Twelve-year old Gemma loves to draw. Her latest passion is illustrating the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, rendering in heart-stopping detail the terrifying giant, Blunderbore. Then, on a trip to stay with her Aunt Lucy, Gemma’s drawing is ripped in a lightning strike. When she hears strange calls for help coming from the beach, Gemma sets off to investigate and discovers that somehow her art has become reality. Jack and Blunderbore are in her world. And Blunderbore has kidnappe...

Told from the mesmerising point of view and in the inimitable voice of Jimmy, this is an extraordinary novel about a poor family who is struggling to cope with a different and difficult child.Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2015.Ned was beside me, his messages running easily through him, with space between each one, coming through him like water. He was the go-between, going between the animal kingdom and this one. I watched the waves as the...

'Just read it. Flippin' amazing.'TRENT DALTONMartha Mullins is a misfit. Her mother is glamorous, aloof and judgemental. Her father, mostly absent. Academic and shy, Martha finds herself fascinated by the underworld, a place she learns about in Roman mythology classes at school. To Martha, the underworld and its divine inhabitants provide a place of refuge, escape, imagination and desire.But Martha also finds joy in friendship. Conne...

The Choke is a mesmerising, harrowing and ultimately uplifting novel from the 2015 Miles Franklin winner.Winner of the 2018 Indie Book Award for Fiction!'It is quite a feat to write characters with such nuance...in harnessing her storytelling facility to expose the flaws in the system with what is becoming trademark empathy, Laguna is an author proving the novel is a crucial document of the times.' - Louise Swinn, The Australian

A child is imprisoned in a house by her reclusive religious parents. Hester has never seen the outside world; her companions are Cat, Spoon, Door, Handle, Broom, and they all speak to her. Her imagination is informed by one book, an illustrated child's bible, and its imagery forms the sole basis for her capacity to make poetic connection.One day Hester takes a brave Alice in Wonderland trip into the forbidden outside (at the behest of Handle - 'turn me turn me'), and this overwhelm...

The incandescent new novel from the acclaimed Miles Franklin winner author of The Eye of the Sheep and The Choke.WINNER OF THE 2021 COLIN RODERICK AWARDLONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARDLawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, an experience of betrayal ...

For the first time, read all four Grace stories in one beautiful hardback edition.It's 1808 . . .and Grace's world is about to change - from her tough life as a mudlark on the River Thames in London, to the adventures and challenges she faces as a servant girl in a new country.Journey with Grace across all four exciting stories about a convict girl who's given a second chance.Dreamy, thoughtful, brave and compassionate, Grace is an unf...

From the winner of the Miles Franklin Award for The Eye of the SheepLawrence is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, an experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the aftermath.As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be conde...

Abandoned by her mother as a toddler, only occasionally visited by her volatile father and raised solely by her tormented Pop, Justine finds sanctuary in The Choke, a place where the banks of the Murray River are so narrow they can almost touch. Although Justine doesn't know it, her father is a menacing criminal and the world she is exposed to is one of great peril to her. She must make sense of it on her own - and when she eventually does, she knows what she has to do…

A beautiful, illustrated adventure story with a classic feel, about a quiet boy and a talking crow on an extraordinary hot-air balloon ride to the Arctic.Matthew stood on the snowy peak and stared out at the world spread before him. Every picture in his books had been limited by the size of the page, contained within frames. Here, there was no frame. Here, the picture didn't end. Beyond those icy plains, the sea, and beyond the sea, a land that floated on the i...

Sugar boy gave me the name Bird, otherwise I'm James Burdell. 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 wha...

Fighting Bones is the convict-era adventure in this series of exciting, action-packed Australian stories for boys aged 8 to 12.Irish brothers Danny and Declan Sheehan are inmates at Tasmania's Point Puer prison for convict boys in 1836. When tragedy strikes and the prison bully is on the rampage, escape is their only chance to survive... But will they dare?It's an adventure in history.Do you dare?