AustLit

'Jane is a contact tracer. She has to call a lot of people and some of them don’t want to talk. Various reasons – tax or immigration issues, infidelity. Domestic abuse.

'Jane knows all about that. She and her daughter Tara have spent years in hiding from Tara’s manipulative and terrifying ex. Now, as Jane talks to a close contact, she realises the woman on the phone is scared of the same man – and he’s close. Too close.

'Suddenly the past comes slamming back into the present as Jane realises she and Tara can’t keep running forever.

'One day, they’re going to be found.' (Publication summary) 

(Publication summary)

'Mrs Koala runs the most popular beauty parlour in town, but she's so busy with her clients, she doesn't even know how many she has!

'From talented duo Catherine Jinks and Tania McCartney comes a delightful book that takes us on a fun-filled journey as we count down to the end of a crazy day in Mrs Koala's beauty parlour.'

Source : publication summary

'Robyn Ayres works as the camp caretaker on Finch Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Queensland. Her current clients are a group of ex-military men who run a tough-love program for troubled teens.

'The latest crop looks like the usual mix of bad boys and sad boys. Then Robyn takes a second look at a kid called Darren. Last time she saw him his name was Aaron, and Robyn was his primary school teacher. And she was somehow at the centre of a vicious small-town custody battle involving his terrifying grandmother.

'Bruising classroom dynamics, manipulative parents and carers and horrendous small-town politics form the backdrop to a nail-biting thriller in which the tensions of ten years ago start to play themselves out, building to a violent climax in the present day.

'Robyn escaped the past once. Now it’s back—and this time there’s no way out.' (Publication summary)

'Meg lives alone. A little place in the bush outside town. A perfect place to hide. That's one of the reasons she offers to shelter Nerine, who's escaping a violent ex. The other is that Meg knows what it's like to live with an abusive partner.

'Nerine is jumpy and her two little girls are frightened. It tells Meg all she needs to know about where they've come from and she's not that surprised when Nerine asks her to get hold of a gun. But she knows it's unnecessary. They're safe now.

'Then she starts to wonder about some little things. A disturbed flyscreen. A tune playing on her windchimes. Has Nerine's ex tracked them down? Has Meg's husband turned up to torment her some more?

'By the time she finds out it'll be too late to do anything but run for her life.' (Publication summary)

'Fourteen-year-old convict Tom Clay lives in a shepherd’s hut in the bush, protecting his master’s sheep from wild dogs. When a vicious fellow shepherd returns to ensure there are no witnesses to his crimes, the bush-crafty Tom and his hapless mate Rowdy face a life-and-death battle to survive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Barney loves cat food. Barney loves greens. Barney loves bacon and biscuits and beans...

'Barney the dog loves to eat. In fact, Barney not only loves every food he has ever encountered, but he also loves to eat all sorts of things that aren’t really food at all!'

Source: publisher's blurb

'Thomas Guthrie Carr is charged by Eliza Gray with mesmerising her and raping her while she was under his influence. But if mesmerism and Mr Carr are shams, was Eliza raped?

'The companion novel to Theophilus Grey and the Demon Thief is a fast-paced adventure as Philo graduates from petty fraud and street crime to high-level political espionage.

'You have too much honour for this trade, my dear. Abandon it now, while you still can.

'In eighteenth-century London, twelve-year-old linkboy Philo Grey has spent most of his childhood out on the streets, collecting information to sell. One of his best customers, Mr Bishop, pays him good money for intelligence about the Jacobites, who are plotting to overthrow King George. But spying on the Jacobites is a dangerous business - especially when Philo becomes the target of a rival gang of linkboys. And then there's Philo's old master, Garnet Hooke, who's never forgiven Philo for leaving him. Garnet feels so betrayed, he'll stop at nothing.

'Luckily, Philo has friends as well as enemies. He can trust his crew of linkboys, his team of informants, and his staunch friend Nathaniel Paxton, a surgeon with a background in espionage. Even his new friend, actress and master of disguise, Caroline Cowley, is a valuable ally. But with his enemies closing in, Philo has to ask himself: where should his loyalties really lie? And how far should they take him?' (Publication summary)

'Twelve-year-old Theophilus Grey - Philo to his friends - heads a team of linkboys who guide Londoners home through the dank eighteenth-century alleys by the light of their torches. In the process, the boys pick up useful information for their master, Garnet Hooke, who runs a spy network from his sickbed.

'When thieves and rogues start dropping without a scratch, rumours spread of a dangerous faery demon on the loose, and Philo begins to fear the worst. Then a sudden wave of crime sweeps the neighbourhood, and he can't help but wonder if the two are connected.

'With help from his new friend, Mr Paxton, Philo finds himself battling a threat far more sinister than any he's faced before. He will need to use all his cunning to uncover the truth behind the demon thief in time to save his friends.

'This gripping tale of spies, spells and secrets plunges the reader into a dark and perilous world where superstition clashes with the Age of Enlightenment.' (Publication summary)

'Twelve-year-old Ned Roach used to scavenge for scraps along the Thames riverbank. But the recent plague of child-eating bogles in London means that he's now working as an apprentice to Alfred Bunce, the bogler.

'Alongside Jem Barbary and (sometimes) Birdie McAdam, Ned must lure bogles out of their lairs so that Alfred can kill them. And this means spending a lot of time in the city's murky underground waterways - especially when Alfred is hired by the London Sewers Office to stamp out a deadly infestation.

'But times are changing. As magic and folklore give way to the machine age, Alfred begins to face an uncertain future - while Ned and his friends find themselves threatened by an enemy from their past who's even more dangerous than the bogles.

'Catherine Jinks captures the end of an era and the start of a technological revolution in her brilliant final instalment of the City of Orphans trilogy.' (Publication summary)

'Imagine if you discovered your whole world was actually in a computer...

'Noble is a knight with a heart that's true and, well, noble. He must fight everything he encounters in his quest to reach the castle and free the princess. But he's tired... Then one day Rufus comes along and turns his world upside down. Rufus has his own ideas about how to get ahead: don't fight, negotiate! Don't play by the rules! Suddenly, life is more interesting - and less painful - than ever before. But the new rules are harder to live by than the old ones. And can it be true what people are saying: that Noble actually lives inside a computer (whatever that is), and that Rufus is a computer virus?

'A fast-paced story with a hilarious combination of characters that pushes the boundaries of space and time.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Eleven-year-old Jem Barbary spent most of his early life picking pockets for a canny old crook named Sarah Pickles. Now she's betrayed him, and Jem wants revenge. He also wants to work for bogler Alfred Bunce, who kills the child-eating monsters that lurk in the city's cellars and sewers. But Alfred is keen to give up bogling, since he almost lost his last apprentice, Birdie.

'When numerous children start disappearing around Newgate Prison, Alfred and Jem do join forces, waging an underground war. They even seek help from Birdie, dragging her away from the safe and comfortable home she's found with Miss Edith Eames. Together they learn that there's only one thing more terrifying than facing a whole plague of bogles - and that's facing some of the sinister people from Jem's past ...' (Publisher's blurb)

'I still hadn't fully absorbed the terrible possibility that I might actually be a werewolf. A werewolf. I kept stumbling over that word; it made no sense to me. How could I be a werewolf? Werewolves didn't exist.

'When Tobias Richard Vandevelde wakes up in hospital with no memory of the night before, his horrified mother tells him that he was found unconscious. At Featherdale Wildlife Park. In a dingo pen.

'He assumes that his two rambunctious best friends are somehow responsible, until he discovers that they're just as freaked out as he is. Then the mysterious Reuben turns up, claiming that Toby has a rare and dangerous "condition". Next thing he knows, Toby finds himself involved with a strange bunch of sickly insomniacs who seem convinced that he needs their help.

'It's not until he's kidnapped and imprisoned that he starts to believe them - and to understand what being a paranormal monster really means.' (From the publisher's website.)