You should sign up to receive the “slightly bizarre short rural fiction” of O Spaniel Murray. It’s free! Do check out the website to get a sense of what’s being offered — this page describes OSM’s complimentary snail-mail service — but all you have to do is email him: mainlynonsense@yahoo.com.
As for the stories themselves, imagine The Thorn Birds (purely for the Australian setting) combined with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with a dash of noir from The Maltese Falcon.
Side note: I totally forgot about Malta until I read Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and then I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s an island somewhere, right?” Geographically clueless 2k14, probably 2k15, and all years preceding and following those two.