Wittedoom: Where Greed is Thicker than Asbestos by Jon Vassa

Welcome to Wittedoom, Western Australia, 1986! A town bustling with promise, where the blue asbestos mines are booming, and fortunes are ripe for the picking. The air might be a little dusty, but nothing says success like a shiny new layer of blue asbestos on your boots, right?

The Thompsons — Jack, Claire, and their teenage kids, Poppy and Hugh — have just arrived in this “quaint” rural town for a fresh start. Jack’s got a job lined up in the mine, and the family’s hoping to settle into the friendly community. Everything seems perfectly normal… at first.

But Wittedoom has its quirks. Strange occurrences start cropping up, little things that make the Thompsons wonder if they’ve stepped into more than just a quiet mining town. Unexplained whispers at night, the oddly cheerful townsfolk who keep just a little too much to themselves, and figures that seem to watch from the shadows — it all begins to feel like the Thompsons are part of something bigger. And not in a good way.