A House Divided by Clare Hallifax
In a crisis, take a stand ... A coming of age story, set against the Dismissal of the government in 1975 as battle lines are drawn, democracy is on the edge, and all of it is far too close to home.
When another national crisis puts Juliet’s family beach trip on hold, Juliet is disappointed, but not surprised. When your dad has a key job in the federal government, even faraway crises hit close to home, and change is the only constant. It’s 1975 and Juliet has a lot to look forward to. It's the last year of primary school, wrongs are being set right, and there’s new attitudes, new opportunities ... as well as new friends. But as Juliet gets to know more about the people around her and the times that shape her, there are plenty of surprises still in store.
But politics is casting a long shadow over the country, and it seems nothing can save Juliet, her family, and her friendships, from the biggest crisis of all.
Cleopatra: The Girl who would be King by Jackie French
Forget what you know about Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen with a fantastic hairstyle. That's only part of the story. Before she was a ruler, Cleopatra was a girl with a fierce ambition: to become pharaoh.
When twelve-year-old Cleopatra and her father, Pharaoh Ptolemy XII, flee to ancient Rome in 59 BCE after Cleopatra's sister seizes the throne, they are in serious trouble. It's up to Cleopatra to raise enough gold to hire an army, gain the support of powerful allies, and take back her country's land.
Three years later she had become the most famous pharaoh in history.
This is the story of how that year in ancient Rome might have changed Cleopatra's life, with daring escapes, crocodiles, pirates, shipwreck and encountering the intrepid Captain Fileas and Myra, the slave determined to be free.
From one of Australia's best-loved authors comes the first title in an exciting new series that explores the Ancient World.
The Trap by Fiona Kelly McGregor
Sydney, October 1942. A wartime city dimmed by brownouts, flush with American cash, rotten with corruption.
For nightclub manager Ray Sayles, a fateful encounter in the Domain turns him into a police target. He's plunged into a system where the rich are untouchable but the marginalised - like notorious queer sly-grogger Iris Webber - are relentlessly targeted, and bent coppers hunt ordinary men whose only crime is desire.
Based on a shocking real-life scandal, The Trap is a blistering, standalone companion to the best-selling Iris. By turns tender and excoriating, it exhumes the hidden history of a city in which the law is a weapon wielded against those deemed deviant - and the most unforgivable vice is the truth.
The Other Catherine by Lauren Keenan
Two worlds, two women, one story . . .
In 1793, eighteen-year-old Catherine is sentenced to transportation on the Tempest, a convict ship bound for New South Wales. Trapped below deck with scores of women, she endures storms, brutality and loss, while dreaming of freedom on the shores of a country far from home.
A century later in Aotearoa, Māori matriarch Keita stands amid the ruins of her whānau and the encroaching world of settlers, whalers and empire. Disturbed by the long reach of colonial change, Keita begins to unravel her own story.
Spanning seas and generations, The Other Catherine is a luminous tale of survival, whakapapa and female friendship, for readers of Jenny Pattrick and Tina Makereti.
The Names of a Hare by Bernice Barry
Cornwall, 1628. A young girl guards a dangerous secret: she can leave her body and fly. Steeped in herbal lore and forbidden spells, the girl becomes a woman, while across the land whispers of witchcraft turn deadly. When witchfinder Matthew Hopkins sets out to hunt her down, their meeting will change the course of history. In a world that fears what it cannot explain, a story shared is the most potent magic of all.
A Flash in the Dust by Meg Caddy
1899, Fremantle Asylum, Western Australia. For three years now, Gilberta Brady has kept quiet and stayed out of trouble, hoping to soon be released. But when Norah Devaney screams into the ward with revenge in her heart and a story no-one believes, Brady’s carefully guarded peace is shattered.
On the run and out of options, they collide with Malkar and Kedalak, Nyungar brothers on their own journey home. They form an unlikely gang of bushrangers and embark on a dangerous mission: track down the man who killed Norah’s mum.
But the Whistling Man is hunting them too.
The Midwatch by Judith Rossell
The biggest children's book of the year! The Midwatch is the long-awaited new middle-grade novel from internationally bestselling author–illustrator Judith Rossell, creator of the multi-award-winning novel Withering-by-Sea.
‘The city was stuffed full of wickedness, everyone knew that …’
Banished to the Midwatch Institute for Orphans, Runaways and Unwanted Girls, Maggie Fishbone is sure she’s in for a life of drudgery. But she quickly discovers there’s more to the Midwatch than meets the eye …
The city shimmers with jewels and secrets, and soon Maggie is thrust into an adventure that takes her deep underground, high above the clouds and face to face with danger itself.
Turn the page and prepare to be drawn into a lavishly illustrated world, brimming with mystery, unlikely heroines and an adventure as big as the sky.
The Year We Escaped by Suzanne Leal
With war on their doorstep, German classmates Klara and Rachel, and French brothers Lucien and Paul, are forced to leave their homes. They are taken to Gurs, a French detention camp in the south-west of France. It's a crowded place, with little comfort and even less food.
When Klara and Rachel are promised safe refuge in a remote French village, Lucien and Paul are anxious to join them — and will risk their own lives to get there.
Filled with adventure, danger and intrigue, this is the story of four unlikely friends desperate to escape from a war that keeps coming closer.
Moonboy by Anna Ciddor
When a boy called Keith pops up from nowhere in Letty's bedroom and accuses her of invading his room, Letty is astonished - but things get even stranger when she realises she is caught up in an incredible adventure, able to slip back and forth in time!
Keith lives in the world of 1969, and Letty joins in the thrill and excitement of the first astronauts about to land on the moon.
But when she discovers her trips to the past are changing history, she starts to worry. What if something she says or does causes a disaster - or even messes up the moon landing?
I am Nannertgarrook by Tasma Walton
Based on the true story of Tasma Walton’s ancestor, a powerful, heart-wrenching novel about maternal love that endures against pitiless odds. Kidnapped by sealers and enslaved far from her homeland, Nannertgarrook has a spirit that refuses to bow …
From her idyllic life in sea country in Nerrm (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), Nannertgarrook is abducted and taken to a slave market, leaving behind a husband, daughter and son. Pregnant when seized, she soon gives birth to another son, whom she raises with the children of her fellow captives.
Nannertgarrook is separated not only from her Boonwurrung family, but from her birthright – the ceremonies she once was so joyously part of, the majestic whales who are her totem, the land and sky and sea country and its creatures. All these things she loves as deeply as she does her blood kin.
But now, as her reality becomes profoundly different, she must keep that family and her old life alive in her mind. Their rich, pulsating elements sing to us through her beautiful voice, even while Nannertgarrook herself is subjected to the worst of humanity. This sweeping novel asks us to consider who, in colonial history, were the real savages, and what it truly means to be civilised.
The First Friend by Malcolm Knox
Even the worst person has a best friend.
A chilling black comedy, The First Friend imagines a gangster mob in charge of a global superpower.
The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria slowly but surely descends into murderous paranoia.
By his side is Vasil Murtov, Beria's closest friend since childhood. But to be a witness is dangerous; Murtov must protect his family and play his own game of survival while remaining outwardly loyal to an increasingly unstable Beria. The tension ramps up as Stalin's visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches. Is Murtov playing Beria, or is he being played?
The First Friend is a novel in a time of autocrats, where reality is a fiction created by those who rule. Reflecting on Putin's Russia, Trump's America, Xi's China and Murdoch's planet Earth, it is at once a satire and a thriller, a survivor's tale in which a father has to walk a tightrope every day to save his family from a monster and a monstrous society. Where safety lies in following official fictions, is a truthful life the ultimate risk?
Dusk by Robbie Arnott
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
