This January is different. It's as though the future is held here. Held at bay, held at more than arm's length. And the waiting is everywhere. School is over for Alex Delaney and he's waiting for his university offers—only seventeen days away. The waiting is killing him. He's not expecting much from January. Bodysurfing, TV, but mainly waiting. So he's not ready for the girl who cuts past him on a wave. Not at all prepared for her perfect balance, compelling green eyes, and gold skin. Janu...

Adjusting to a new country and a new school was never going to be easy for Herschelle. The food is strange, it's so different to South Africa and, worst of all, no one understands the Aussie slang he's learnt on the web.But it's the similarities that make things really hard. Herschelle will have to confront racism, bullying and his own past before Australia can feel like home . . .A moving, funny new novel by one of Australia's best-loved authors.

Mother, your boy is a loser. It's possible that the object of most urgent desire thinks I'm a bird-nerd. And I suspect I might be competing for her affections with a dog she recently pashed... A few months ago Dan had to make a choice. Go to Geneva with his parents for a year, board at school or move into a house with his 22-year-old bass-playing aunt, Jacq, and her friend, Naomi. He picked Jacq's place. Now he's doing his last year at school and trying not to spin out. Trying to master ca...

Jon, Rick and Jen share takeaway food rituals, sporadic cocktail nights and the quest for love. Rick seems destined to long, lonely nights beneath his Porky Pig doona. Jen consumes men like chocolate bars. And Jon gets lucky in a way he's never expected - more women than he knows how to handle. A medical graduate with grand plans for the hormone of darkness, he finds his life is spiralling way out of control.

Richard Derrington is twenty-eight and single. More single than he'd like to be. More single than he'd expected to be, and not coping well. Since Anna trashed him six months ago he's been trying to find his way again. He's doing his job badly, he's playing tennis badly, his renovating attempts haven't got past the veranda, and he's wondering when things are going to change. Zigzag Street covers six weeks of Richard's life in Brisbane's Red Hill. Six weeks of rumination, chaos, poor judgeme...

When Annaliese Winter walks down Curtis Holland's front path, he's ill-prepared for a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who's a confounding mixture of adult and child. After years travelling the world with his band, Butterfish, he's not used to having a neighbour at all. So when Curtis receives an invitation to dinner from Annaliese's mother, Kate, he is surprised when he not only accepts but finds himself being drawn to this remarkably unremarkable family. Even to fifteen-year-old Mark who is a...

Frank and Philby meet at university. Frank is the king of cool and dysfunctionally libidinous. Philby is nervous, nerdy and dysfunctionally insecure. Somehow, they form a team, and go about chasing girls, passing their degrees and surviving many a green drink experience. The hilarious misadventures of Frank and Philby are just part of what lies between the covers of Headgames. There's also a difficult unicorn, a shampoo fetish, a cyber romance, a shopping mall that goes on forever, a fishi...

Everyone knows that Joel and Cat hate each other. Then they end up partners in a writing assignment. By the second paragraph they're in the thick of an all-out tandem-story war. Then Cat's dad and Joel's mum start dating, and they can finally agree on something - it's got to stop. But will sparks fly between Joel and Cat for all the right reasons as they go about setting a few things straight?

Felix, a Jewish boy in Poland in 1942, is hiding from the Nazis in a Catholic orphanage. The only problem is that he doesn't know anything about the war, and thinks he's only in the orphanage while his parents travel and try to salvage their bookselling business. And when he thinks his parents are in danger, Felix sets off to warn them--straight into the heart of Nazi-occupied Poland. To Felix, everything is a story: Why did he get a whole carrot in his soup? It must be sign that his paren...

For fans of Hatchet and Island of the Blue Dolphins comes Theodore Taylor’s classic bestseller and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award winner, The Cay.Phillip is excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curaçao. War has always been a game to him, and he’s eager to glimpse it firsthand–until the freighter he and his mother are traveling to the United States on is torpedoed.When Phillip comes to, he is on a small raft in the middle o...

Winner - KOALA Children's Choice Awards 2011 - Fiction for Years 7–9Winner - YABBA Children's Choice Awards 2011 - Hall of FameShortlisted - REAL Children's Choice Awards 2011 - Fiction for Years 7–9Bridget wants a quiet life. Including, if possible, keeping her parents out of prison.Then a boy called Menzies makes her an offer she can't refuse, and they set off on a job of their own.It's a desperate, ...

Hedley Hopkins has a few problems: he is the new kid at school, straight off the boat from England in the 1950s. The only friends he has made are the kids at the Loony Bin especially bald headed, long armed Victor. But if he could just fulfil a dare and dig out the hideous skull hidden in a grave in the sand dunes, he could impress the bullies at school and become their friend. But Hedley is not so sure. Weird things are happening to his body. Is he being punished for his terrible...