But there’s something in Declan’s past that just won’t go away, that pokes and scratches at his thoughts when he’s at his most vulnerable. Declan feels as if nothing will take away that pain that he has buried deep inside for so long. So he makes the only decision he thinks he has left: the decision to end it all. Or does he? As the train approaches and Declan teeters at the edge of the platform, two versions of his life are revealed. In one, Declan watches as his body is destroyed and the lives of those who loved him unravel. In the other, Declan pauses before he jumps. And this makes all the difference.One moment. One pause. One whole new life. From author of The Shadow Girl, winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2012 Prize for Writing for Young Adults, comes a breathtaking new novel that will make you reconsider the road you’re travelling and the tracks you’re leaving behind.

    Worries I’ve never shared. Thoughts that circle and collide and die screaming because they never make it outside my head. Stuff like that, if you let it go—it’s a survival risk.Sixteen-year-old Nate McKee is doing his best to be invisible. He’s worried about a lot of things—how his dad treats Nance and his twin half-brothers; the hydro crop in his bedroom; his reckless friend, Merrick.Nate hangs out at the local youth centre and fills his notebooks with things he can’t say. But when some of his pages are stolen, and his words are graffitied at the centre, Nate realises he has allies. He might be able to make a difference, change his life, and claim his future. Or can he?This Is How We Change the Ending is raw and real, funny and heartbreaking—a story about what it takes to fight back when you’re not a hero.

    When her father died suddenly, it hit her hard; at the same time she struggled with the demands of her lifestyle and felt as though her life was spinning out of control. Until she met Henry.Now they are set to marry and live happily ever after when their best man arrives in town – handsome, charming and ever attentive, Aiden is a welcome visitor. But his presence soon causes ripples in the happy couple's world, as he brings secrets with him – and starts to unravel some of Madeleine's.As the big day draws closer, Madeleine starts to question her commitment to Henry: Is he really the one she wants to spend the rest of her life with?

    For the first time in his life, Harry Joy sees the world as it really is, and takes up a notebook to explore and notate the true nature of the Underworld.

    Orphaned at age nine, at home under the stars, completely unschooled, Adam uses his fists and his wits to rise from poverty to prosperity. He befriends an aborigine, performs dangerous work in the opal mines, falls in love with a sensual half-caste, has a run-in with a murderous policeman, marries a cold and manipulative beauty and finally treks west to carve himself an empire. This striking first novel tells a colorful and entertaining story, vividly evoking a vigorous, multiethnic society and a beautiful, diverse, often dangerous land. Green is a journalist and the author of Alice to Nowhere. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library JournalNine-year old Adam is orphaned when his father is buried during an Australian desert sandstorm. A childhood of roaming the outback with his father's drilling partner instills in him a fierce determination to have a place of his own. In this fast-paced, gripping saga, the reader follows the hard-working Adam and his mates, Jimmy, the practical aboriginal, and Josef, the impetuous young German immigrant, from the opal mines to the desert. They feint with death in mine disasters, at the hands of Mailey, the revenge-seeking law officer, and in the ravages of flash floods. A more deadly threat for Adam is his beautiful, calculating, near-mad wife, but a seductive half-caste woman lends her own type of danger to all of the men. Essential for most fiction collections. Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P.L., Col.

    The Wallace-Jones are old-money rural aristocracy and Felicity Townsend is from a very different side of the tracks.But Em is determined not to treat Felicity with the same teenage snobbery that tore apart her relationship with her first love, Josh Sinclair. A man who has now sauntered sexily back into Em's life and given her a chance for redemption.As Felicity settles in, suspicions are raised about her intentions toward Em's beloved Rocking Horse Hill, the historic family property that Digby owns but has promised will be Em's home for as long as she wishes. Though worried for her future, Em sides with her brother and Felicity, until a near tragedy sets in motion a chain of events that will change the family forever.An emotional story of family turmoil and second-chance love played out against the dramatic landscape of rural South Australia.

    The History chronicles how, since antiquity, mischief-makers have clandestinely shaped the past – from an Athenian slave to a Polish salt miner and from an advisor to the Ethiopian Queen to a girl escaping the Siege of Paris. Jessie becomes enthralled by the book and by her own mission to determine its accuracy.Soon the History inspires Jessie to perform her own acts of mischief, unofficially becoming mischief-maker number 202 in an effort to cheer up her eccentric neighbour, Mrs Moran, and to comfort her new schoolfriend, Theodore. However, not everything is as it seems. As Jessie delves deeper into the real story behind the History, she realises it holds many secrets and unravelling them might be the biggest mischief of all.

    This is 1920 and a woman has rights - she might still be too young to vote, but she's not going to be treated like a chattel. But she's reckoned without the brother-in-law she's always despised, who brutally shatters her comfortable world, so she has no choice but to sail to Australia. When Michael Winterbourne, a Cumbrian lead miner wakes up with a hangover after his engagement celebrations, he has no idea he is about to be the cause of a terrible tragedy that will change his life and destroy his family. When Michael and Elizabeth meet on the SS Historic, bound for Sydney, they are reluctant emigrants from England. They may start to hope their troubles are over, but they'll find they're only just beginning. A Greater World is set in the early 1920s, a period of transition between the old pre-World War One way of life and the post-War, with the coming economic Depression, major social change and the evolving role of women in society.

    It’s November 1948, and the widowed Hanora Sparrow and her teenage daughters, Aria and Rosy, have fallen on tough times; when they move into a housing commission camp on the outskirts of Sydney, their spirits are low and their prospects few. While Hanora copes via various pharmaceutical offerings and Rosy with nothing other than indignity, the spirited Aria rises immediately to the challenge of keeping the family together in such trying circumstances. With her endless curiosity and lively sense of humor, Aria draws the Sparrow women into close friendships with other camp residents and supports her family through her work as a photographic model in the city. Despite the setbacks, Aria strives toward their eventual salvation.

    But something goes tragically wrong, and Tom dies in the blaze. His wife, Dawn, doesn't want him to have died for nothing and decides to hold a funeral procession for Tom as a protest, driving 350km from Yardley in country Victoria to bury him in Melbourne where he was born. To make a bigger impact she agrees with some neighbours to put his coffin on a horse and cart and take it slow - real slow.But on the night of their departure, someone burns down the local bank. And as the motley funeral procession passes through Victoria, there are more mysterious arson attacks. Dawn has five days to get to Melbourne. Five days, five more towns, and a state ready to explode in flames... Told with a laconic, deadpan wit, Taking Tom Murray Home is a timely, thought-provoking, heart-warming, quintessentially Australian story like no other. It's a novel about grief, pain, anger and loss, yes, but it's also about hope - and how community, friends and love trump pain and anger, every time.

    But news of her beloved father's heart attack brings Bella rushing back to Australia along with her aunt Liz, an acclaimed musician who's been living in London for the past thirty years. While her father recuperates, Bella seizes the chance to prove to him that she is capable of running Mullinjim, the family property in Far North Queensland. But coming home is fraught with emotional danger for both Bella and Liz. While Bella is confident she can deal with drought, bushfires and bogged cattle, she dreads facing her neighbour. Gabe Mitchell is the man she once hoped to marry, but he's also the man who broke her heart. And for Liz, Mullinjim holds a painful secret that must never be revealed...In the rugged beauty of the outback, new futures beckon, but Bella and Liz must first confront the heartaches of the past.

    Then one summer's afternoon tragedy strikes ... and those who are closest to him struggle to come to terms with their loss. Friendships are strained, marriages falter and loyalties are tested in a gripping and brilliantly crafted novel of loss, grief and desire.Told from the points of view of nine of the people who are mourning Rory, this riveting novel presents a vivid snapshot of contemporary suburban Australia and how we live now. Marriage, friendship, family-all are dissected with great psychological insight as they start to unravel under the pressure of grief. The characters live on the page; their lives are unfolded and their dilemmas are as real as our own.Last Summer is a stunning novel about loss-the terrible pain of losing a husband, brother or friend-but also all those smaller losses that everyone must face: the loss of youth, the shattering of dreams, the fading of convictions and the change in our notions of who we thought we were. It is also about what comes after the loss: how we pick up the pieces and the way we remake our lives.

    When he doesn’t die, he is surprised and pleased. But he can’t seem to move from the crash position. In fact, the accident is just the first in a series of family crises: His wife Wendy is heroically supportive, but when his daughter Rosie punches out a vindictive schoolmate, all hell breaks loose. His son Declan is found with a stash of illicit drugs. A strange policeman starts harassing the family and ordinary mishaps take on a sinister desperation. To top it all off, Michael’s professional life starts to crumble.Mark Lamprell’s extraordinary debut examines the terrible truth: sometimes you can’t pull yourself together until you’ve completely fallen apart.

    Secrets and lies...secrets and lies... Fourteen-year-old twins, Kaine and Roxy, used to be close, but now they can hardly bear to be in the same room.Roxy hates the way her brother behaves - Kaine might be brilliant at football, but he's always in trouble and seems determined to tear the family apart.And Kaine despises the way his supposedly perfect sister dominates their parents in her ambition to reach Wimbledon.But the twins are both hiding dangerous secrets of their own, secrets that could destroy everything they are working towards - and both Roxy's and Kaine's survival hangs precariously in the balance. Gripping, unstoppable and real; this book is UNSTOPPABLE.

    After a tough decade for retail, Book Fiend is the last bookshop in the CBD, and the last independent retailer on a street given over to high-end labels. Profits are small, but clients are loyal. When James breezes into Book Fiend, Cait realises life might hold more than her shop and her cat, but while the new romance distracts her, luxury chain stores are circling Book Fiend’s prime location, and a more personal tragedy is looming.