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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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?

Many books and essays have addressed the broad sweep of Texas music—its multicultural aspects, its wide array and blending of musical genres, its historical transformations, and its love/hate relationship with Nashville and other established music business centers. This book, however, focuses on an essential thread in this tapestry: the Texas singer-songwriters to whom the contributors refer as “ruthlessly poetic.” All songs require good lyrics, but for these songwriters, the poetic qualit...

Is fame and money a blessing when it reveals that your whole life has been a lie?Rue's deceased mother kinda 'fibbed' about who her real father was. Big time. On her 21st birthday she learns the truth by way of a $55 million dollar inheritance from a man she never got the chance to know.More shocking? The two famous brothers Rue's been reading about in magazines all her life are suddenly family. Jack and Sean Stone aren't happy to meet their new secret sist...

The second anniversary issue of a mystery magazine which Bestselling author Reed Farrel Coleman has called “a cut above” and mystery grand masters Lawrence Block and Max Allan Collins have praised for its “solid fiction” and “the most elegant design”.Our Issue Nº8: Winter 2019 featuresA curated collection of short fiction including stories by Hester Young, Edgar Award Winner SJ Rozan, Hilary Davidson, Ryan David Jahn, Edgar Award Winner Gary Earl Ross, Jonathan Ferrini, Kev...