SURVIVAL EXPERT!It's not always possible to skip around smelling the roses, 'cos sometimes you're too busy gripping onto the cliff edge by your fingernails. But 99 times out of 100 it's worth hanging in there bozo: just as things get worse so too can they get a whole lot better. In this handy pocket-sized book, Ruby will give you the lowdown on how to survive a bunch if tricky situations. So long as you keep your a cool head, buster, you can make it out there alive...

    Michelle Koszlowski desperately wants to be a princess until her wish comes true and she discovers what a pain royal life can be.

    She was young and frightened, trying to escape a brutal marriage, but despite the violence and cruelty she’d endured, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. Yvonne would not see her son again for nearly 40 years.Kristina was the first child of her mother’s subsequent, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother’s sorrow, though Peter’s absence resounded through the family, marking each one. Yvonne dreamt of her son by day and by night, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother. Boy, Lost tells how their lives proceeded from that shattering moment, the grief and shame that stalked them, what they lost and what they salvaged. But it is also the story of a family, the cascade of grief and guilt through generations, and the endurance of memory and faith.

     But before Maddie can tell her best friend Jana about him at lunch the next day, Jana announces her huge new crush -- on the same guy! Maddie doesn't want to cause trouble, so she keeps her feelings hidden. Jana will get over her crush soon, right? Add major school stress to Maddie's secret, and it's a recipe for disaster. Can she keep her cool and work things out with both Jacob and Jana before it all turns into a total mess?

    The family of three journeys across the country, squabbling, bonding, searching and reconnecting.But Loretta isn’t mother material. She’s broke, unreliable, lost. And there’s something else that’s not quite right with this reunion.They reach the west coast and take refuge in a beachside caravan park. Their neighbour, a surly old man, warns the kids to stay away. But when Loretta disappears again the boys have no choice but to ask the old man for help, and now they face new threats and new fears.This beautifully written and gripping debut is as moving as it is frightening, and as heartbreaking as it is tender.

    Everything they do subverts their firm intention of keeping up appearances. They meet just after the war in liberated Paris but they cannot quite free themselves from the many strings attached to them - the old aunts, the sisters, the cousins, the nuns and the ominous concierges who dog their footsteps.Alexandre is a banker and a Resistant and lives in a world of numbers and Roman emperors. Poum resides in the Odyssey and in her bed, hiding from the mysterious disapproval of their relatives, for they both seem to persist in some irreparable faux pas which has them wading through a lifetime pickle. Their daughter, Catherine, would like to help but she seems to be part of the problem.This is no ordinary childhood, and Catherine de Saint Phalle’s acceptance of her parents, despite their flaws, shines through, propelling us head first into their strange, yet beautiful, Parisian world.Poum and Alexandre is a searingly honest, humorous and moving elegy to family and place, and a meditation on the ways they ultimately define us.

    On the surface of my skin, a miracle was quietly brewing . . .'Suburban Australia. Sweltering heat. Three bedroom blonde-brick. Family of five. Beat-up Ford Falcon. Vegemite on toast. Maxine Beneba Clarke's life is just like all the other Aussie kids on her street.Except for this one, glaring, inescapably obvious thing.

    

    With her Newfoundland pony, Raven, and Newfoundland dog, Blizzard, Jessie is never at a loss for faithful companions. Jessie's grandmother is always pushing her to be a "lady," but if being a lady means leading a life without adventure, Jessie will have none of it. When Jessie realizes that a little girl named Clara is being neglected, Jessie knows that she has to help. And when Jessie discovers a herd of wild ponies captured in the woods, she knows that she and her friends must come to the rescue. But going head-to-head against the town's bully to save Clara and the ponies is no small feat, and Jessie will need more than just a little bit of luck. The rugged shores of Newfoundland in 1965 set the scene for award-winning author Joan Hiatt Harlow's tale of a girl and her boundless affection for ponies.

    The Gateway is no ordinary hotel – and its guests aren’t just visiting from out of town!

    Within weeks of their delivery Prime Minister Julia Gillard's own speech about misogyny and sexism went viral and was celebrated around the world. Summers makes the case that Australia, the land of the fair go, still hasn't figured out how to make equality between men and women work. She shows how uncomfortable we are with the idea of women with political and financial power, let alone the reality. Summers dismisses the idea that we should celebrate progress for women as opposed to outright success. She shows what success will look like.

    The story is one of Australia’s foundation legends, but until now it has been told as though only half the participants were there.What if the hot-tempered, free-wheeling gold miners we learnt about in school were actually husbands and fathers, brothers and sons? And what if there were women and children inside the Eureka Stockade, defending their rights while defending themselves against a barrage of bullets?As Clare Wright reveals, there were thousands of women on the goldfields and many of them were active in pivotal roles. The stories of how they arrived there, why they came and how they sustained themselves make for fascinating reading in their own right. But it is in the rebellion itself that the unbiddable women of Ballarat come into their own.Groundbreaking, absorbing, crucially important—The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is the uncut story of the day the Australian people found their voice.

    Each of the Sprite Sisters, aged between nine and thirteen, has a magical power related to one of the four elements - Fire, Water, Earth and Air. When Ariel discovers her power on her ninth birthday, their circle is complete. The girls' magic must be kept secret, and used only for good; if not, the consequences could be dire. The Sprites' big house in the country is full of laughter and sunshine, but a shadow is falling. Everything the Sprite Sisters hold dear will soon be shattered by the arrival of someone who is intent on destroying their power ... www.sheridanwinn.com

    Then one day, running in Central Park, she lost all sensation in her legs. Two days later she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.Caro was no stranger to tragedy. Her father Richard contracted polio at the age of twenty and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Dignified, undaunted and ingenious, he was determined to make every day count, not least seducing his nurse while still confined to an iron lung, then marrying her.But when Caro was herself blindsided by illness, cut loose from everything she depended on, she couldn’t summon any of the grace and courage she’d witnessed growing up. She was furious, toxic, humiliated. Only by looking back at her father’s extraordinary example was she able to rediscover her own grit and find a way forward, rebuilding her life shard by shard.An emotionally brutal memoir of family, vulnerability and purpose, Diving into Glass is a searing, often funny portrait of the realities of disability and an intimate account of two lives filled with vigour and audacity.'Caro Llewellyn's portrait of her father is a tour de force. It is entirely unpredictable and consistently exhilarating. I read it in one transfixed sitting.’ Janet Malcolm‘Disturbing, compelling, portentous, obsessive, repetitious, persistent, prophetic, packed with shocks of recognition.’ Annie Proulx‘Indefatigable and unsinkable, Llewellyn keeps her story on pace as if her very life, and her father’s legacy, depended on it. Inspiring and uplifting.’ Mary Norris, author of Between You & Me‘Llewellyn has landed herself alongside the great memoirists of our time. A riveting marvel.’ Elizabeth Flock, author of The Heart is a Shifting Sea

    As an almost-eleven-year-old Monday, she should be able to pass notes in class or brush her dog, Pickle, without lifting a finger. But her Monday telekinesis still has some kinks, and that plate of spaghetti she's passing may just end up on someone's head. And if that's not hard enough, practically perfect Ellie Preston is out to get her, and Principal Wible wants to send her to remedial summer school to work on her powers! It's enough to make a girl want to disappear...if only she were a Friday.