuss why stories set so close to home exert such a powerful pull on readers, how tension is built through intimacy and misdirection, and what these novels reveal about trust, fear and the fragile boundaries of safety. This is a conversation about crime fiction as entertainment, obsession and social mirror — and why the most disturbing stories often unfold where we feel safest.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.