AustLit

'From bestselling Australian author Lynette Noni comes a dark, thrilling YA fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Sabaa Tahir.

'Here at Zalindov, the only person you can trust is yourself.

'Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last ten years fighting for survival in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer.

'When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal: a series of elemental challenges against the torments of air, fire, water and earth, assigned to only the most dangerous of criminals.

'Then a coded message from Kiva’s family arrives, containing a single order: Don’t let her die. We are coming. Aware that the Trials will kill the sickly queen, Kiva risks her own life to volunteer in her place. If she succeeds, both she and the queen will be granted their freedom.

'But no one has ever survived.

'With an incurable plague sweeping Zalindov, a mysterious new inmate fighting for Kiva's heart, and a prison rebellion brewing, Kiva can't escape the terrible feeling that her trials have only just begun.' (Publication summary)

''My most desperate wish while Saroo was growing up was to send through the heavens a message—"Your boy is fine, I'm looking after him. He's beautiful." That was my big wish.'

'Saroo Brierley's journey home to a small village in India by scrolling through countless satellite images on Google Earth became an internationally bestselling book and inspired the major motion picture LION. But the untold story of how his adoptive mother, Sue, came into his life half a world away in Tasmania is every bit as riveting and unlikely. For Sue herself had a traumatic childhood. She was the daughter of European refugees, and her father was a violent alcoholic whose business gambles left her family destitute.

'When Sue married she was determined to break the cycle of despair. She chose not to have biological children and to adopt a child in need. Sue and her husband, John, filled their home with love and compassion, and opened their hearts to two very special little boys, Saroo and Mantosh.

'Twenty-five years later, the discovery that Saroo's mother was actually still alive in a remote town in India turned his world upside down — as it did for Sue. The story of how Sue met Kamla and united over their shared love for Saroo is both moving and inspiring.

'In this uplifting and deeply personal book Sue explores what it means to be a mother, how families are formed in many ways, and how love and perseverance can, ultimately, bring us all together.' (Publication summary)

'Someone once told me that you have two families in your life - the one you are born into and the one you choose. Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don't choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.

'From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana is exquisitely polite, but Lucy knows, even after marrying Oliver, that they'll never have the closeness she'd been hoping for.

'But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.

'That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'My real name, no one remembers.
The truth about that summer, no one else knows.

'In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor in rural Oxfordshire. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe's life is in ruins.

'Over one hundred and fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items: a sepia photograph of an arresting-looking woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist's sketchbook containing the drawing of a twin-gabled house on the bend of a river.

'Why does Birchwood Manor feel so familiar to Elodie? And who is the beautiful woman in the photograph? Will she ever give up her secrets?

'Told by multiple voices across time, The Clockmaker's Daughter is a story of murder, mystery and thievery, of art, love and loss. And flowing through its pages like a river, is the voice of a woman who stands outside time, whose name has been forgotten by history, but who has watched it all unfold: Birdie Bell, the clockmaker's daughter.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

'This is a story of right and wrong, and how sometimes they look the same ...

'1926. Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western Australia. The only inhabitants of Janus Rock, he and his wife Isabel live a quiet life, cocooned from the rest of the world.

'One April morning a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying infant - and the path of the couple's lives hits an unthinkable crossroads.

'Only years later do they discover the devastating consequences of the decision they made that day - as the baby's real story unfolds...' (From the publisher's website.)

'An abandoned house…

'After a particularly troubling case, Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police and retreats to her beloved grandfather’s cottage in Cornwall. There she finds herself at a loose end, until one day she stumbles upon an abandoned house surrounded by overgrown gardens and dense woods, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

'A missing child…

'June 1933, and the Edevane family’s country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. For Eleanor, the annual party has always been one of her treasured traditions, but her middle daughter, Alice, sixteen years old and with literary ambitions, is especially excited. Not only has Alice worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she’s also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn’t. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night sky, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great they leave Loeanneth and never return.

'An unsolved mystery…

'Seventy years later, in the attic writing room of her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family’s past and seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Clariel is the daughter of the one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen and, most importantly, to the King. When her family moves to the city of Belisaere, there are rumors that her mother is next in line for the throne. However, Clariel wants no part of it—a natural hunter, all she ever thinks about is escaping the city’s confining walls and journeying back to the quiet, green world of the Great Forest.

'But many forces conspire against Clariel’s dream. A dangerous Free Magic creature is loose in the city, her parents want to marry her off to a killer, and there is a plot brewing against the old and withdrawn King Orrikan. When Clariel is drawn into the efforts to find and capture the creature, she discovers hidden sorcery within herself, yet it is magic that carries great dangers. Can she rise above the temptation of power, escape the unwanted marriage, and save the King?' (Publication summary)

'"The body you are wearing used to be mine."

'So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions in a series of letters her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

'She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of an MI5ish secret organisation called the Checquy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain (who knew?). She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

'In her quest to uncover which member of the Checquy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters such wacky folk as a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children with bizarre traits are transformed into Checquy operatives, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Heaven must be missing an angel ... The angel Bethany and her mortal love, Xavier, have already pushed the boundaries of Heaven with their relationship. In this conclusion to the Halo trilogy, the two take their love to the next, forbidden, step: they marry. At a time when they believe nothing will come between them again, they are faced with their most daunting challenge yet - The Sevens, a military order of angels designed to maintain balance in the universe. These soldiers won't stop until their job is done - capture the wayward angel and send her home. Beth discovers there is only one way back to Earth, but the cost is higher than she ever imagined. If she can survive, she can prove to Heaven and Earth that there is nothing stronger than the power of love.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"The first time we met, Jewel Valentine saved my life."

'Isn't it enough having your very own terminal disease, without your mother dying? Or your father dating your Art teacher? No wonder Sacha Thomas ends up in the lake that Saturday evening...

'But the real question is: how does he end up in love with Jewel Valentine?

'With the help of quirky teenage prodigies Little Al and True Grisham, Sacha and Jewel have a crazy adventure, with a little lobster emancipation along the way.

'But Sacha's running out of time, and Jewel has secrets of her own.' (From the publisher's website.)

'"Come to us, Troubletwisters, join us ... welcome, most welcome!"

'When their home mysteriously explodes around their ears, twins Jack and Jaide are sent to stay with a grandmother they have never met, in a town they have never heard of. Portland might seem boring and quiet, but it soon becomes apparent that Grandma X is more than a little eccentric, and there are very strange happenings in the town. Talking cats, swarms of cockroaches, a miniature tornado trashing their room - the twins are about to find out what it means to be a troubletwister!

Something growing
Something read
Something living
Someone dead.'

(From the publisher's website.)

'Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long-lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen-year-old girl, Edie's mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper, her twin sisters and their father, Raymond, author of the 1918 children's classic The True History of the Mud Man. In the grand and glorious Milderhurst Castle, a new world opens up for Edie's mother. She discovers the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, the dangers.

Fifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother's riddle, she, too, is drawn to Milderhurst Castle and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.' Source: www.allenandunwin.com/ (Sighted 03/11/2010).

'Nothing much happens in the sleepy town of Venus Cove.

'But everything changes when three angels, Ivy, Bethany and Gabriel are sent from heaven to protect the town against the gathering forces of darkness. They work hard to conceal their true identity and, most of all, their wings. But the mission is threatened when the youngest angel, Bethany, is sent to high school and falls for the handsome school captain, Xavier Woods. Will she defy the laws of Heaven by loving him?

'Things come to a head when the angels realize they are not the only supernatural power in Venus Cove. There′s a new kid in town and he′s charming, seductive and deadly. Worst of all, he′s after Beth.'

'The angels and Xavier must work together to overcome the dark forces - but will Beth survive the battle?' (From the publisher's website.)