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Chasing the Valley
Skye Melki-Wegner - 2013
Escape is their only hope.Danika is used to struggling for survival. But when the tyrannous king launches an attack to punish her city – echoing the alchemy bombs that killed Danika’s family – she risks her life in a daring escape over the city’s walls.Danika joins a crew of desperate refugees who seek Magnetic Valley, a legendary safe haven. But when she accidentally destroys a palace biplane, suddenly Danika Glynn becomes the most wanted fugitive in Taladia.Pursued by the king’s vicious hunters and betrayed by false allies, Danika also grapples with her burgeoning magical abilities. And when she meets the mysterious Lukas, she must balance her feelings against her crew’s safety.Chasing the Valley is the first book in an epic trilogy of magic, treachery and survival.
Forever Friends
Shannon Guymon - 2004
After accidentally overhearing her so-called best friend verbally destroy her, Briana feels as if her world has fallen apart. Then she meets Jill and Miquelle and the three girls soon become inseparable. Join the girls as their friendship is put to the test through prejudices and misconceptions, a food fight, a car crash, missionary work, disastrous homecoming dates, crushes, first kisses, and everything else that comes with true friendship.
Geek Girl
Holly Smale - 2013
She knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a "jiffy" lasts 1/100th of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. What she isn't quite so sure about is why nobody at school seems to like her very much. So when she's spotted by a top model agent, Harriet grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her Best Friend's dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly handsome supermodel Nick. Even if it means lying to the people she loves. As Harriet veers from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, she begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn't seem to like her any more than the real world did. And as her old life starts to fall apart, the question is: will Harriet be able to transform herself before she ruins everything?
Boys Don't Knit (in Public)
T.S. Easton - 2014
All a big misunderstanding of course. To avoid the Young Offenders unit, Ben is ordered to give something back to the community and develop his sense of social alignment. Take up a hobby and keep on the straight and narrow. The hot teacher he likes runs a knitting group so Ben, reluctantly at first, gets 'stuck in'. Not easy when your dad is a sports fan and thinks Jeremy Clarkson is God. To his surprise, Ben finds that he likes knitting and that he has a mean competitive streak. If he can just keep it all a secret from his mates...and notice that the girl of his dreams, girl-next-door Megan Hooper has a bit of a thing for him...
Bird & Sugar Boy
Sofie Laguna - 2006
I live with my dad who has a big tattoo that says Live to Ride. He is so strong he can lift up a car, but he can't tell me what he's thinking. Maybe he's thinking about my mother who shot through.Sugar Boy is my best friend. We hang around down at the river, in the bush tunnel, or beside the railway tracks riding our bikes fast enough to beat the train. There's only two of us, but we're the whole team.I don't know what would happen if I didn't have Sugar Boy . . .
Gap Year in Ghost Town
Michael Pryor - 2017
I can see them. You can't. And, see them or not, they're dangerous. This is why my family has hunted ghosts for hundreds of years to protect people like you.The Marin family are outcasts of the ghost hunting world. They run a two-man operation in inner city Melbourne. Anton has the Ghost-sight, but his father does not.Rani Cross is supremely skilled in hand-to-hand combat, with enhanced speed and strength thanks to her magical initiation into the Company of the Righteous.When it comes to ghost-hunting methodology, Anton and Rani don't see eye to eye - Anton likes to 'ease their passage' to the next world, while Rani's all about the slashing.But Melbourne is under threat; with a massive spike in violent ghost manifestations, Anton and Rani must find a way to work together to keep supernatural forces at bay.And what with all the blindingly terrifying brushes with death, Anton must decide if he really wants in on the whole ghost hunting biz anyway.
Boone Shepard
Gabriel Bergmoser - 2016
You might have heard the rumours—whispers of an evil plot involving time travel, dangerous experiments, a secret fortress, a terrible book, famous authors and, regrettably, murder. You might also have heard of heroes who were caught up in this plot, fighting to do the right thing. That sounds a lot more impressive than it actually was. My name is Boone Shepard. I’m here to set the record straight.”Boone is taking a break from writing for The Chronicle newspaper to hunt down and destroy every last copy of a very rare, very dangerous book. But then his editor calls to demand he investigate a missing persons case deep in the Scottish Highlands—in the company of his rival, photographer Promethia Peters—and he is forced to abandon his personal goals and get back to work. Restless and begrudging, Boone is unprepared when this hunt leads him back to the one story that won’t stop chasing him—his own. Boone Shepard is the first in a series of young adult novels following the adventures of an Australian expat, errant journalist and accidental hero.
Puberty Blues
Kathy Lette - 1979
It also marked the starting point of Kathy Lette's writing career, which sees her now as an author at the forefront of her field.Puberty Blues is about top chicks and surfie spunks and the kids who don't quite make the cut: it recreates with fascinating honesty a world where only the gang and the surf count. It's a hilarious and horrifying account of the way many teenagers live and some of them die. Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey's insightful novel is as painfully true today as it ever was.
Crash and Burn
Michael Hassan - 2013
You likely already know what came after for Crash: the nationwide notoriety, the college recruitment, and, of course, the book deal. What you might not know is what came before: a story of two teens whose lives have been inextricably linked since grade school, who were destined, some say, to meet that day in the teachers' lounge of Meadows High. And what you definitely don't know are the words that Burn whispered to Crash right as the siege was ending, a secret that Crash has never revealed.Until now.Michael Hassan's shattering novel is a tale of first love and first hate, the story of two high school seniors and the morning that changed their lives forever. It's a portrait of the modern American teenage male, in all his brash, disillusioned, oversexed, schizophrenic, drunk, nihilistic, hopeful, ADHD-diagnosed glory. And it's a powerful meditation on how normal it is to be screwed up, and how screwed up it is to be normal.
Girl Defective
Simmone Howell - 2013
It’s about ten-year-old Super Agent Gully and his case of a lifetime. And about beautiful, reckless, sharp-as-knives Nancy. It’s about tragi-hot Luke, and just-plain-tragic Mia Casey. It’s about the dark underbelly of a curious neighborhood. It’s about summer, and weirdness, and mystery, and music.
And it's about life and death and grief and romance. All the good stuff.
The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay
Rebecca Sparrow - 2006
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.
Before the Beginning
Anna Morgan - 2020
For fans of We Were Liars.Schoolies week: that strange in-between time when teenagers move from school into the adult world. It's a week when anything is possible, and everything can change.Grace is questioning everything she thought about herself, and has opted not to join her clique of judgemental friends for schoolies, instead tagging along with her brother Casper and his friends. Casper, an artist, is trying to create the perfect artwork for his uni application folio. Overachieving, anxiety-ridden Noah is reeling from a catastrophe that might have ruined his ATAR result. And Elsie is just trying to figure out how to hold their friendship group together.On the first night of the trip, they meet Sierra, a mysterious girl with silver-grey hair and a magnetic personality. All of them are drawn to her for different reasons, and she persuades them to abandon the cliched schoolies experience in favour of camping with her on a remote, uninhabited island. On that island, each of them will find answers to their questions. But what does Sierra want from them?An empathetic and suspenseful coming-of-age story from the author of All That Impossible Space.
The Stars at Oktober Bend
Glenda Millard - 2016
When they meet they find the tender beginnings of love and healing. Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone, but something inside her is broken. She has acquired brain injury, the result of an assault, and her words come out slow and slurred. But when she writes, heartwords fly from her pen. She writes poems to express the words she can't say and leaves them in unexpected places around the town. Manny was once a child soldier. He is sixteen and has lost all his family. He appears to be adapting to his new life in this country, where there is comfort and safety, but at night he runs, barefoot, to escape the memory of his past. When he first sees Alice, she is sitting on the rusty roof of her river-house, looking like a carving on an old-fashioned ship sailing through the stars.
Act of Faith
Kelly Gardiner - 2011
Sixteen-year-old Isabella is forced to flee her home when her father’s radical ideas lead him into a suicidal stand against Oliver Cromwell’s army. Taking refuge in Amsterdam and desperate to find a means to survive, Isabella finds work with an elderly printer, Master de Aquila, and his enigmatic young assistant, Willem.When Master de Aquila travels to Venice to find a publisher brave enough to print his daring new book, Isabella accompanies him and discovers a world of possibility -where women work alongside men as equal partners, and where books and beliefs are treasured.But in a continent torn apart by religious intolerance, constant danger lurks for those who don’t watch their words. And when the agents of the Spanish Inquisition kidnap de Aquila to stop him printing his book, Isabella and Willem become reluctant allies in a daring chase across Europe to rescue him from certain death.The sequel to Act of Faith will be published in 2013.
Confessions of a High School Disaster
Emma Chastain - 2017
I’m a kissing virgin (so so so embarrassing).2. My best friend, Hannah, is driving me insane.3. I think I’m in love with Mac Brody, senior football star, whose girlfriend is so beautiful she doesn’t even need eyeliner.4. My dad won’t stop asking me if I’m okay.5. Oh, and my mom moved to Mexico to work on her novel. But it’s fine—she’ll be back soon. She said so.Mom says the only thing sadder than remembering is forgetting, so I’m going to write down everything that happens to me in this diary. That way, even when I’m ninety, I’ll remember how awkward and horrible and exciting it is to be in high school