Lee Fiora is a shy fourteen-year-old when she leaves small-town Indiana for a scholarship at Ault, an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts. Her head is filled with images from the school brochure of handsome boys in sweaters leaning against old brick buildings, girls running with lacrosse sticks across pristine athletics fields, everyone singing hymns in chapel. But as she soon learns, Ault is a minefield of unstated rules and incomprehensible social rituals, and Lee must work hard to find and maintain her place in the pecking order. About the Author: "Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of... View More...
This road trip will have earth-shattering consequences . . . Twins Justine and Perry are about to embark on the road trip of a lifetime in the Pacific Northwest. It's been a year since they watched their dad lose his battle with cancer. Now, at only nineteen, Justine is the sole carer for her disabled brother. But with Perry having been accepted into an assisted-living residence, their reliance on each other is set to shift. Before they go their separate ways, they're seeking to create the perfect memory. For Perry, the trip is a glorious celebration of his favourite things: mythical sea... View More...
An enchanting novel for young adults. Seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Over six turbulent months, Cassandra tries to hone her writing skills, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries which chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. View More...
From the bestselling author of If I Stay. This characteristically powerful novel follows eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds in the months following her best friend's shocking suicide. As Cody numbly searches for answers as to why Meg took her own life, she begins a journey of self-discovery which takes her to a terrifying precipice, and forces her to question not only her relationship with the Meg she thought she knew, but her own understanding of life, love, death and forgiveness. View More...
This acclaimed story of World War II is rich in suspense, characterization, plot and spiritual truth. Every element of occupied Holland is united in a story of courage and hope: a hidden Jewish child, an "underdiver," a downed RAF pilot, an imaginative, daring underground hero, and the small things of family life which surprisingly carry on in the midst of oppression. The Verhagen family, who live in the old windmill called the Winged Watchman, are a memorable set of individuals whose lives powerfully demonstrate the resilience of those who suffer but do not lose faith. View More...
A powerful story of love and loss, secrets and revelations - and making sense of a past that once seemed perfect. For Tom Brennan, life is about rugby, mates and family - until a night of celebration changes his life forever. Tom's world explodes as his brother Daniel is sent to jail and the Brennans are forced to leave the small town Tom's lived in his whole life. Tom is a survivor, but he needs a ticket out of the past just as much as Daniel. He will find it in many forms . . . About the Author: J.C. Burke was born in Sydney in 1965, the fourth of five sisters. With writers for parents, sh... View More...
The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves- the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional... View More...
The Catcher in the Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves- the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventio... View More...
Short-listed for the CBCA Book of the Year- Older Readers "When can I hold you then?" He whispered. "I want to. I... " He was going to say I love you - but what did that mean? For Xavier McLachlan, rugby is life. Winning a 1st XV jersey means everything... Until he meets Nuala Magee. Has there ever been a girl like her? She's feisty, she's troubled, she's dangerous. What will his mates think? Does he even care? Everything looks different now. Xavier McLachlan is in love. About the Author: James Moloney has been writing for young people for more than twenty years. Once a teacher and a libraria... View More...
From the critically acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere, a radiant novel that will leave you laughing and crying - all at once. For fans of John Green, Gayle Forman and Lauren Oliver. Jude and her twin Noah were incredibly close - until a tragedy drove them apart, and now they are barely speaking. Then Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy as well as a captivating new mentor, both of whom may just need her as much as she needs them. What the twins don't realize is that each of them has only half the story and if they can just find their way back to one another, they have a chance t... View More...
Internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha van Leer team up to create a story about a girl who crosses the border between reality and fantasy in a perilous search for her own happy ending. What happens when happily ever after ... isn't? Delilah hates school as much as she loves books. In fact, there's one book in particular she can't get enough of. If anyone knew how many times she has read and re-read the sweet little fairy tale she found in the library, especially the popular kids, she'd be sent to social Siberia ... forever. To Delilah, though, this fairy ... View More...
When Jules Davern falls for Darcy at the ice-skating rink, she has no idea how complicated her life is about to become. She doesn't know much about him, except that he's friendly, French - and never there when she needs him. When DArcy asks her to be his partner in a skating contest and then doesn't show up for practice, Jules decides she's had enough. What Jules doesn't know is that Darcy has some big problems of his own. View More...
Malou has just turned sixteen--hardly old enough to be out in the world on her own--and all she knows for sure is that she's of mixed race and that she was left at an orphanage as a newborn. When the orphanage burns to the ground, she finds out that she may have been born in a small town in Ontario's cottage country. Much to her surprise, Parry Sound turns out to have quite a few young brown faces, but Malou can't believe they might be related to her. After she finds work as a cleaner in the local hospital, an Aboriginal boy named Jimmy helps her find answers to her questions about her parents... View More...
Sara has never been out of the tiny town of Hope, Ontario, where she has been in an orphanage all her life. After a fire destroys the orphanage, clues about her parentage--a medical certificate and a Star of David--lead her to Germany. Despite her fears--she doesn't speak the language, she knows no one in Germany, and she's never been on an airplane--Sara arrives in Germany determined to explore her newly discovered Jewish heritage and solve the mystery of her parentage. What she encounters is a country still dealing with the aftermath of the Holocaust. With the help of a handsome, English-spe... View More...
Tess has always been tormented by waking visions that make her question her sanity. When the orphanage she lives in burns down, she decides to face her fears and find out once and for all what is wrong with her. She believes the truth must lie with her parents, and so, armed with only an address and phone number, Tess travels to a crumbling mansion in rural Quebec, where she discovers evidence of mistreatment of mental patients. She also makes an unlikely ally and gradually unearths her family's sad history--and finally accepts the truth about her paranormal powers. Part of the SECRETS--a seri... View More...
The extraordinary international bestseller from the author of new novel Bridge of Clay. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE "Brilliant and hugely ambitious ... the kind of book that can be life changing" The New York Times It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as... View More...
Melina Marchetta's stunning debut novel Looking for Alibrandi is one girl's story of her final year at school, a year she sets herself free. Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and in her final year at a wealthy girls' school. This is the year she meets her father, the year she falls in love, the year she searches for Alibrandi and finds the real truth about her family - and the identity she has been searching for. A moving and revealing book, unusual for its honesty and its insight into the life of a young person on the brink of adulthood. Multi-award-winning, a bestseller and made into an award... View More...
There's no easy way to put this, so I'll say it straight out. It's time I faced up to the truth. I'm fourteen years old and I have Ishmael Leseur's Syndrome. There is no cure. But that won't stop Ishmael and his intrepid band of misfits from taking on bullies, bugs, babes, the Beatles, debating, and the great white whale in the toughest, the weirdest, the most humiliatingly awful-and best year of their lives! 'To save embarrassment, don't read this book on a bus.' Katharine England, Advertiser View More...
Introduced by Jennifer Byrne. This is not a romance - I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn - a real yarn. Oh! Written with all the high spirits of youth, My Brilliant Career is the unforgettable tale of Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl - passionate, endearing, stubborn, honest - and her fraught journey from rags to riches to rags. View More...
Girls! Girls! Those of you who have hearts, and therefore wish for happiness, homes, and husbands by and by, never develop a reputation for being clever. When sixteen-year-old Miles Franklin began writing a thinly disguised novel about her youth in the Australian bush, she meant to 'show just how ridiculous the life around me would be as story material.' But when My Brilliant Career was published in 1901, it struck its author's native country like a small bomb and so scandalized Australians that Franklin demanded that it not be published again until ten years after her death. Today it remains ... View More...