The Starts Are a Million Glittering Worlds

A stunning debut novel about love, guilt and forgiveness. If you loved Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro, you will adore The Stars are a Million Glittering Worlds.

Thea, a young woman crippled by guilt, flees to Central America to escape her life.

In Guatemala, she meets the charismatic Chris and his partner, Sarah, and the three of them form a tight bond. But everything changes when a tragedy occurs.

Thea soon finds herself in a new relationship, bonded to her partner by grief. Together they do their best to start over in Hobart, but when tragedy strikes again - bringing up unanswered questions for Thea - she realizes that if she wants to know the truth, she will need to come clean about her past.

Gina Butson is a former lawyer who completed her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) in 2023. Her short fiction has been published in Newsroom, Salient and Turbine. Gina won the Salient Creative Writing competition and was Highly Commended in the Sargeson Prize in 2024.