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The Mushroom Tapes

The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial

Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein

  • awardShortlisted, Indie Book Award, Non-Fiction, 2026
  • In July 2023, in the quiet Gippsland town of Leongatha, Erin Patterson—stay-at-home mother and true-crime devotee—invited her husband’s devoutly Christian family to lunch. Within days, three of her guests were dead and the fourth was in a coma. They had all been poisoned by death cap mushrooms.

    Two years later, Patterson stood trial, accused of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The court case gripped the nation and fascinated people all over the world.

    Among those drawn into the drama were three renowned writers: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein.

    Together, they joined the daily media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts and spent long days immersed in the case’s sinister and complex themes: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.

    The Mushroom Tapes is a true-crime book like no other—a unique study of Erin Patterson and our collective obsession with her strange and terrible crime.

    The Mushroom Tapes authors. Left-to-right: Sarah Krasnostein, Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper. Photograph © Darren James, 2025.


    INTERVIEWS and REVIEWS


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    About the Authors
    Helen Garner

    Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime...

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    Chloe Hooper

    Chloe Hooper is the author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, along with two acclaimed novels. Her most recent book is Bedtime Story.

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    Sarah Krasnostein

    Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, Not Waving, Drowning, and On Peter Carey

    The Trauma Cleaner is available in various translations. The Believer was named by The New Yorker as a Best Book of 2022.

    She has won Walkley Awards for...

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    Extent:
    256pp
    Format:
    Paperback
    Text publication date:
    11 November 2025
    ISBN:
    9781923058750
    AU Price:
    $36.99
    NZ Price:
    $40.00
    Australian
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    Praise for Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein
    andThe Mushroom Tapes

    ‘Insightful, humane and self-questioning.’

    ‘Extremely readable…Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein are an acute trio of conversational partners. Their precise, wry observations compel the reader’s attention.’

    ‘Sensitive and insightful.’

    ‘Pick up this book and you’ll find it hard to put down.’

    ‘I was utterly captivated…a dense and deeply engaging weaving of voices, narratives and ideas.’

    ‘Allows us to imagine what the mealtime conversations many of us have been having about this case would be like if three of Australia’s best writers were guests.’

    ‘An utterly absorbing exploration of how these writers think: questioning, rationalising and reflecting on female criminality, morality and the ethics of storytelling.’

    ‘Categorically a must-read, diary-clearing kind of book…I couldn’t stop reading.’

    ‘So readable, so moreish, I got through it in one day.’

    The Mushroom Tapes is in a league of its own.’

    ‘A monster of a true-crime book—and, odd as it might seem, also a bloody good time.’

    ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like being in a conversation with your most blisteringly intelligent, imaginative mates.’

    ‘Riveting.’

    ‘An illuminating read.’

    Other editions ofThe Mushroom Tapes
    • The Mushroom Tapes
      ebook
      ISBN: 9781923059603
      11 November 2025
      Buy ebook