It was like a tiny bit of Dorothy’s Oz in boring old black-and-white Kansas. Pink was for girls.Ava Simpson is trying on a whole new image. Stripping the black dye from her hair, she heads off to the Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence, leaving her uber-cool girlfriend, Chloe, behind.Ava is quickly taken under the wing of perky, popular Alexis who insists that: a) she’s a perfect match for handsome Ethan; and b) she absolutely must audition for the school musical.But while she’s busy trying to fit in — with Chloe, with Alexis and her Pastel friends, even with the misfits in the stage crew — Ava fails to notice that her shiny reinvented life is far more fragile than she imagined.Debut author Wikinson takes a lighthearted but timely and resonant look at a teen's attempts to don a new personality and figure out who she really wants to be.

    And the girl most likely to have everything under control . . . that is, until her dad invites Nick McGowan, the cutest boy at school, to live with them. Rachel worries that this could only be a recipe for disaster, but her best friend Zoe thinks it’s the perfect opportunity for lurve. Sparks start to fly for all the wrong reasons. Nick finds Rachel spoiled and uptight and Rachel dismisses Nick as lazy and directionless. But a secret from Nick’s past draws them together and makes the year Nick McGowan came to stay one that Rachel will never forget.

    My gaze follows the shoes up over long legs to a towering figure.I stand abruptly.Tall, black eyes, messy hair, a permanent scowl on a permanently angry face. Our school’s delinquent, a waster, the kind of boy who always sits at the back of class. The kind of boy even popular people like Sophia are afraid of.Teddy Taualai.Alice Dyson knows exactly how she’ll be spending her final year of high school. With her head down, quietly concentrating on her textbooks and homework. She’s focused on the future, and nothing and no one is going to get in her way. Until a bizarre encounter with the school’s most notorious troublemaker derails all her plans, turning Alice into the unwilling centre of attention and her life into one enormous complication.And even worse? Now Teddy Taualai won’t leave her alone.A story about rumours, friendship, and discovering who you really are.

    Who was the mysterious poet they had met in the Garden? What actually happened in the seaside cave that day? And most important — who can they tell about it? In beautifully shimmering prose, Ursula Dubosarsky reveals how a single shared experience can alter the course of young lives forever. Part gripping thriller, part ethereal tale of innocence lost, The Golden Day is a poignant study of fear and friendship, and of what it takes to come of age with courage.

    She sure wasn't expecting to be the one in need of help, though.Thanks to her father's gambling addiction, Stella and her family now find themselves living at Fairyland Caravan Park. And hiding this truth from her friends is hard enough without dealing with another secret. Stella's birth mother has sent her a letter.As Stella deals with the chaos of her family, she must also confront the secrets and past of her 'other' family. But Stella is stronger than she realises.From the author of P is for Pearl comes a heart-warming book about family, friendship and what home can mean.

    The last thing sixteen-year-old Maisie Martin thought she'd be doing this summer is entering a beauty pageant.Not when she's spent most of her life hiding her body from everyone.Not when her Dad is AWOL for Christmas and her gorgeous older sister has returned to rock Maisie's shaky confidence. And her best friend starts going out with the boy she's always loved.But Maisie's got something to prove.As she writes down all the ways this summer is going from bad to worse in her school-assignment journal, what starts as a homework torture-device might just end up being an account of how Maisie didn't let anything, or anyone, hold her back...

    I am the staff trainer. I will call you grasshopper and you will call me sensei and I will give you the good oil. Right? And just so you know, I'm open to all kinds of bribery.'From the moment 15-year-old Amelia begins work on the checkout at Woolworths she is sunk, gone, lost...head-over-heels in love with Chris. Chris is the funny, charming, man-about-Woolies, but he's 21, and the 6-year difference in their ages may as well be 100. Chris and Amelia talk about everything from Second Wave Feminism to Great Expectations and Alien, but will he ever look at her in the way she wants him to? And if he does, will it be everything she hopes?

    When Joel's dad finally makes a deal with the cops, his son ends up in solitary confinement while Craggs is sent off to juvenile detention. Contending that the past is never truly buried, this tale portrays the influence of peer pressure on teenagers and both the positive and dangerous choices they must face.

    Winning scholarships. Heading to uni. Travelling the world. Everyone except Milo Dark. Milo feels his life is stuck on pause. His girlfriend is 200km away, his mates have bailed for bigger things and he is convinced he's missed the memo reminding him to plan the rest of his life. Then Layla Montgomery barrels back into his world after five years without so much as a text message. As kids, Milo and Layla were family friends who shared everything - hiding out in her tree house, secrets made at midnight, and sunny afternoons at the river. But they haven't spoken since her mum's funeral. Layla's fallen apart since that day. She pushed away her dad, dropped out of school and recently followed her on-again-off-again boyfriend back to town because she has nowhere else to go. Not that she's letting on how tough things have been. What begins as innocent banter between Milo and Layla soon draws them into a tangled mess with a guarantee that someone will get hurt. While it's a summer they'll never forget, is it one they want to remember? A boy-meets-girl-again story from the award-winning author of The Intern and Faking It.

    Now Sam's trying to build a new life for them. He survives by breaking into empty houses when their owners are away, until one day he's caught out when a family returns home. To his amazement this large, chaotic family takes him under their wing - each teenager assuming Sam is a friend of another sibling. Sam finds himself inextricably caught up in their life, and falling for the beautiful Moxie. But Sam has a secret, and his past is about to catch up with him.

    By a tram-riding, mermaid-swaying, wolf-eaten, peace-sign flipping friend. I knew she wouldn't be happy if I stayed out here by the pool, with Jed's nail tracing the length of my neck.But I didn't want to go inside. I didn't want another drink. I wanted to stay out here and see what would happen.What’s a girl to do when her parents have split up; her mum’s trawling Tinder; and one of her best friends has decided not to invite her to the biggest party of the year, which she then has to watch unfold on everyone else’s social media?If you’re a girl called MC, you get mad as hell, that’s what you do.But what begins as one girl’s private, no-holds-barred rant soon snowballs in the most public way possible.

    But that's another way maps lie, because it felt like the distance travelled was a whole lot further than that.'Sorrento, Victoria - 1999 Fred's family is a mess. Fred's mother died when she was six and she's been raised by her Pop and adoptive father, Luca, ever since. But now Pop is at the Rye Rehabilitation Centre recovering from a fall; Luca's girlfriend, Anika, has moved in; and Fred's just found out that Anika and Luca are having a baby of their own. More and more it feels like a land-grab for family and Fred is the one being left off the map.But even as the world feels like it's spinning out of control, a crisis from the other side of it comes crashing in. When 400 Kosovar-Albanian refugees arrive in the middle of the night to be housed at one of Australia's 'safe havens' on an isolated headland not far from Sorrento, their fate becomes intertwined with the lives of Fred and her family, as she navigates one extraordinary year that will change them all.A middle-grade coming-of-age story about the bonds of family and the power of compassion for fans of The Bone Sparrow, Wolf Hollow and The Thing About Jellyfish.

    ‘There are worse things than school.’Luke sleepwalks through his days wagging school, swimming at the reservoir and eating takeaway pizza.That is until Charlotte shows up.Rumour is she got expelled from her city school and her family moved to the Blue Mountains for a fresh start.But when Luke’s invited to her house, he discovers there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.

    Her name is Frida, and shes edgy, caustic and funny. She's also a storyteller, but the stories she tells about herself don't ring true, and as their surprising and eventful day together unfolds, Sebastian struggles to sort the fact from the fiction.But how much can he expect Frida to share in just one day? And how much of his own self and his own secrets will he be willing to reveal in return?

    But it’s nothing to do with him. That’s just the way the Aborigines have always been treated. In the summer of 1965 racial tensions in the town are at boiling point, and something headed Walgaree’s way will blow things apart. It’s time for Robbie to take a stand. Nothing will ever be the same.