'I ... I want to know that I'm using my powers for good and -' 'You want to make a dead man proud.' 'Whoa!''You want to put bandages over severed arteries that really need to be sewn shut. You want the moral high ground.'Holly Yarkov has a boyfriend who is a gift from the universe. She has a job that fulfils her even as it wears her down. She has a core group of friends from high school. And she has a layer of steel around her heart that is beginning to tarnish. Just as she is reaching for a future she can't quite see, Holly is borne back into the past by memories of her beloved father, and of the boy-who-might-have-been...

    Any distraction is welcome, and the woman who has chained herself to the escalator, shouting about the perils of consumerism, is certainly that. She recognises Dot immediately - from their time campaigning for women's rights, and further back still, to the heyday of the Sydney Push when Margot married Laurence. Dot is in despair at the abandonment of the sisterhood, at the idea of pole dancing as empowerment and the sight of five year-olds with false eyelashes and padded bras. She's still a fierce campaigner, but these days she isn't sure where to direct her rage. Margot's despair is quieter; a haunting resentment that her youthful ambitions have always been shelved to attend to the needs of others. And as the two women turn to the past for solutions for the future, Margot's family is in crisis. Laurence sets off on a journey in a bid to repress his grief, daughter Lexie loses the job that has been her life for twenty years, and her younger sister Emma hides her pain with shopping binges that plunge her into debt. Liz Byrski assembles a fallible cast of characters who are asking the questions we ask ourselves. What does it mean to grow older? Are we brave enough to free ourselves from the pressure to stay young? And is there ever a stage in life when we can just be ourselves?

    Feeling like foreigners in this land of sun and surf, they're still adjusting to work, school, and life in a sprawling purple clapboard house, when one morning, tragedy strikes.In the devastating aftermath, the questions fly. What really happened? And who's to blame? Determined to protect his family, Finn finds himself under the police and media spotlight. Guilty and enraged, Bridget spends nights hunting answers in the last place imaginable. Jarrah — his innocence lost — faces a sudden and frightening adulthood where nothing is certain.In the Blink of an Eye is a haunting, redemptive story about forgiveness and hope.

    Maybe then she can move on. Maybe then she’ll discover who she is if she’s no longer The Dying Girl.But with a little brother who dresses like every day is Halloween, a vegan warrior for a mother, and an all-out war with the hot butcher’s apprentice next door, Marlowe’s life is already pretty complicated. And her second chance is about to take an unexpected turn...

    The result is a captivating rural novel, brimming with romance, mystery and suspense.Nina never knew what happened to her father, the celebrated artist Jim Larkin. One minute he was her devoted dad, the next he'd disappeared without trace. Seventeen years later, she's still haunted by the mystery.Until a call from outback Wandalla changes everything.At first, Nina's inheritance of a waterless property and a farmhouse stuffed with junk seems more like a burden than a gift. But this was her father's childhood home – and possibly her last chance to discover the truth.So what is the local solicitor, Harrison Grey, not telling her as he hands over the keys? Why does the area's wealthiest resident, Hilary Flint, seem to hate her so much? What is the significance of the gold locket with cryptic engravings that Nina always wears?And why, on top of everything, is she inexplicably drawn to her soon-to-be-married neighbour, Heath Blackett?

    To escape her guilt and her parents' bitter disapproval, Cate leaves Perth for her aunt Ida's isolated farm in country Western Australia.Henry is a drifter, a young swagman-like character who wanders onto the Christie family property and takes up residence in a disused shed. With secrets of his own, the last thing he wants is to get tangled up in Cate and Ida's lives.Against their own better judgement, the fates of Cate and Henry and Ida inexorably intertwine and they learn to face the realities of life, death and letting go.A witty, charming and moving debut rural romance about what makes a good death and, more importantly, what makes a good life.

    Now in their eighties, Ella suffers from cancer and John has Alzheimer's. Yearning for one last adventure, the self-proclaimed "down-on-their-luck geezers" kidnap themselves from the adult children and doctors who seem to run their lives and steal away from their home in suburban Detroit on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery.With Ella as his vigilant copilot, John steers their '78 Leisure Seeker RV along the forgotten roads of Route 66 toward Disneyland in search of a past they're having a damned hard time remembering. Yet Ella is determined to prove that, when it comes to life, you can go back for seconds—even when everyone says you can't.

    A complicated friendship.A roadtrip in a stolen car.The stories that define us.And two funny, sharp, adventurous young women who refuse to be held back any longer.Rosa was never really trying to hurt anyone, no matter what they said in court.But she's ended up in juvenile jail anyway, living her life through books and wondering why her best mate Asheeka disappeared.A page-turning novel about a complicated friendship; a road trip through NSW in a stolen car; the stories that define us; and two funny, sharp, adventurous young women who refuse to be held back any longer.WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR WRITING FOR YOUNG ADULTS 2022LONGLISTED FOR THE CBCA BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR OLDER READERS 2022

    Even her childhood, where she and her mother were forced to flee Malaya in the fish-stinking hold of a junk in the dying days of colonialism, was fraught with peril.For a time it seemed she would find safe harbour in Tasmania in the arms of wine-maker Peter Torrance, but her restless spirit cannot be contained. Thea’s ambition is to travel the world as a foreign correspondent but Peter is dedicated to his family vineyard in a blue gum valley: it seems their love must fail.Thea makes her name internationally with her coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy then the escalating war in Vietnam, one of the only women in the field. Her job leads her further into peril and death stalks her all the way, until a return to Tasmania opens the door to a new and exciting career.Will this opportunity allow her to become reunited with the man she used to love? Or has that dream vanished, like mist in the valley of blue gums?

    I wish the woman who lives in it was dead. Which makes it hard . . . because she was the one who came running when I screamed. Kat Jones is woken by an Intruder looming over her bed. She's saved by Edwina – the neighbour Kat believes betrayed her dying mother. Her dad issues an ultimatum. Either spend nights next door, or accept another Intruder in her life – Hercules, the world's ugliest guard dog. It's a no-brainer, even for dog-phobic Kat. When she meets adorkable Al at the dog park, finally Kat has someone to talk to, someone who cares.But the prowler isn't finished with Kat. To stop him, she needs Edwina's help . . . and what Kat learns could mend fences – or break her fragile family apart forever.

    Inside a brand new, palatial home, her three young children need more than she can give. Clem, a wilful four year old, is intent on mimicking her grandmother; the formidable matriarch Pat Cormac. Arthur is almost three and still won't speak. At least baby Robbie is perfect. He's the future of the family. So why can't Emma hold him without wanting to scream? Beyond their gleaming windows, a lake vista is evaporating. The birds have mostly disappeared, too. All over Shorehaven, the Cormac family buys up land to develop into cheap housing for people they openly scorn.After: The summers have grown even fiercer and the Cormac name doesn't mean what it used to. Arthur has taken it abroad, far from a family unable to understand him. Clem is a young artist who turns obsessively to the same dark subject. Pat doesn't even know what legacy means now. Not since the ground started sinking beneath her. Meanwhile, a nameless woman has been released from state care. She sticks to her twelve-step program, recites her affirmations, works one day at a time on a humble life devoid of ambition or redemption. How can she have an after when baby Robbie doesn't?

    Nic is a forty-five-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. She'd put her theory to the test, if only the pen buckets weren't currently blocked in by the crates of Happy Meal toys and the towers of Vegemite jars, take-away containers and cat food tins.Nic's closest relationship is with her niece Lena. The two of them meet for lunch every Sunday to gossip about the rest of the family and bitch about work (they're both checkout chicks: Lena just for now, Nic until they prise her staff discount card from her cold, dead hands).One Sunday, Nic fails to turn up to lunch and when Lena calls she gets a disconnection message. Arriving at the house she hasn't visited in years ('Too far for you to come, hon. Let's meet in the middle.') she finds her aunt unconscious under an avalanche of stuff.Lena is devastated that her beloved aunt has been living in such squalor all this time. While Nic is in hospital, she gets to work cleaning things up for her. Her first impulse is to call in the bulldozers and start searching Gumtree for a roomy caravan. But with the help of her reluctantly recruited brother, Will, she gets the job done.This heroic effort is not appreciated by the plastered up, crutch-wielding Nic. She returns to an empty, alien place unrecognisable as her home and the unbearable pity of her family who have no idea what they've destroyed. How can she live in this place without safety and peace? And how can she ever forgive the niece who has betrayed her?

    She isn’t sure what exactly she’s doing at Kalkari Wines in the Australian Shingle Valley – it’s the middle of winter and far from the lush, romantic vineyard setting she’d been expecting. Her brother thinks she’s spying for him, her bad-tempered new boss thinks she’s the au pair and the nanny can’t wait for her to clean the place up. Discovering pagan bonfire ceremonies, bizarre winemaking practices and a valley full of eccentric locals, Rose just wishes she’d ended up somewhere a bit warmer. But as the weather improves, the valley reveals its beauty, and Rose starts to fall in love: with the valley, the wines, the two children she’s helping to look after, and one of the men there. When her boss’s estranged wife returns and her brother descends, wanting answers, Rose is forced to make the hardest decision of her life.

    Their affluent father, Rex, has made sure that they'll be the envy of the new, working-class suburb they've moved to. But underneath the surface of the perfect family, is there something unsettling about the Jensons? To the local kids, Rex becomes a kind of hero, but Colt senses there's something in his father that could destroy their fragile new lives.

    . . you can't be trusted.  ROSE WANTS NOTHING MORE THAN TO GET AWAY. Last year she'd had it all: pre-law in the fall, a budding romance, and her best friend, Zoe. Now Zoe will never forgive her, her family is crumbling, and the secret that's been boiling up inside her is bubbling a little too close to the surface. All Rose needs to escape are an old van, her surfboard, the road, the ocean, and . . . mom? When Rose's mother jumps in the passenger seat right as Rose is about to set off, her trip takes an unexpected turn, filled with nagging memories of last year, and the looming scandal that refuses to be ignored. A twisting plot that keeps you guessing, told from the viewpoint of a realistically flawed yet snarky main character, makes this a book that just can't be put down.